Visitors have a look at a scale mannequin of the Thirty Meter Telescope at India’s Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum in Bangalore.Credit: Manjunath Kiran/AFP through Getty
We are heartened to see a chapter on public engagement in science and expertise in India’s draft Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy 2020 (see go.nature.com/3k7g6hf). We sincerely hope there’s the political will and funding to make this imaginative and prescient a actuality: the pandemic has proved that science literacy is of the utmost significance.
Among different issues, the draft calls for: devoted science-communication wings at every of the publicly funded establishments; nationwide and native centres for growing science protection within the media; coaching in related communication abilities at each stage (from college to school); funding in analysis on how folks interact with discovery and misinformation; inventive and modern platforms for science outreach that’s domestically and culturally related, from museums and festivals to social media. It additionally means that civil society, non-governmental organizations and personal companions ought to contribute.
If carried out correctly — with adequate sources and incentives, and drawing on greatest observe globally — the policy might revolutionize India’s science panorama, professionally and academically.
