Host: Subhra Priyadarshini; Sound editing: Prince George
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Subhra Priyadarshini: Welcome to a special episode of This week in India’s Science from Aberdeen, Scotland — where the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) Conference 2025 just wrapped up. This conference is the largest congregation of science communication professionals from around the world.
Among the global crowd of science communicators, a spirited group from India stood out. Young, curious, committed to change. I sat down with some of them to understand what they think of the state of science communication back home — what’s changing, what’s stuck, and what must happen next.
Let’s start with Sangeetha Unnithan, who teaches communication at the Indian Institute of Management in Indore.
Sangeetha Unnithan: I don't feel as a discipline, it's still got the recognition it should in India still, although we have a lot of institutions focusing in this area, but among the masses, in terms of popularization of science, I think we are still lagging far behind, but there is a lot of potential.
Subhra Priyadarshini: Sangeetha’s work focuses on how science and development are represented in India’s mass media.
Sangeetha Unnithan: I'm looking into representation of science and technology in the mass media, particularly news media. My objective was to actually look at how science journalism is helping enhance the understanding of development via the media. But I realized through my research that science journalism is tilting more towards entertainment, and at times sensationalization, than towards development. It's more like what I call pop science. For example, during the COVID reporters, starting from political reporters to crime reporters to sports reporters, everybody was covering COVID Because we don't have the kind of resources we don't. We only have so many science journalists, right? And in fact, many newspaper bureaus don't even have science journalists. Anybody could cover science. So during COVID, we actually saw that somebody was covering the press conference, somebody was speaking to, you know, the doctor, somebody was speaking to the health workers. So this is what I say, that we haven't reached that level of maturity where we should be much more serious about science journalism.
Subhra Priyadarshini: Sangeetha makes a strong case: for most people, mass media is the last source of science they ever encounter after formal education. And that’s where science journalism becomes crucial.
So, what about new kinds of communication — visual, community-driven, digital? Here’s Raghul M R, a PhD student from the National institute for Science Communication and Policy Research in Delhi.
Raghul M R: My research interest is on climate communication, how visuals are being communicated, how they are made, how they are interpreted by the audience. When you say it's a climate emergency, mostly it is a global narrative, but climate change is highly local. What I see is often the coastal issues are not told, or the need of the coastal people is not addressed. The images are not localized. It is not that materials are not dynamic in nature.
My concern is in the academic sector. In India, I find people feel difficult to accept scicomm (science communication) as a field of study. People often feel as it's a secondary kind of thing. This conference, this is like we have a conference for scicomm, and people understand what we are talking. Now in India, when I speak about even for the scicomm conference, people often feel like what is happening here.
Subhra Priyadarshini: And what would help? Institutional support is important, says Raghul, but not enough.
Raghul MR: In the current scenario, institutions alone won’t help. We need a more inclusive community, which understands what scicomm is, and what is the need of scicomm. That is the need, actually, for Indian scenario.
Subhra Priyadarshini: Inclusivity came up a lot in these conversations. Here’s Moumita Mazumdar, also from NIScPR, who works on science misinformation and language barriers.
Moumita Mazumdar: We have 22 scheduled languages and over 19,000 dialects. So how are we going to translate these materials? Not even translate, how are we going to connect it with the context of different parts of India? Digital media is helping in science communication, which is also helping in spreading misinformation. So misinformation is a very broad term. Fake News, disinformation, pseudo news, when something is translated, many of the times, it gets misinterpreted.
Subhra Priyadarshini: Moumita also works with IndiaBioscience, and she’s excited about the push to fund regional language science outreach, and work with grassroots NGOs.
Moumita Mazumdar: We are really focusing on Indian languages. We are giving out grants [for] outreach in Indian languages, collaborating with NGOs at the grassroots level where we can take life sciences. That’s in the process.
Subhra Priyadarshini: Of course, one of the biggest challenges for science communicators is dealing with stigma — especially around mental health. Anushka Banerjee and Kadambari Patil, from the Centre for Brain and Mind at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru have been working to change this.
Anushka Banerjee: I think one of the important things we're trying to focus on through our work is increasing conversations and normalizing severe mental illnesses in some rural parts of India. A lot of these illnesses are attributed to cultural or religious stigma. We also see it in urban areas where people believe that through yoga or meditation or diet they can control or reduce the impact. You should see a doctor.
Kadambari Patil: We work at a research center which does stem cell and genetic research on psychiatric disorders. We are the science communicators, and we are just trying to bring in mental health awareness and neuroscience research to the public against the stigma.
Subhra Priyadarshini: So what do science communicators do at NIMHANS?
Kadambari Patil: There are some scicomm efforts. But we are trying to see if we can get help from people who have lived experience of these disorders telling us how we can reach the public in a better, more sensitive, more involving way. We’re trying to build something like that in India, which has not been done a lot.
Anushka Banerjee: The science communication community in India is very small knit, but incredibly vibrant. Institutions are open to the idea of us doing the work but when it comes to providing resources and funding and making space for us, that’s where things begin to falter. It took the UK 10 to 15 years to develop the same thing and I think we already have a great group of individuals who can take this forward.
Subhra Priyadarshini: That’s the sound of a field coming into its own. From climate visuals to mental health outreach, from language equity to folk storytelling, science communication in India is no longer just an add-on. It’s slowly becoming a movement. And with more and more young voices rooting for it, I am hopeful.
Thanks to everyone who found time to come and speak to me at PCST 2025. From sunny Aberdeen, I’m Subhra Priyadarshini and you were listening to a special episode of This Week in India’s Science on the Nature India podcast.
