Social sciences' role in policy formulation

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, APRIL 19. Social sciences face a crisis of relevance in an era of ``fast foods and quick bites''. They do not have answers to problems, which have an immediate bearing on the people. Even the sections such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists, who have intense interaction with experts of social sciences about two-three decades ago, now have fewer contacts with the latter.

These points of views set the tone for discussions at the inaugural day of a three-day seminar on the ``Future of Social Sciences: Search for new perspectives'' organised by the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) on Thursday.

Analysing the factors for the crisis, Prof. V.K.Natraj, Director, MIDS, said there was a ``collective failure'' on the part of the social scientists to communicate their ``indispensability or utility'' to the outside world. ``Though social sciences have a vital role to play in policy formulation, we do not get a receptive audience.''

Similarly, people were not adequately informed by the social scientists that though the impact of research projects in this area might not be immediately visible, behind every instrument of social and economic policy lay serious theoretical underpinnings, evolved through research activity.

Prof. Natraj said while many researchers in social sciences might not like to be dictated about the time-frame within which they had to complete their work, they should also respect time and resource constraints.

The Chairman of the MIDS, Prof. C.T.Kurien, said there was a need for reappraisal of the way social scientists understood society and social realities. They should also study the ``new surge'' in people having a sense of community, which was expressed in different forms with caste as the basis of community. The search for community identification and rights would have to be studied at length by the social scientists.

The former Vice-Chancellor of the Shivaji University in Kolhapur and Member-Secretary of the Indian Council for Social Sciences Research, Prof. D.N.Dhanagare, said the question of relevance had been daunting this branch of study for long. He wondered why social scientists should repeatedly talk this issue whereas natural scientists seldom addressed themselves to this question. Even when they did, they only discussed strategies to cope with future challenges, he said. Regretting the lack of interaction between the industry and social scientists, he said in spite of tax incentives offered by the Central Government, the situation had not improved.

The former Director of the Kolkata-based Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Prof. Amiya Kumar Bagchi, in his paper on transdisciplinary social sciences, said development of capabilities of human beings would not yield results if the fruits of economic growth were not well distributed.

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