On the occasion of 50 years of the country’s independence, the National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) launched a major study to solicit the views of the future citizens of the country – students of senior schools – on many issues of importance to the society. Using a structured questionnaire, the study aimed at assessing children’s perceptions about certain issues including the societal role of science and technology. The other issues covered were - freedom, democracy and the rights and duties of the citizens. What do they think and feel about such issues? How have their attitudes changed with the changing value systems of the society? What do they feel about the role of science and technology and mass media towards meeting the societal goals? Other aspects that were examined included their aspirations, their efforts to reach goals they have set for themselves and their contribution to the welfare of the society at large.

This survey was a very exciting experience for both-those who designed and conducted it and the young respondents. We had expected that the children of the present times, brought up as they are in the all persuasive culture of present day mass media (symbolically modern TV culture) and the rapidly changing social ethos, would not be much bothered about the problems of the nation and the way they can relate themselves with the progress of the country.

But the results have completely disproved such perceptions. It is really heartening to find that children in every part of the country - from Jammu and Kashmir to Kerala, and Nagaland to Rajasthan - are deeply concerned about the state of the nation and have deep feelings about the future of our people. In fact, the nationalistic vision of present-day children appears to be virtually the same in spirit as it was during the heady days of the freedom struggle.

From the responses of children, six very significant conclusions, which would have far reaching implications for the efforts towards building a strong and prosperous India in the new millennium, can be made :

Indian children collectively demand :

1. A complete reformation of the Indian mind, from the present decadent state of apathy, self-orientation and indulgence.

2. Full-fledged share in developing the future vision for the nation.

3. Meaningful opportunities to serve the society.

4. High accountability of public institutions.

5. Humanistic use of science and technology for public good.

6. More purposeful use of electronic media.

Other interesting insights provided by the survey are :

1. The survey became a national campaign in rediscovering and reaffirming the sense of national pride and placing the children at the critical interface of citizen, society and the nation at large.

2. The survey helped in activating children’s mind towards thinking on the extended meaning of national development and how progressive ideas rooted in the domain of scientific rationality can be extended to the realm of society and culture at large.

3. Children appreciated NCSTC for conducting this survey and stated that it is the first time an organisation in the country has offered them an unique opportunity to express their views on issues concerning the nation.

According to the children, creation of opportunities for basic education for children is the most important achievement of the country in the last 53 years, followed by self-sufficiency in food grains production, and promotion of national cultural heritage in the world .

Children took note of :

1. Most people have an opportunity to get basic education.

2. The country produces enough food grains to feed its people.

3. The country has a very impressive image of its cultural heritage in the world.

4. The country has the third largest scientific and technical manpower in the world (3.27).

5. Most people have access to health facilities (3.93).

India’s well known achievement of having the third largest scientific and technical manpower in the world is not ranked high by the children. It may be that awareness building efforts among the people on our country’s science and technology system have not adequately reached the younger generation. Country’s achievement in providing health facilities to its people is also ranked low.

The massive efforts made by the country during the last 53 years to tackle the problems of underdevelopment and promote quality of life on a sustainable basis have been undermined by unsatisfactory performance of the country in some very critical areas. In this survey, the children were asked to identify these areas. According to them, the areas of unsatisfactory performance (in decreasing order of importance) are :

1. Inability to control population.

2. Inability to eradicate corruption in public life.

3. Inability to make every citizen literate.

4. Inability to protect environment.

5. Inability to make most villages self-sustaining.

The children have not ranked ‘inability to protect environment’ high (as indicated by its ranking score) among the alternatives provided to them. This is in spite of much thrust on awareness building on environment issues among children in recent years by government agencies as well as voluntary organisations in the country. ‘Inability to make most villages self-sustaining’ seems to have gone down the ranking ladder because of the high critical importance of the first three issues in contemporary India and the nature of urgency by the children to tackle these problems on a war footing.

An attempt was made in this survey to examine perceptions of the children regarding the different alternatives for development available to rural poor in independent India. To do this, the cases of three rural families were presented to the children :

Gopi, Raju and Birju were born in August 1947 in a village just at the time of country’s Independence. They belonged to families of farmers each of whom had small land holdings. During these past 53 years, their lives have changed considerably. Below is described how their lives have taken shape. The children were asked to indicate who among Gopi, Raju and Birju, is the most satisfied in free India :

An overwhelmingly large proportion of children in the sample (78 percent) considered Gopi as the most satisfied with the course his life has followed. This shows that the Indian children are highly appreciative of this model of development as it does not uproot people from their soil and offers them opportunities for sustainable livelihood and growth in their natural environment.

Only 17 percent of the children in the sample approved Raju’s course of life. This seems quite striking because massive industrialisation during the last five decades has created all around employment opportunities for the rural poor to join as wage labour force in industries and in some sense freeing themselves from the age-old shackles of poverty. Apparently the children strongly appreciate the principle that one should be one’s own master rather than becoming an insignificant element in the vast labour market. Mobility of the rural poor to the ‘dreamlands of opportunities’ - migration to big cities but in reality living a life in miserable sub-human conditions - as in the case of Birju - was approved only by 5 percent of the respondents.

To ascertain the perceptions of the children about the citizens’ responsibilities towards the society and the nation at large, the behavour of Amar Nath, a common citizen, under seven situations, which demand a strong sense of social responsibility, was presented to them. The children were asked to study these responses to indicate whether they approved the behavior of Amar Nath in each of these situations or not. Amar Nath is a young man who runs a small automobile repair shop in a city.

The level of awareness among children regarding citizen’s responsibilities based on their responses to Amar Nath’s behaviour is given in the table below. It is seen that children are highly aware of the issues of Political responsibility as voter (90.6 percent), Rising above narrow Self-interest to social duty (88.0 percent), Breaking the gender bias (84.6 percent), Sense of voluntary social work (82.7 percent), Rising above narrow self-interest to moral strength (82.4 percent) and Respecting scarce resources for common good (73.9 percent). However, the perceptions of the children regarding collective social action by mobilising people appear to be rather weak (43.6 percent). Perhaps they feel that in present social environment where each and every person is chasing his own self-interest, leading to much tension and conflicts in society, it is not really possible to change the attitude of people towards the wider social good.

A gender-wise comparison of the perceptions of the children shows that girl students have relatively a greater sense of responsibility in all the seven areas listed above than their male counterparts.

After more than 50 years of independence, the problems of poverty, population growth, illiteracy and widespread corruption have not been completely solved. How does the younger generation feel about the ultimate future of the country? In this survey, the children were asked to reflect on the state of our nation when it celebrates the 100th year of independence in 2047.

The children’s vision of the state of the nation was found to be of high disillusionment. A large percentage of them (58 percent) perceive that on the eve of 100th year of independence, a prosperous and strong India can only be built if its people develop a deep sense of responsibility towards the nation. About 27 percent of the children in the sample were, in fact, highly pessimistic about the future of the country as they feel that the problems of poverty, population growth, illiteracy and corruption would increase and the Indian society may not be able to find a way out. Only about 8 per cent of the respondents perceive a highly prosperous India at par with the advanced nations when it reaches the ripe age of 100 years.

During last 53 years, Indian science and technology has contributed to the development of the country in many areas. How do children perceive this contribution?

Predictably, the most outstanding contribution, according to the children, has been towards bringing green revolution through introduction of new agricultural technologies. Surprisingly, the children consider the role of medical sciences in promoting health services as far more important than the wider role of applications of science and technology in promoting large scale employment in industries, institutions and other sectors of the economy. The children, however, feel that the development of telecommunication facilities (telephone/telegraph/postal services) and spread of electronic media (radio and television) covering all parts of the country has been inadequate.

One immediate area where people easily recognise the importance of science and technology is the health sector. According to children, immunisation against diseases and fight against diseases like cholera, tuberculosis and malaria have been the two most important contributions of medical services in the place where they live (city/town/village). Infant mortality, health of women and old people have not been adequately addressed by the medical services.

A developing society like India’s needs technologies appropriate to its requirements for development. To ascertain how the children perceive the country’s technological capacity building, the following example was presented to them:

The children were asked to identify the most appropriate way of obtaining the pump technology out of the four alternatives presented to them.

The results are presented in the table below. The response of the children indicates that they would like the country to achieve complete self-reliance in the field of technology development and adoption. This also reflects a deep sense of national pride in seeing the nation as a true contributor in the field of science and technology. Clearly, the popular perceptions of children are not very supportive of the present policies of technological and economic liberalisation, which the country is pursuing at present.

An attempt was made to ascertain what the children feel about this phenomenon. The responses of the children show that they largely consider the departing S&T personnel as ‘brain bank’ because the people who have gone abroad can come back after some years and offer their highly valuable expertise for the development of the country. Many children also support the argument that the people who have migrated abroad and made fortunes there, should return back the money spent on their education in India by the government by creating first-rate institutions in various S&T disciplines. Note that in contrast with the issue of rural migration examined in Section-3, the children, in the case of scientists and other professionals, strongly support the view that every person has a right to move to a place of work of his/her choice.

A large segment of the children in the sample (67 percent) support the two arguments that people are superstitious because of a feeling of insecurity (67 percent), and the deep-rooted belief in destiny which makes them rely on super-natural powers for ensuring their well being (65 percent). A significantly large number of the respondents (56 per cent) support the argument that even the people who had good formal education fail to develop a sound scientific attitude and remain largely superstitious in their personal lives. Interestingly, nearly half of the respondents do not support the view that the superstitions prevailing in the society are rooted in local cultures and religious practices.

The children were asked to respond to a set of policy options to stop further damage to the country’s environment without hampering its development. Nearly all the respondents felt that gains of industrial development should not be sacrificed purely for the sake of safeguarding the environment. The overall response pattern further indicates that children support policies which promote rapid industrial development which is eco-friendly and sustainable in which the industries use technologies which are non-polluting and are environmentally safe.

After independence, the enrollment of girls in science and engineering courses has increased in a big way, but even today many people are not interested in seeing their daughters becoming scientists or engineers. Such a gender bias hinders Indian women from emerging as a valuable human resource for the society and the nation at large. An assessment of this situation by children was carried out by examining their responses to five possible negative attitude-patterns prevalent in the society against girls pursuing professional education in scientific and technical fields. The results are given in the adjoining table below.

The above results tend to indicate that children consider the social conditions like insecurity faced by women during odd working hours, the prevalence of the evil of dowry and low esteem accorded to women working in offices and factories - as far more responsible for the prevailing gender bias in permitting girls to take up professional S&T-based scientific and technical occupations than their intellectual or physical inefficiencies, which are so wrongly perceived by the orthodox people in society.

To have an idea as to how the children perceive India’s status in the world of modern science and technology, they were asked to assess the country’s basic S&T strength and its utilisation in development vis-ŕ-vis that of Japan. Assigning a score of 100 to Japan on this account, the respondents were asked give marks to their own country.

This study was aimed at developing a better understanding for more effective communication means, tools and techniques. It has provided valuable inputs to education planners, science communicators and even mass media executives to evolve programme strategies to harness the collective creative talent of the school children. The overwhelming response of the children to this survey has brought forth their deep concern about the deteriorating conditions in the country’s national and social life and its future, but at the same time, they articulate the deep nationalistic feelings they have for their country and the way they related themselves to the sacred idea of ‘our nation’. It has underlined the aspirations churning in their young minds for making their own contribution towards the development of a humane and caring society.