Question

India has had a long and unbroken tradition of great scholarship — in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, logic and ethics. Yet, in parallel with this, several superstitious and obscurantist attitudes and practices flourished in our society and unfortunately continue even today — among many educated people too. How will you use your knowledge of science to develop strategies to counter these attitudes?

Answer 1

In order to popularize scientific explanations of everyday phenomena, mass media like

$\longrightarrow$ Internet  

$\longrightarrow$ Newspapers  

$\longrightarrow$ Television  

$\longrightarrow$ Radio

should be used. Knowledge of Science should be educated to the masses so that they learn about the real causes of phenomenon allowing their superstitious beliefs to wash away.

Answer 2

India has had a long and unbroken tradition of great scholarship - in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, logic and ethics. Yet, in parallel with this, several superstitious and obscurantistic attitudes and practices flourished in our society and unfortunately continue even today - among many educated people too. How will you use your knowledge of science to develop strategies to counter these attitudes ?

(i) In order to popularize scientific explanations of everyday phenomena, mass media like radio, television and newspaper should be used.

(ii) School books should include explanations regarding day-to-day experiences in life.

(iii) Students and youngsters should be encouraged to try and offer scientific explanation for many a so-called perplexing events and beliefs.

Poverty and illiteracy are the two major factors which make people superstitious in India. So to remove the superstitious and obscurantist attitude we have to first overcome these factors. Everybody should be educated, so that one can have scientific attitude. Knowledge of science can be put to use to prove people's superstitious wrong by showing them the scientific logic behind everything happening in our world.