Responding to the global call for the March for Science, scientists, researchers, students and citizens in around 20 cities in India came out on the streets to raise the issue of India’s science. The protestors wished to highlight how attacks on scientific and rational thought, cuts in funding for education, and rising social injustices in the form of caste based attacks are closely interlinked.
Keeping these in mind, the protestors raised the following demands:
- Stop the attacks on science and reason, and spreading obscurantist values through the use of public institutions, and develop scientific temper, human values and spirit of inquiry in conformance with Article 51A of the Constitution.
- Bring to book the murderers of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M.Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh
- Increase the spending on Education (school and higher education) to 6% of the GDP.
- Ensure that the education system does not impart ideas that contradict scientific evidence.
- Increase R&D spending in science to 3 % of the GDP.
- Enact policies based on scientific evidence.
