Context-Department of Science and Technology released a draft of its proposed Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) policy

• India is going to be possibly the first country in the world to implement a Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) Policy on the lines of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to encourage science and technology (S&T) institutions and individual scientists in the country to proactively engage in science outreach activities to connect science with the society.
• Draft policy builds upon traditions of earlier policies: Scientific Policy Resolution 1958, Technology Policy Statement 1983, Science and Technology Policy 2003 and Science Technology and Innovation Policy 2013

Draft scientific social responsibility policy

Objectives

• The main objective of SSR policy is to harness the voluntary potential that is latent in the country’s scientific community to strengthen science and society linkages so as to make S&T ecosystem vibrant. This primarily involves bridging science-society, science-science and society-science gaps, thereby bringing trust, partnership and responsibility of science at an accelerated peace towards achieving social goals

This specifically implies: 

1. Science-society connect: Facilitating inclusive and sustainable development by transferringthe benefits of scientific work to meet existing and emerging societal needs. 

2. Science-science connect:Creating an enabling environment for the sharing of ideas and resources within the knowledge ecosystem. 

3. Society-science connect:Collaborating with communities to identify problems and develop scientific and technological solutions. 

4. Cultural change: Inculcating social responsibility among the individuals and institutions practicing science; creating awareness about SSR within society; and infusing scientific temperament into day-to-day social existence and interaction. 

Policy

• Individual scientists or knowledge workers will be required to devote at least 10 person-days of SSR per year for exchanging scientific knowledge to society.
• It also recognises the need to provide incentives for outreach activities with necessary budgetary support. It has also been proposed to give credit to knowledge workers/scientists for individual SSR activities in their annual performance appraisal and evaluation. No institution would be allowed to outsource or sub-contract their SSR activities and projects.

Implementation

SSR is to be implemented through the following specific strategies: 

1. All Central Government Ministries and State Governments would plan and strategise their SSR in accordance with their respective mandates. 

2. Every knowledge institution would prepare its implementation plan for achieving its SSR goals. 

3. All knowledge workers would be sensitised by their institutions about their ethical responsibility to contribute towards the betterment of society and the achievement of national developmental and environmental goals. 

4. Every knowledge worker would be liable for at least 10 person-days of SSR per year. While the knowledge worker would be given wide latitude in choosing the SSR activity, it should necessarily pertain to the transmission of scientific knowledge to society.

5.There should be an SSR monitoring system in each institution to assess institutional projects and individual activities. Each knowledge institution would publish an annual SSR report. 

6. Appropriate indicators for monitoring of SSR activities perta output/outcomes for both at institution and individual level need to be developed. The impact of SSR activities needs to be measured in terms of short frames. 

7. Individual and institutional SSR necessary budgetary support.

8. Individual SSR activities should be given knowledge worker, such as the performance the output of university and college teachers. 

9. SSR activities and projects of a knowledge institution would not be outsourced or sub contracted. 

Benefits

• When most research is being done by using taxpayers’ money, the scientific establishment has an ethical obligation of “giving back” to the society. 
• “SSR is not only about scientific impact upon society but also about the social impact upon science. SSR would therefore strengthen the knowledge ecosystem and bring efficiencies in harnessing science for the benefit of society,” 
• The draft defines SSR as “the ethical obligation of knowledge workers in all fields of science and technology to voluntarily contribute their knowledge and resources to the widest spectrum of stakeholders in society, in a spirit of service and conscious reciprocity”. 

Concerns

• Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) Policy is based on the lines of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) but CSR is itself a problematic for a number of reasons. For example, it subtly lends legitimacy to the undue influence that big businesses have on the political process, provides political cover to corporations that are otherwise engaged in ethically questionable core operations, etc. So the question arises: what ethically dubious practices within scientific institutions might SSR be distracting us from?
• Honest scientific activity is premised on the “easy access to resources and knowledge”, so it is amusing that the government recognises this need when it wants to communicate “how the investments on [sic] S&T benefit society,” further legitimising its own rule, but doesn’t think it necessary to ensure an accountable democratic state
• The problem is that when “knowledge workers” undertake their ethical responsibilities and act in the interest of society, they are frequently harassed by the government. The message being sent here is truly frightful: “We decide what is in the best interests of society, and any deviations from our line will be punished.”
• Our scientific institutions – in the form of, say, their tenured faculty – rarely speak out against this violence and reject the notion that they have any responsibilities in the political sphere. Indeed, their obsequiousness is well-known and should be a cause for concern. The SSR further exacerbates the rot within these institutions by bolstering this repudiation. This is to say nothing of the “wide latitude” given to knowledge workers to choose SSR activities, which will undoubtedly lead to a proliferation of the sort of outreach that is often exclusive and alienating.