Responsible innovation goes south: critique, othering, and a commitment to care

ABSTRACT

This paper employs critique as othering to engage with mainstream renderings of Responsible Innovation (R(R)I) in a non-western setting. To re-image science-society relationships, initial framings of R(R)I argued for distancing from corrosive critiques of S&T and embracing democratic engagement. However, RIs fixation on Europe as its ‘Centre' led to ‘othering' and dis-engagement in the Indian context. Consequently, the critique of R(R)I by Indian actors resulted in re-framing it as ‘business-as-usual.’ I argue that rather than distancing from critique of S&T, R(R)I must revisit and deepen its commitments to care. A care-based approach demands that we continuously pay attention to the absent, neglected, and marginalized concerns without being over-invested in origins, naming, and institutionalization. The auto-ethnographical account demonstrates that embodying a critical edge (due to specific locations, entanglements, and attachments of the researcher) could generate interest, relationality, and care for neglected concerns rather than creating distance and othering.

KEYWORDS:

• Responsible innovation
• othering
• India
• critique
• care

Introduction

There is no hurry. There is no overriding urgency or food security argument for [release of] Bt Brinjal.¹ Our objective is to restore public confidence and trust in the Bt brinjal product. If it cannot be done, so be it. My conscience is clear. I have followed a democratic, transparent, often acrimonious process. I had to balance science and society, producers and consumers … My decision is both responsible to science and responsive to society.

(Then Minister of Environment and Forest Jairam Ramesh on the moratorium of commercial release of Bt Brinjal in India, quoted in The Hindu² newspaper, February 9, 2010. Emphasis mine)

In 2010, after public consultations in seven states, an indefinite moratorium was put by the government on the commercial release of the first genetically modified food crop in India. The events were attended by more than 8000 people including civil society groups, farmers, scientists, different market actors, concerned citizens, and consumers. The public consultations were organised to address the concerns of these diverse groups who had different stakes in Brinjal, yet so far, they were not part of any decision-making regarding Bt Brinjal. This initiative by the government was the result of public protests and decades of struggle by different civil society groups in demanding democratization of S&T decision-making in India (Abrol 1983; Pandey and Sharma 2017; Shiva 2005; Scoones 2006; Gadgil and Guha 1994; Visvanathan and Parmar 2002).

In a way, the minister laid the foundation of Responsible Innovation (R(R)I) in India by addressing societal concerns related to technoscientific innovations through inclusive deliberations (Owen et al. 2013), and ensuring that different actors (science and society) interact and are mutually responsive to each other (von Schomberg 2013). In the face of limited knowledge and uncertainties around the unintended consequences of emerging technologies, R(R)I called for anticipation, reflection, inclusive deliberation, and responsiveness for ‘collective commitment to care for the future through responsible stewardship of science and innovation in the present’ (Owen et al. 2013, 36). As per the quote above, to maintain a ‘balance’ between science and society, Indian S&T has to follow a transparent and democratic route and be responsive to societal needs.

Scholars and activists argued that this exercise in public consultation marks a new era of science-society engagement that goes beyond linear, deficit models of public understanding of science (Gupta 2011; Pandey and Sharma 2017). It was speculated that maybe there would be more domestic efforts to build spaces and platforms within scientific institutions where societal concerns around S&T could be addressed through public engagement and inclusive deliberation. Simultaneously, as R(R)I³ gained a lot of government and policy support in the EU, I expected that Indian and international, academic and policy engagements with R(R)I could be beneficial in directing attention to the symmetrical treatment (Mamidipudi and Frahm 2020) of innovation and governance to ‘open-up’ the regulatory governance of emerging technologies in India (Stirling 2008, Pandey and Sharma 2017).⁴ However, none of this happened! Instead, in later instances, activists demanding public engagement for opening-up the regulatory governance of S&T were served with gag orders.⁵ The scholarly and policy engagement with R(R)I were subject to critique, that, rather than opening-up the space for deeper democratic debates, ended-up closing such debates by othering R(R)I as ‘European’ and of little use in the Indian context in the current format. A lot of the international collaborative engagements with R(R)I in India ended up with ‘business-as-usual’ advocating linear and deficit-based mechanisms of governance of S&T (Srinivas et al. 2018).

My observations regarding the critique of R(R)I are situated within this very specific context. By employing vignettes from personal experiences, empirical research data, and secondary material, I will argue that R(R)I and its Indian engagements could be understood by employing the concept of ‘othering’ that has its deep entanglements with colonial roots of engaging with S&T (Smith 2019). Not only did the critique end in othering of R(R)I in India, but also many practices of western scholars, of defining, critiquing, institutionalizing, and mobilizing R(R)I for international context, relied on practices that are synonymous to othering in R(R)I.

In total, I will be employing four vignettes (two for ‘othering in R(R)I’ and two for ‘othering of R(R)I’) to discuss different ways in which critique ended up distancing R(R)I from meaningful engagement in a non-western context. Initially setting out to re-image science-society relationships and the role of S&T in shaping future worlds, R(R)Is fixation on Europe as its ‘Centre’ led to ‘othering’ and dis-engagement in the Indian context. Based on these reflections, I will argue that to avoid the mundane and the ‘business-as-usual’ formulations of R(R)I, a feminist, care-based approach for engaging with R(R)I in the Indian context could be more useful. A care-based approach demands that we continuously pay attention to the absent, neglected, and marginalized concerns without being over-invested in origins, naming, and institutionalization. The auto ethnographical approach in this paper highlights how embodying a critical edge (due to the specific locations, entanglements, and attachments of the researcher), could be employed to generate interest, relationality, and care for neglected concerns rather than creating distance and othering.

The paper is organized as follows: Following Latour (2004) and Puig de La Bellacasa (2011) on mobilizing critique for socio-technical assemblages, Section ‘Critique, othering, R(R)I, and care: conceptual lens’ develops a conceptual lens that situates othering in relation to critiques, concerns, and care. Section ‘Methodology and data collection’ presents the detailed methods employed to collect and analyze data for this paper. Section ‘Findings’ presents and discusses the vignettes that articulate critique as ‘othering in R(R)I’ and ‘othering of R(R)I’. Section ‘Discussion and conclusion’ presents a re-reading of some aspects of the vignettes of section ‘Findings’ and Bt Brinjal consultation 2010, in order to re-imagine critique in/of R(R)I through a commitment to care for neglected things.

Critique, othering, R(R)I, and care: conceptual lens

Nindak niyare rakhiye angan kuti chanway

Bin sabun pani bina nirmal kare subhay

(Kabir Das, philosopher and poet, India 1398-1518)

(Translation: One has to keep the critique close by, in one’s courtyard, as they perform the function of cleaning one’s conscience/behavior without soap or water)

Critique, in different formats, is central to social conditioning. I first got introduced to critique, in a formal way, in middle school through Kabir Das, a fifteenth-century philosopher and poet, from India. Kabir Das is one of the central figures of the Bhakti tradition, a grassroots social movement of critique and dissent against some of the preachings of mainstream religions such as Hinduism and Islam. The poet urges us to cultivate the value of appreciating criticism as it leads to humility and personal improvement. However, as Puig de La Bellacasa (2012) citing Haraway argues, critique like all things, could not be understood without its world. Thus, it is important to ask who can criticize whom, with what authority and purpose. Are all critiques meant for improvement or do some critiques cause more harm than good? How can a critique be organized in such a way that it is constructive rather than destructive? These are the questions that we, as scholars, regularly encounter. From a post-colonial site of engagement with modern western science and technology, where my research is situated, othering emerges as a dominant mode of criticism. As a tool of discursive power, othering as critique is employed to ‘dominate, restructure and have an authority’ (Said 2003, 25). For example, by designating the local knowledge systems as inferior and irrational, othering established the authority of modern, western science as the only valid form of knowledge in colonial and imperial regimes (Kumar, Mukharji, and Prasad 2018; Mohanty 2015 Prakash 1999; Prasad 2014; Rajan 2017; Sarukkai 1997; Subramaniam 2019; Sur 2011).

Othering can be mobilized in various ways. It can occur through highlighting or universalizing of differences (Mohanty 2015) and downplaying of similarities (Narayan 1995). It can lead to exclusion and marginalization but also governability (Jahoda 2018; Stenbacka 2011; Andreucci and Zografos 2022). One of the most widely discussed employments of othering in the context of S&T is the construction of Centre-periphery relations where the ‘Centre’ represents the western metropole as the creator of valid (scientific) knowledge and the ‘periphery’ is the site where this knowledge diffuses, is received, and employed (Basalla 1967; Kumar 2006; Prakash 1999). In this relation of asymmetric power dynamics, the Centre exercises control over the periphery through influences at the ideational and material levels while simultaneously constructing the STI enterprises in the periphery as ‘inferior’ (Prasad 2014). A different interpretation of centre-periphery relation is the dichotomous separation of the peripheral STI as solving locale-specific problems (of poverty and hunger) while the Centre STI as engaging with universal, expeditious, and exploratory questions in science (Joseph 2013; Pandey and Pansera 2020). Though heavily criticized in scholarly writings for neglecting cross-cultural exchanges and circulations in making knowledge (Prasad 2014; Rajan 2006; Raina and Habib 1996), this Centre-periphery relation, in different incarnations (such as the idea of catching-up⁶ in innovation studies and patenting regimes), continues to dominate the imaginary as well as the materiality of knowledge exchange between north and south (Kumar et al. 2018; Prasad 2014).

Beyond the north–south positioning, the Centre-periphery dynamics become the basis of the one-directional relationship between science and society, where science becomes the creator of neutral, objective, universal, and valid knowledge (and technology) that is adopted and used by society. The deficit model of science communication and public understanding of science (Simis et al. 2016; Suldovsky 2016), and the model of diffusion of innovations (Menzli et al. 2022; Rogers 2003), both rely on this Centre-periphery understanding of science and society. By this definition, the creation and pursuit of scientific knowledge and innovation becomes a highly valuable endeavor while governance (focused on ethical and social considerations) of S&T becomes secondary. Viseu (2015) in her study of nanotechnology, shows that ethical and societal concerns lie at the periphery while research and development of innovation remain a core concern of the S&T systems. The Centre-periphery dynamics also become visible in funding body-research group relations apparent from the observations of research partners (such as Germany and UK) in the R(R)I-Practices project (Doezema et al. 2019; Ladikas et al. 2019).

For decades, the critical constructivist approaches to study science and technology have questioned the authority of science along the axis of knowledge and power (Bijker 2010; Jasanoff 2005; Macnaghten et al. 2005; Prasad 2011). Commenting on the recent apathy of the public towards science and the rise of climate skeptics, Bruno Latour (2004) in his famous essay on ‘has the critique ran out of steam,’ argues that the critical constructivist approaches that exposed the power dynamics involved in shaping knowledge and authority of science have proven damaging to both the critique as well as the institutions of science. Rather than bringing humility and improvement in the practice of S&T, the scholarly critiques of S&T that ‘unmasked’ interests, politics, and historical contingencies have damaged the legitimacy of scientific knowledge and institutions. The critical constructivist acts of ‘unmasking’ and ‘exposing’, Latour (2004) argues, have resulted in creating distances and othering through readymade explanations – of naivete, fetishism, inferiority, an obsession with blaming oppressive powers, and impositions of moral and empirical norms. To remediate this situation, Latour (2004) calls for a distance from the critique that others, and focus on engaging in matters that concern different and often oppositional actors in socio-technical assemblages.

Responsible Innovation, in its earliest incarnations, was situated in a similar distancing from the abrasive critique of the ‘bads’ and active seeking for the ‘goods’ (Owen et al. 2013)/‘right impacts’ (von Schomberg 2013) of science and technology. As Owen et al. (2013, 27–28) argue ‘any framework for responsible innovation needs to accommodate not only what we do not want science and innovation to do … . But what we do want them to do’. Similarly, the early discussions on R(R)I demanded a departure from a narrow focus on identifying risks and impacts of S&T innovation to ‘what sorts of futures we want science and innovation to bring into the World’ (Owen et al. 2013). However, as I will demonstrate in Section ‘Findings’ of this paper, these early versions of R(R)I, when organised along the north–south, knowledge-power, and Centre-periphery axis could not continue with these transformative visions of engaging with S&T. The critique of R(R)I from Europe as well as India ended up distancing and othering non-western locales and R(R)I respectively, preventing the possibility of collective re-imagining of S&T for shaping our worlds. The move, away from critique and in favour of assembling concerns through mutual exchange, has been problematized by scholars both in response to Latour (Keller 2017; Puig de La Bellacasa 2011) as well as R(R)I (van Oudheusden 2014) as masking politics and asymmetries of power. If both- critique that ends up othering, and the proposed departures from critique that others, are unhelpful for engaging with socio-technical assemblages, what are the possibilities and ways of thinking differently?

Puig de La Bellacasa (2011) in contrast to Latour still sees a potential role for the critical standpoints in the ‘re-presenting’ of socio-technical assemblages. According to Puig de La Bellacasa (2011, 93), arguments for complete abandonment of critique are often mobilised as ‘tool to oppose descriptions and explanatory strategies that support minoritarian critical standpoints’ including feminist politics. As a result, ‘we cannot throw out critical standpoints with the bathwater of corrosive critique’. Thus, rather than focussing on a critique that distances and others, she argues for a critique that enables relating and connection through a commitment to care focussed on bringing neglected, marginalised, and absent concerns to the fore. A critique that relates and connects, as per Puig de La Bellacasa (2011, 94) is not ‘about ready-made explanations for blaming oppressive powers, but rather about how a sociotechnical assemblage can reinforce asymmetrical relations that devalue caring.’ A focus on care and relationality does not mean that the critique will not ‘cut’ or detach. In fact, a caring critique cuts in some ways because of its attachments and awareness of oppression, however, this cut is not meant to ‘merely expose or produce conflict but should also foster caring relations’ (Puig de La Bellacasa 2011, 97).

My own approach, in writing autoethnography in this paper is inspired by Puig de La Bellacasa’s position on critical standpoints. As a researcher working on S&T embedded in a post-colonial, developmental setting, I have a situated and limited perspective that entangles and attaches me with R(R)I, S&T and Indian context in a certain way. As a result, my account cuts both the European and Indian engagements with R(R)I not to distance, expose or detach, but to connect and attach distant positions in a patch-work by bringing the neglected, marginalised, and absent concerns sometimes to the fore and sometimes in-between.

Methodology and data collection

This paper is based primarily on data gathered through an auto-ethnography (Denshire 2014) of my experiences of being at the interface of science-society relations in India for the past 20 years. Since 2011, I have been actively engaging with the discourses and practices of RI from a non-western, post-colonial developmental context. Auto-ethnography is a transgressive account that reconfigures power relations by blurring the boundaries between knowledge and practice, ‘facts’ and ‘fictions’, and the ‘self’ as external, neutral observer and the ‘other’ as the object of investigation (Denshire 2014). Within these auto-ethnographic accounts, I am positioned along three intersecting axes that endow me with different degrees of privilege and marginality in different settings.⁷ Axis one bridges being an insider of science (biotechnology student) and an outsider of science (policy researcher) engaged in science-society related concerns (Viseu 2015). Axis two bridges the position of a doctoral student to a post-doctoral researcher, and eventually a teacher engaging with R(R)I. Axis three bridges the position of an R(R)I researcher from a post-colonial, developmental, global south context to an academic elite (with a precarious job situation) in India. At different points in time and space, these axes intersect to provide me a situated, limited, perspective of the social world that is captured through the vignettes presented in the next section.

The auto-ethnography is supplemented with multiple data (codified and tacit) that I gathered, over the past 12 years (2010–2022), by working on various projects on the institutionalization of science and emerging technologies (agricultural biotechnology, nanotechnology, and second generation biofuels), innovation and governance of S&T in India, and R(R)I. As a result, though the autoethnography is used as a point of entry into discussions, these accounts are backed with empirical data from interviews of different actors and participant observation at sites where science-society relationships are configured and negotiated (such as scientists’ labs, farmers’ fields, classrooms, research proposals, public protest against GM crops, international scientific conferences, and policy forums).

Findings

By employing four vignettes, this section discusses how the internationalization of R(R)I was shaped by critique that distanced and othered both the non-western context and R(R)I, preventing deeper meaningful and engagements of R(R)I in these locations, through two moves. While the critique and definitions mobilized for international engagements with R(R)I othered non-western contexts, the critical engagements with RI in India othered R(R)I itself.

Othering in R(R)I

Cultural meanings and origin stories

I am very interested in locally situated, cultural meanings of R(R)I. For example frugal innovations and grassroots innovations. (Second RI conference in Dan Haag, December 2012)

This is a conversation I had with one of the scholars who was central in the development of the future trajectory of R(R)I in Europe. While I was discussing how the challenges that led to the focus on R(R)I in Europe are similar to the challenges in India (the debates around biotechnology), the scholar was not convinced by my approach and instead told me that he was more interested in ‘Indian’ ways of understanding R(R)I, which for them are closer to ‘frugal’ or ‘grassroots’ innovation (Bowman 2016).

The generalization of frugal innovation as the ‘Indian’ version of R(R)I was repeated to me at multiple junctures and platforms during my international exchanges. For instance, when I was invited (with another co-author) to write a chapter on Indian understanding of R(R)I, I wanted to write the biotechnology story (mentioned above) and situate R(R)I within the local political economy of challenges posed by emerging technologies to the institutions of science and the need for democratization. Instead, I was advised by one of the editors of the book to consider writing about frugal innovation, since another (western) scholar was already writing about the biotechnology story in Europe. As a negotiation, contingent on my position as a PhD student in the global south with limited such opportunities, I ended up writing about how R(R)I is not a frugal innovation and the first co-author wrote about the possibilities and platforms for exploring commonalities between the two terms (Srinivas and Pandey 2019).

This insistence on frugal innovation as the ‘Indian’ version of R(R)I makes sense when it is situated in the geopolitics around innovation in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. As the stability of western world was shaken, solutions to fix the problem were sought from all parts of the world. In a famous essay published in Harvard Business Review, frugal innovation was presented with examples from India, as a way forward (Prahalad and Mashelkar 2010). Proponents of frugal innovation argued that the problems of innovativeness in industry could be solved by making products affordable. Contrarily, scholars have argued that frugal innovation is problematic because it neglects the systemic embedding of social and environmental injustices in the processes of finding solutions through market mechanisms (Arora and Romijn 2012; Pansera 2018).

The problem with insistence on looking at frugal innovation as the Indian version of R(R)I is that such characterizations focus on single stories and readymade explanations at the cost of deeper engagement with the knowledge politics of modern S&T systems. By labelling frugal innovation as the Indian RI, multiple experiments (such as the Bt Brinjal consultation 2010) in engaging with such knowledge politics and multiple different stories of RI are sealed off. Before all these encounters, in November 2012, I had launched a discussion on an online platform of scholars working on science-society relations.⁸ The aim of the discussion was to talk about the responsible governance of scientific innovations in biotechnology and nanotechnology and get a context-specific and historically situated understanding of R(R)I in the Indian political economy. In response, the participants talked about the importance of such discussions in the Indian context, the need to unpack the terms responsibility and accountability, and the possible meanings and mechanisms of democratic governance of science and innovation. However, a discussion on frugal and grassroots innovations as the Indian version of R(R)I did not emerge, organically, in this forum.

While the western discourses on R(R)I/R(R)I were, to a certain extent, aware of the problems of universalizing as a tool for othering (hence a focus on cultural meanings), they did not consider how an overt focus on finding differences is the other side of the same coin, binding, both universalization and differentiation to ways of ‘othering’ (Mohanty 2015). Rather than connecting multiple, related parallel developments, an insistence on frugal innovation as the Indian version of R(R)I preserved Europe as the original site of development of R(R)I. Naming and framing, argues Subramaniam (2019), performs othering by assigning fixed positions and roles to different actors. Through the process of finding cultural meanings of R(R)I in non-western locales, frugal innovation becomes the variant of the original.

Along with looking for different cultural meanings, fabricating single origin stories, through retrospective retracing of genealogies, is yet another way through which othering is manifested. Initial writings on R(R)I were wary of these concerns and as a result they argued for a deliberate refraining from fixed definitions in order to leave the term flexible and moldable (Doezema et al. 2019; Owen et al. 2013). However, a lack of origin story and clear definition subjected initial articulations of R(R)I to critique (De Saille 2015). I encountered these critiques in the 4th S.Net conference in Northeastern University, Boston, which was organized around the idea of R(R)I. The conference presentations and discussions were dominated by western scholars and the international engagements with R(R)I were clubbed in one session due to the minority presence of scholars from non-western locations. This RI session also gathered minimum attendance. In both formal and informal conversations there was a lot of anxiety among the participants (pre-dominantly western) about the institutional and theoretical origins of the term and the ambiguity in its definition. The tracing of the origin of the concept to the Lisbon treaty⁹ were repeated in multiple presentations and so was the reference to European values. To further ease these anxieties and to academically institutionalize R(R)I, the launch of the Journal of Responsible Innovation was informally announced in S.Net 2013 and later formalized through an editorial note (Guston et al. 2014).

Terms such as RI, argues Bensaude Vincent (2014) gain currency by remaining interpretatively flexible and aligning multiple actors with diverse interests towards a shared goal. The contextualization of a concept in socio-historical settings is a useful heuristic and sense making tool (Bensaude Vincent 2014; Leigh Star 2010). However, it is important that these contextualizations are performed with care. Sites such as international conferences and projects, already imbibe asymmetric power dynamics due to the dominance of western scholarship and western funding agencies. At these sites, the repetition of European origin story and European values for a supposedly international assemblage like RI, thus, ends up othering non-western locales and their engagement with RI.

Catching-up

Even when you are starting early, you are still catching-up because you are using a western concept. (Globelics Academy, Finland, 24 May 2013)

These were the observations of fellow colleagues in the Globelics Academy PhD school where I presented my work on the developments around nanotechnology (innovation and governance) in India. I was arguing that innovation paradigms must take inclusive governance of innovation into account. In order to develop ‘responsible’ nanotechnology and avoid the revision of public controversy, like biotechnology, an early engagement with social, ethical, and environmental concerns of nanotechnology in India, is needed. By mobilizing the concept of RI from a non-western locale, I was aiming to develop multi-sited, simultaneous, and situated trajectories of RI. The audiences, in front of whom I presented, were not exposed to any discourse on RI/RRI previously. However, my reference to the western authors in talking about RI led the audiences to assume that any non-western engagement with a supposedly ‘western term’ can only be understood through a lens of ‘catching-up’. The implication was that along with ‘catching-up’ in innovation, by engaging with the discussion on governance early, countries like India are now also attempting to ‘catch-up’ with the western world in the governance of S&T innovations.

The idea of catching-up, a dominant theme in innovation literature, is central to the linear understanding of economic growth and development led by technological change (Lundvall and Rikap 2022). By ordering the world economies in hierarchies of development, catching-up prescribes the global south to fit into western economic models to pursue growth while neglecting alternative ways of thinking about well-being. The mobilization of catching-up to critique non-western engagements with RI, indicates the performance of these hierarchies in everyday scholarly practices othering the possibilities of mutual learning and collective thinking.

In this section, I have argued that the emphasis of western RI scholarship on cultural meanings and differences in ‘other’ locales, anxiety around lack of definition and institutionalization, and the lens of ‘catching-up’ as a way of understanding non-western engagement with RI mobilized an understanding of RI as a European/western concept. This explicit and implicit understanding presents Europe as a Centre of RI discussions ‘othering’ all non-western engagement with RI as translations or cultural re-appropriation of the original concept. Consequently, this European-ness/western-ness of RI was employed by Indian actors to ‘other’ RI as not relevant to the India context. In the next section, I present two vignettes to demonstrate how RRI was othered through critical engagements by Indian actors at the research and policy, and pedagogical level.

Othering of R(R)I

Research and policy

In the Indian context and practice, where there are concerns related to the access, equity and inclusion (AEI), which are more paramount than the general ideas of ethics, engagement etc. (Page 1 of the Indian National Workshop Report 2018 of the RRI Practices Project)

India was one of the partners in the EU-funded, multi-country, RRI practices project. The partners were supposed to conduct workshops in their ‘local’ settings to find out how RI was understood in the ‘local’¹⁰ context. The Indian National Workshop Report was the outcome of such an effort. The Indian study also produced a longer version of the country report and a policy brief. In all these reports, there are repetitive invocation of how RRI is a ‘western’ concept with limited relevance to the Indian context (Srinivas and Pandey 2019, 3). For example, the opening statement of the national report, mentioned above, argues how the developmental questions of access, equity, and inclusion are so ‘paramount’ in the Indian scene that concerns around ethics and engagement become secondary. Despite the less relevance for societal engagement and ethics in the Indian context, the report repeatedly talks about ‘the need for research and innovation to be people- and citizen-centric’ (3). Yet the report does not hint towards the mechanisms through which the needs of the people are identified.¹¹

In the absence of inclusive deliberation, the people-centric vision of science policy translates into linear models of innovation delivery – from S&T institutions to the people. Similar to the ideas of frugal innovation, this vision of science policy, too, reduces people (and especially people facing economic challenges) as one-dimensional entities without knowledge and other concerns. Many studies in India have shown that the politics of most economically and socially marginalized people is motivated by different factors such as rights, recognition, and care, beyond just fulfilling basic needs (Mamidipudi et al. 2012; Pandey and Sharma 2021). By prioritizing developmental needs as the core concern of the country, the Indian engagements with RI create Centre-periphery dynamics where RI’s invocation of engaging with societal and ethical concerns of technology through inclusive deliberation are pushed to the periphery. Another mechanism through which othering of RI manifests in its Indian engagement is by allocating all concerns related to inclusive governance of S&T to an uncertain future plane. Here, the Centre-periphery relation is enacted by prioritizing innovation to address developmental needs in the present while pushing governance to a future periphery. The quote below from the interview of an Indian S&T policy maker reflects the same.

I am thinking that the concept of responsibility could be integrated in the National Innovation Index we are developing. Perhaps, it is too early …  … Responsibility is the next challenge. This is a step for the future. Until now, we did not consider many society-related aspects in our surveys. (Interview with a senior official from Department of Science and Technology, conducted by Simone Arnaldi during the workshop of RRI Practices project, 20-21 September 2017, Berlin)

It is worth acknowledging that the context of engaging with S&T in India is very different from the western counterparts in the RRI practices project, for many reasons. For instance, there are still rich knowledge traditions of alive and functional alternative cosmologies and worldviews in the practices of agriculture, health, and handlooms, to name a few (Agarwal 2019; Mamidipudi 2016; Rudra et al. 2017; Shiva 2005), that co-exist with modern science. From the feminist position of assembling neglected things, a responsible shaping of S&T should ensure that these diverse knowledge systems continue to co-exist and thrive. In contrast, the othering of ethics and inclusive deliberation in discussions of S&T (and thus RI), either in their designation as secondary concerns or transferal to an uncertain future, contributes in making modern western science the ‘reason of state’ at the expense of these alternative cosmologies (Subramaniam 2000, 82).

Pedagogy

We are in science not for social prestige or profit, we are here simply because of the curiosity of understanding the universe. (Undergraduate students in a session on scientific social responsibility at an Indian science institute, October, 2019)

The context of this statement is an undergraduate teaching session on scientific social responsibility in the module of sustainable development at one of the most prestigious science institutions in India. In the monsoon semester of 2019, I was invited to teach a few sessions in an undergraduate science program. I had full freedom to design individual sessions and choose the readings. I thought it would be useful to engage third-semester students of sciences with the idea of scientific social responsibility in the context of emerging and uncertain developments in science and technology. I staged the discussion in the backdrop of the reading and presentation of three texts – Mary Shelley’s classic (1818) Frankenstein, Amulya Reddy: The Citizen Scientist by Ranjan (2009), and the research article by Guston (2012) titled The pumpkin or the tiger? Michael Polanyi, Frederick Soddy, and anticipating emerging technologies. All three texts, in the most abstract interpretation, talk about the kinds of power and capabilities science and technology endow to scientists and how individual scientists employed these endowments. We discussed four models of scientific social responsibility – the scientist in Mary Shelley’s book who gets obsessed with his drive for curiosity and ignores all unintended consequences of his science; Michael Polanyi and his defense of the ‘republic of science’ and silence on the Manhattan project which was motivated by an anticipated association with prestige; Frederick Soddy (both in Guston’s paper) and his denunciation of long-held notions of scientific prestige to re-define them by taking upon the role of a science communicator and peace advocate; and Amulya Reddy who, through his scientific work on rural societies, ensured that his science had a social purpose.

Despite the different models of scientific social responsibility presented and discussed, a wide majority of students¹² shared the view that their pursuit of science is driven by curiosity (much like the scientist in Shelley’s Frankenstein) rather than profit, social good, or prestige.¹³ Sarukkai (2009) argues that the association with curiosity driven science is a long-held mechanism of ‘othering’ and distancing questions of ethics from the realms of science. The dominant assertion of pursuing a curiosity driven science by the graduate students of the top science institution of India points to a culture of cognitive dissonance in science which blissfully chooses to ignore the deep entanglements of institutions, infrastructure, and apparatuses (that are commonplace and make modern science possible) with the structures of power, profit, and prestige (Bharadwaj and Glasner 2009; Prasad 2014; Rajan 2017; Sur 2011).

This section discusses three ways in which RI and its call for inclusive deliberation in the democratic governance of S&T were othered by Indian actors. One, by prioritizing deficit understanding of the public, two by moving questions of inclusive deliberations to realm of future concerns, and three, by designating the responsibility of scientists to be primarily driven by curiosity in science.

Discussion and conclusion

International engagements with R(R)I: assembling neglected things

The act of ‘re-presenting’ through verbal, visual, and written formats are exercise of knowledge politics and world-making (Puig de La Bellacasa 2011). The previous sections discussed how the critical engagements that shaped RI, through international exchanges, ended up othering non-western locales as well as othering RI in India.

Othering is deeply entangled and embedded in research methods, theories, and frameworks that shape ontologies and epistemologies (Smith 2019). In this paper, I have argued that international exchanges around RI instated different kinds of asymmetric Centre-periphery relations resulting in othering and neglect of certain aspects central to the practice of RI. Othering in R(R)I manifested through assumptions of and insistence on differences and cultural meanings of RI in non-western locations, an urge to institutionalize and define RRI through origin stories in Europe and European values, and the reliance on ‘catching-up’ as a valid frame of reference to understand non-western engagement with RI. As a result, othering in RI resulted in marginalization of the role of non-western settings in the agenda of RI. The othering of RI through critique by Indian actors and institutions at different platforms, assumes the Centre-periphery relation in a different format. Here, RI is ‘othered’ by invoking the developmental needs of the country as a priority and justification for favoring S&T innovation over questions of governance (ethics, regulation, and societal engagement). By this logic, investment in S&T innovations become the Centre while social and ethical concerns of different groups are pushed to the periphery. Thus, othering resulted in the asymmetric separation of innovation and governance in order to marginalize and neglect different knowledges and value systems (other than science) that are essential for a democratic imagination of S&T and its role in shaping our worlds.

The initial framings of RI aimed to distance the concept from the corrosive critique that focused exclusively on the risks of S&T, and direct attention towards the respectful consideration of different concerns in shaping the role of science in society (Owen et al. 2013; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013; von Schomberg 2013). The vignettes show that the critical shaping of RI through international exchanges resulted in creating different Centre-periphery hierarchies of valuation that othered, marginalized, and eventually led to a neglect of certain aspects (ethical and social concerns, role of non-western locales in shaping RI agenda, role of different actors in shaping governance of S&T). This outcome has implications for the agenda of RI as a mechanism to collectively envision the role of S&T in shaping our worlds, as well as the trajectory of S&T innovations in a neoliberal, global context (Owen et al. 2013; von Schomberg 2013). In this regard, my concerns are entangled with the concerns of the actors presented in this paper. The purpose of this paper is not to dismantle international engagements with RI by ‘uncovering’ the ‘hidden’ interests and power strategies of these actors from a higher moral pedestal or critical distance. Rather, by employing vignettes from auto-ethnography and secondary data, I mobilize a commitment to care by bringing the neglected aspects to the fore, from my very limited, entangled, and situated position as a researcher working on RI from a post-colonial, developmental state setting. Following Puig de La Bellacasa (2011) I consider this paper as a material, vital doing for sharing responsibility in the ethico-political becoming of things (here RI and S&T). So, what does it mean to assemble neglected things and how? What neglected aspects did I bring to the fore?

First, a word of caution. A commitment to care by paying attention to the invisible and neglected aspects does not mean a guaranteed remedy or a magic bullet to contemporary challenges. Also, caring is a mode of asymmetrical, selective attention that demands continuous re-evaluation in different circumstances (Martin et al. 2015). Thus, rather than being a theory, a commitment to care is a transformative ethos of sharing responsibility in the making of the worlds that we study (Puig de La Bellacasa 2011; Dengler and Seebacher 2019; Fernandez et al. 2020).

To engage with the neglected (through othering) things/beings/concerns/relations, I return to the Bt Brinjal consultation 2010 discussed in the introduction of this paper. The case is relevant for the ‘careful’ engagement with Indian and international debates on RI for the following reasons. One, the Bt Brinjal consultation enables the possibility of imagining and simultaneously re-locating the debates on RI in non-western locations. Feminist standpoint theorists emphasize the need to pay attention to diverse, situated, and partial perspectives (Haraway 2020; Harding 2016). The provision of spaces and platforms for telling multiple, multi-origin stories with different positions is the first possible step towards ensuring the de-centering of the Centre-periphery relationship that reproduces hierarchies and colonial legacies (Escobar 2011; Visvanathan 2002; Visvanathan 1985). An engagement with the ethico-political becoming of RI, thus, focuses on strengthening the possibility, spaces, and platforms of co-existence and collective telling of diverse stories of responsibility in STI. Owen et al. (2013) in their introductory essay on RI discuss multiple experiments in RI in western locations (including Socio-Technical Integration Research which pre-dates RI conceptualization). Characterised by elements of inclusive deliberation and responsiveness, Bt Brinjal consultation in India enables one among many diverse ways of imagining and engaging with RI in non-western locales. Unlike frugal innovation and linear models of science communication, which assume readymade explanations for understanding RI in the Indian context, Bt Brinjal consultation derives its understanding of responsibility through situated, case-based engagement with people’s needs, vulnerability, and concerns. The reference to the event is not an end/finished product but an invitation to engage in ethico-political becoming of RI and S&T.

Two, the Bt Brinjal consultation is not a popular case among Indian S&T and policy community because of its unconventional nature in terms of experiments with direct democracy in matters of S&T.¹⁴ The case is criticized for being influenced by emotions and fears rather than science, and giving value to the views and opinions of non-scientists (Rao 2010; Shantharam 2010). From the perspective of commitment to care that dissolves the arbitrary separation and power asymmetries between facts and values, nature and culture, and expert and lay opinions, Bt Brinjal consultation destabilizes Centre-periphery dynamics between innovation and governance of science. The mutual respect for and symmetrical treatment of different onto-epistemological positions, as exemplified in the Bt Brinjal consultation, ensures trust building that is vital for inclusive deliberation in RI (Mamidipudi and Frahm 2020; Valkenburg 2020). Although, as shown in the introduction, public participation does not always guarantee acceptance of STI innovation (Van Oudheusden 2019), the building of onto-epistemic trust enables the possibility of co-creation and co-ownership of knowledge and institutions for collective ‘world-making’ that are at the heart of RI’s transformative agenda (Mamidipudi and Frahm 2020; Owen et al. 2021b; Valkenburg 2020).

Three, the consultation and the singularity of its occurrence in the Indian S&T scene, highlights that the exercise of inclusive deliberation, by being dependent on the power play between different groups and onto-epistemic positions (Vasen 2017, van Oudheusden 2014), is a function of politics of deliberation as well as political will (Herring 2015). This means that like care, participation, and inclusive deliberation could neither be taken for granted nor be an end in themselves (Di Giulio et al. 2016; Pandey and Sharma 2021). Rather, these are processes that require continuous, situated, reflexive reassessment of power asymmetries (Conley and York 2020). Also, the aims of inclusive deliberation should not be pre-determined (Valkenburg 2020). The Bt Brinjal consultation challenges the technological determinism and deficit understanding within experiments of inclusive deliberation in the context of S&T. Contrary to implicit assumptions of consensus building towards acceptance of a technological innovation, the Bt Brinjal consultation shows that the inclusive deliberation process could sometimes lead to a ‘No’ to technological innovation as a perfectly acceptable political/public mandate.

Acknowledgment

I thank three anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive engagement with this paper. An initial version of this paper was presented at the SAMS workshop (12-13 December 2018) at University of Bristol, UK. I am thankful to the comments of the participants, particularly Richard Owen and Sally Randles, that helped to refine the arguments of the paper. I also express my gratitude to the editors of this special issue for their enthusiastic support. Poonam Pandey reports financial support from Maria Zambrano programme of the Spanish Government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Brinjal, also known as Aubergine or Eggplant, is a very popular and common vegetable in India, south Asia and many parts of the world.

2 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national//article60640747.ece accessed on 25th August 2022.

3 Though both RRI and RI share commonalities, they are distinguished on the basis of RRI being more of an EU policy discourse and RI as being a majorly academic and UK policy discourse (see Owen et al. 2021a, b for more details). Unless specifically mentioned, I will use these terms interchange-ably because most of the times I am referring to the common aspects of RI and RRI which are associated to aspects of democratic governance of S&T and the elements of anticipation, reflexivity, inclusive deliberation, and responsiveness in deciding the intent and direction of STI.

4 https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/what-genetically-modified-mustard-and-gender-injustices-debates-in-india-have-in-common/

5 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/gm-mustard-experts-slam-icars-gag-order-on-staff/articleshow/96502652.cms

6 The idea of ‘catching-up’ justifies a universal imaginary of economic development according to which by imitating a standardized path of industrial growth and investment in STI, similar to a leading (western) country, all (follower) countries in the world can achieve economic empowerment. For further details see Popov and Jomo (2018) and Furman and Hayes (2004).

7 Drawing from the biological vocabulary of vaccines where an attenuated infectious being in held minute quantities, upon injection in a body can equip the receiving body with self-defense, I call the vignettes discussed below as speculative fictions with attenuated truth. Which means although these are my ‘true’ lived experiences, they are still subject to my interpretations of the events understood from a situated, limited perspective. Like the immunity of the body decided by individual sensitivity, the sensitivity to receive or reject these attenuated truths depends on individuals.

8 The discussion was launched on Centre for Studies in Science Policy (CSSP) forum which is part of the School of Social Sciences in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi India. The forum has more than 400 active members working on different aspects of science, technology, and innovation policy and science-society relationships. In total I received 9 detailed responses.

9 The Lisbon treaty 2007, argues De Saille (2015, 153) ‘brought a legal directive for all EU policy-makers and legislators to “maintain an open, transparent, and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society” (art. 8b.2), and tasked the European Commission specifically to “carry out broad consultations with parties concerned” (art. 8b.3)’.

10 Local is a very subjective reading here. The interview and workshop with central government officers and national STI actors presents the dominant positions in STI rather than challenging the power hierarchies.

11 Based on the list of participants, the workshop was predominantly attended by academic elites of National Capital Region, Delhi.

12 At least those who were most vocal because eventually the discussion took the shape of a debate between us versus them, where the students assumed the role of the unified us/insider/defender of science and assigned me the role of them/outsider/attacker on the institution of science.

13 Demonstrated in the opening quote of this vignette.

14 https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/the-bitter-harvest-of-the-bt-brinjal-moratorium/44242/