Isn't that a brilliant metaphor for the academies' report on GM crops?
Apparently, it's a popular Hindi saying, and I found it in this SciDev.Net editorial by T.V. Padma and David Dickson on the role of science academies in developing countries.
Here's the editorial's scathing comment on the science academies' penchant for staying in the sidelines:
... The academies were conspicuously silent when a former science minister introduced astrology as a science course, and they have not made any meaningful contribution to Indian science policy formation, or to parliamentary debates on contentious issues such as the presence in India of foreign universities, or liability for nuclear accidents.
Indeed, the fact that last month's Indian inter-academy report on genetically modified crops — intended to shed more light on the vexed issue of GM brinjal — was the first of its kind in India only underlines how inactive the academies have been in a country that prides itself as growing knowledge economy.
3 Comments:
"...how inactive the academies have been..." ---And they have collected due rewards: Tata has donated 50MUSD to Harvard, not to Indian academia. (And 8 of 10 in the Indian middle class will be proud of this news.) This downward spiral of lack of confidence and lack of engagement will only grow. We guarantee it.
Come, come Abi, surely even a chauvinistic 'South Indian' as Northerners are apt to call you, would have heard the phrase 'Aa Bail Mujhe Maar' !! Which roughly translated actually means -- Come Bull, Gore me. (And I an not talking Al Gore here!)
@Rahul: I was at BHU for four years, so you may be right: I probably heard that phrase quite a few times. Except that I would have had no idea what it meant. My Hindi never went beyond barely passable.
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