Scientific Social Responsibility Policy | 08 Jan 2020

Why in News

107^th Indian Science Congress considered the importance of communication and community outreach programmes to make people aware of scientific research.

• The Department of Science and Technology also mentioned about the Centre’s policy on implementing Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR).

Scientific Social Responsibility

• Definition:
  
  • Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) is the confluence of scientific knowledge with visionary leadership and social conscience.
  • It is about building synergies among all stakeholders in scientific knowledge community and also about developing linkages between science and society.
• Need:
  
  • The SSR policy will facilitate easy access to resources and knowledge about the investments and impacts of Science and Technology (S&T) on society.
  • It would inculcate moral responsibility amongst the scientific community which may trigger social entrepreneurship and start-ups impacting S&T ecosystem and society.
• Objectives:
  
  • It aims to harness the voluntary potential in the country’s scientific community to strengthen science and society linkages.
  • 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.
• SSR Policy:
  
  • Under the programme, researchers who are working on a science project funded by any of the Ministries under the Central government will have to undertake activities to popularise science and make it more accessible to the public.
  • It will include a range of activities like delivering lectures in educational institutes, writing an article in a magazine or doing something beyond the curriculum.
  • The science outreach would be mandatory and researchers had to include this as part of their outcome report.
  • Soon the government will list activities that could be taken up under the Scientific Social Responsibility programme that was similar to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Source:TH