The Plague of Pseudoscience in India
Acronyms used in this post:
NCERT: National Council of Educational Research and Training, the Indian body that prepares school curriculum and textbooks.
R&D: Research and Development, the organized work of creating new knowledge, tools, medicines, machines, methods, and technologies.
GDP: Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services produced in an economy.
GERD: Gross Expenditure on Research and Development, the share of national income spent on research and development.
DNA: Deoxyribonucleic Acid, the molecule that carries genetic information in living organisms.
IIT: Indian Institute of Technology, India’s elite public engineering institutions.
AI: Artificial Intelligence, computer systems designed to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.
Pseudoscience is what happens when a society wants the smell of science without entering the kitchen.
That is the problem. Not religion sitting quietly in a corner with its lamp and flowers. Not an old woman whispering a prayer before her grandson’s board exam, because the boy may have spent the year playing mobile games and now every department of the universe has been requested to assist. The problem begins when superstition climbs onto the public stage, borrows a microphone, wears a laboratory coat, and announces that it has discovered quantum consciousness in a coconut.
Then the crowd claps.
Then the minister smiles.
Then television calls it a debate.
Then WhatsApp turns it into national heritage.
And somewhere, in a classroom with a broken fan and a bored child, science quietly loses another citizen.
India has always had too much public religiosity. I say this not as a tourist of other people’s beliefs but as someone who grew up inside the noise. The little rituals were everywhere. The astrologer. The guru. The neighborhood cure. The exam charm. The temple economy. The miracle baba. The mother who believed in antibiotics but also in a thread tied around the wrist because why annoy any department unnecessarily?
One could live with that.
Private irrationality is a human tax. Everyone pays something. One man fears black cats. Another reads stock charts as if they are the Upanishads. A third believes his political party has never lied, which is the most dangerous superstition of all.
But something uglier has happened now.
The old village whisper has acquired broadband.
A rumor that once travelled by paan-shop, priest, and auntie now travels by algorithm. A faith healer no longer needs a small tent outside the railway station. He needs a ring light, a cheap microphone, a payment link, and a nation tired enough to believe that reality can be negotiated by forwarded video.
This is not harmless.
A half-literate society is not a society where people cannot read. That is too simple. A half-literate society is one where people can read the words but not inspect the claim. They can pass exams but cannot ask, “How do you know?” They can calculate marks, interest rates, train times, and cricket averages, but cannot distinguish evidence from costume.
That distinction is everything.
Science is not a cupboard full of facts. Science is a method for not fooling yourself too easily. It is the habit of asking what would prove you wrong. It is the patience to say, “I do not know yet.” It is the ability to separate a beautiful story from a working explanation.
A myth may be beautiful. A myth may carry poetry, memory, grief, identity, moral instruction, and old human bewilderment. But a myth is not a jet engine. A medicine must heal. A bridge must stand. A vaccine must work. An eclipse must arrive on time whether the priest approves or not.
Reality is wonderfully rude that way.
This is where India gets into trouble. We are not short of intelligence. That lazy insult should be thrown into the nearest municipal drain, where it will meet many relatives. India produces brilliant mathematicians, coders, doctors, physicists, engineers, biologists, statisticians, space scientists, and students who can solve problems under exam pressure that would make a calm European teenager take up gardening.
The trouble is not intelligence.
The trouble is organization.
We built islands of excellence and left the mainland to superstition, coaching, politics, and memory work. We made IITs and space missions and software exports, but we did not build a scientific culture deep enough for ordinary life. We taught science as a subject, not as a civic instinct.
So a boy learns Newton’s laws in school, comes home, and watches a guru explain that ancient sages had all modern physics already. A girl learns a little genetics but is never given evolution in a way that makes the world rearrange itself in her head. A man with an engineering degree forwards nonsense about miracle cures. A television panel argues whether mythology contains advanced aviation. Someone says “ancient science” in the tone of a man placing a trump card on the table.
And the room nods.
Here is the small trapdoor under our feet: people can know formulas and still not know science.
That is why evolution matters so much. Evolution is not just a biology chapter. It is the great spine of modern life science. Without it, medicine becomes shallower, ecology becomes confusing, genetics becomes a pile of vocabulary, and human beings remain mysteriously dropped from the sky like luggage mishandled by heaven.
When evolution is weakly taught, delayed, trimmed, softened, or hidden away for only those who take advanced biology, creationist thinking occupies the empty room. It moves in early. It arranges the furniture. By adulthood, it has become family property.
Then try removing it.
You cannot simply say, “Darwin.” That is like arriving at a house in Behala during monsoon, pointing at the waterlogging, and saying, “Drainage.” Correct, but inadequate.
Children need the story early. Variation. Inheritance. Selection. Deep time. Fossils. Common ancestry. Microbes changing. Viruses adapting. Dogs bred from wolves. Rice improved by selection. The human body carrying old compromises like a building renovated by many incompetent landlords over millions of years.
Then biology becomes intelligible.
Without that, students memorize life. They do not understand it.
The same thing happens across science education. If the periodic table is treated as a chart to mug up rather than one of humanity’s great maps, chemistry becomes a punishment. If probability is taught as exam arithmetic rather than the grammar of uncertainty, people cannot understand medical risk, election polls, weather forecasts, investment scams, or why one dramatic anecdote proves almost nothing. If evidence is not taught, personality becomes evidence. Costume becomes evidence. Sanskrit becomes evidence. Loudness becomes evidence. Majority belief becomes evidence.
This is how nonsense wins elections of the mind.
And yes, politics has fed the beast.
Vote banks do not thrive on critical citizens. They thrive on dependence. Keep people literate enough to sign, count, obey, and consume. Do not make them dangerous enough to ask why the school has no lab, why the hospital has no doctor, why the job has no security, why the river is poisoned, why the miracle cure is sold but never tested, why the leader’s children study abroad while the local school teaches obedience wrapped in patriotism.
A questioning citizen is bad raw material for patronage politics.
So the old bargain continues. You give people identity, spectacle, grievance, ritual, and emotional compensation. You do not give them intellectual tools sharp enough to cut the rope.
This is why gurus, faith healers, miracle men, and televised charlatans flourish under political shade. They are not merely entertainers. They are part of an economy of obedience. They teach people that truth descends from authority. First from scripture. Then from leader. Then from celebrity. Then from forwarded video. Then from the man in saffron or white or designer humility who says something meaningless in a voice slow enough to sound profound.
The poor are blamed for believing. That is too easy.
People believe strange things because life is frightening. When the hospital is expensive, the court is slow, the police are uncertain, the job market is cruel, and the future looks like a government clerk who has gone to lunch and may not return, magic becomes emotional insurance. A man with no safety net will grab even a painted rope.
So no, the answer is not sneering.
Sneering is the cheapest form of rationalism. It gives the speaker a warm feeling and changes almost nothing.
The real work is harder. Build institutions that reduce desperation. Build schools that teach method. Build public health that does not leave people running to miracle sellers. Build media habits that punish fraud. Build law that targets harmful superstition without turning private belief into a police matter. Build a culture where “prove it” is not an insult.
That little phrase matters.
Prove it.
A civilization grows up when that phrase becomes normal.
Not rude. Not foreign. Not anti-national. Not anti-religious. Just normal.
Jawaharlal Nehru, for all his mistakes, understood this. He saw science not only as machines and laboratories but as a way of thinking. The young republic wanted dams, steel plants, atomic energy, research institutes, universities, and space science. It wanted to move from fatalism to planning. From prayer to experiment. From empire’s leftovers to national capability.
It did not fully succeed.
No country does. History is not a school essay where noble intentions march neatly into outcomes. India became a strange contraption. One wheel scientific, one wheel feudal, one wheel bureaucratic, one wheel devotional, and all four turning at different speeds on a road full of potholes.
Still, the Nehruvian idea of scientific temper remains one of the finest promises the republic made to itself. It even entered the Constitution as a duty: to develop scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry and reform.
Read that again slowly.
The Constitution did not ask citizens merely to chant, obey, and inherit. It asked them to inquire and reform.
That is a dangerous sentence. Beautifully dangerous.
Because inquiry does not stop politely at the temple gate, party office, family WhatsApp group, television studio, or school textbook. Inquiry is like a Calcutta rainwater leak. Once it enters, it finds every crack.
No wonder so many people fear it.
Now we arrive at the China question, the one that causes patriotic indigestion.
India is behind China scientifically not because Indians are less clever, less spiritual, more spiritual, better at poetry, worse at discipline, or any of the usual drawing-room nonsense. India is behind because China treated science, manufacturing, engineering, infrastructure, and industrial capability as national power with terrifying seriousness. It built supply chains. It funded research. It scaled universities. It pushed manufacturing. It connected laboratories to factories. It made the state, industry, and education system pull in one broad direction, often harshly, often unfairly, often without freedoms Indians should never surrender.
Let us be clear. China is not a moral model. It has censorship, propaganda, surveillance, and political control. A free society should not envy the cage because the cage has better wiring.
But China’s scientific rise is real.
India cannot answer that rise with mythology, slogans, and television pride. You cannot build a semiconductor industry by declaring that ancient sages had nanotechnology. You cannot catch up in biotechnology by forwarding cow-urine cures. You cannot become a research power while treating R&D spending as optional decoration. You cannot produce discovery by asking young minds to memorize, obey, emigrate, or shut up.
Science needs money. It also needs freedom.
That second part is always where the chair becomes uncomfortable.
A scientist must be able to say the data does not support the minister. A historian must be able to say the evidence does not support the myth. A doctor must be able to say the cure is fraudulent. A teacher must be able to say the textbook is weak. A student must be able to ask why.
Without that, you get performance science.
Performance science is science as stage decoration. Rockets in speeches. Ancient glory in textbooks. Innovation in advertisements. Startup slogans on banners. A minister pressing a large ceremonial button while somewhere a research scholar waits six months for a reagent because procurement paperwork has the digestive speed of a python after lunch.
I know this rhythm. Anyone who has worked with real systems knows it. The brochure says transformation. The room says fan not working.
In my part of Calcutta, on certain afternoons, the city has a way of revealing the entire philosophy of development in one lane. A boy attends online coaching on a cracked phone. The internet drops. A loudspeaker nearby announces a religious event. Someone burns garbage. A political flag flaps from a bamboo pole. A mother bargains over vegetables. A retired man explains geopolitics with the certainty of a field marshal and the evidence base of a tea biscuit. Then the power flickers.
This is not a joke scene.
This is where national capability is actually built or lost.
Scientific temper is not born in conferences. It is born when that boy learns to ask why the phone heats, why the sky darkens before rain, why fever rises, why antibiotics must be completed, why eclipses are predictable, why caste is not biology, why women are not naturally inferior, why a godman’s claim needs testing, why a politician’s claim needs numbers, why a YouTube video is not proof.
That is the republic in miniature.
A small boy. A weak signal. A question.
The practical path forward is not glamorous, but it is real.
Teach evolution to everyone. Not as controversy. As biology.
Teach probability before superstition hardens into adult confidence. Make children understand risk, randomness, coincidence, and the fact that two events happening together does not mean one caused the other.
Teach the difference between story and mechanism. A story explains meaning. A mechanism explains how something works. Both have human value. Only one can run a power plant.
Teach teachers to say “I don’t know.” That sentence should be made respectable. In many Indian classrooms, the teacher must appear omniscient, like a minor district deity with chalk. This is fatal. Science begins when authority admits uncertainty without losing dignity.
Teach in Indian languages. English-only rationalism is a gated community. It has nice lawns and no voters. If scientific temper does not speak Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia, Assamese, Urdu, and the rest, it will remain an elite hobby with occasional TEDx lighting.
Build local science media. Not dull moral lectures. Not scolding. Good stories. Experiments. Explanations. Debunking with humor. Public health in plain words. Evolution with mangoes, dogs, mosquitoes, and fish markets. Probability with cricket. Climate with sweat. Nutrition with the kitchen. Astronomy with the evening sky. Chemistry with soap. Physics with ceiling fans. Statistics with election promises.
The ordinary world is already a laboratory. We only forgot to label it.
Regulate harmful fraud. A person may believe what he likes in private, but the moment he sells a cancer cure, tells patients to stop medicine, accuses women of witchcraft, performs dangerous rituals, or exploits grief for money, the law should arrive wearing heavy boots.
But law alone is not enough.
The deeper fight is prestige.
Right now nonsense has glamour. Babas have channels. Politicians have mythology. Television has shouting. Influencers have confidence. Science has PDFs.
This is not a fair contest.
Science communication must become vivid without becoming dishonest. It must learn rhythm, image, metaphor, suspense, and comedy. It must stop sounding like a notice from the electricity board. People do not read because something is important. They read because something pulls them.
Truth must learn to travel.
Not by becoming cheap. By becoming alive.
There is also a private-sector problem. Indian industry often wants the fruit of science without watering the tree. We like services, shortcuts, arbitrage, importing, assembling, reselling, and calling it innovation. Real R&D is slow, expensive, uncertain, and full of failure. It does not suit a culture addicted to immediate marks, immediate jobs, immediate valuation, immediate applause.
But every serious scientific nation pays this price.
Laboratories need technicians. Technicians need respect. Doctoral students need enough money to live like humans, not ghosts haunting university corridors. Universities need freedom. Industry needs patience. Public funding needs seriousness. Procurement needs reform. School labs need actual equipment, not locked cupboards opened for inspection day like family silver.
And families need to change too.
The Indian family is often the first anti-science institution a child encounters. Not because parents are evil. Because parents are afraid. They want marks, rank, job, marriage, safety. Curiosity looks risky. Questions look disrespectful. Failure looks shameful. So the child learns to perform intelligence, not practice inquiry.
This is how a civilization produces toppers without producing enough discoverers.
A topper knows the answer.
A discoverer knows how to live with not knowing.
That difference is the size of a nation.
There is an old Bengali weakness for adda, argument, and intellectual theatre. We should use it better. Imagine para clubs hosting science evenings instead of only loudspeakers and political banners. Imagine local libraries running misinformation clinics. Imagine schoolchildren testing claims from advertisements. Imagine retired engineers explaining household electricity. Imagine doctors debunking miracle cures in Bengali. Imagine biology teachers making evolution impossible to unsee.
It sounds small.
Good. Small is where culture changes.
A country is not rational because its elite writes rational essays. A country becomes rational when the local uncle pauses before forwarding nonsense because his niece will ask for evidence and embarrass him in the family group.
That is reform.
Not dramatic. Not televised. Devastating.
The plague of pseudoscience in India will not be cured by atheists shouting at believers, though I understand the temptation. Some days the temptation arrives with tea and sits down comfortably. But shouting alone hardens people. The better move is sharper: separate comfort from claim.
You want ritual? Fine.
You want poetry? Fine.
You want metaphor? Fine.
You want to sell it as physics, medicine, aviation, genetics, or national history? Now we test.
That boundary is civilization.
India does not need to become less Indian to become more scientific. This is the false bargain sold by fools on both sides. The rationalist who thinks culture must be bleached out is wrong. The traditionalist who thinks science must bow before inherited pride is also wrong. A mature civilization can preserve songs, food, festivals, stories, languages, griefs, jokes, gods for those who want them, and disbelief for those who do not. What it cannot preserve, if it wants to live, is the right to lie about reality without consequence.
The final enemy is not faith.
The final enemy is unaccountable certainty.
It wears many costumes. Religious certainty. Political certainty. Market certainty. Nationalist certainty. Technocratic certainty. Family certainty. Even atheist certainty, when it becomes smug and lazy.
Science is not certainty. Science is disciplined uncertainty.
That is its beauty.
That is why it works.
India can still choose this path. The talent is here. The hunger is here. The young are here. The failures are visible enough to be repaired. The comparison with China should not produce humiliation. It should produce sobriety. They built capacity. We performed pride. Now let us build.
Spend seriously on R&D. Teach evolution. Defend universities. Punish fraud. Fund public science. Respect teachers. Train citizens in probability. Build laboratories. Protect dissent. Make science local. Make evidence fashionable. Make doubt respectable. Make nonsense costly.
And above all, teach children the one sentence that can still save a republic:
How do we know?
That sentence is small.
So is a match.