The science centre movement in Índia: a conspectus

Abstract

The present article is about the development of the science museum net in India started in 1956, when the government of that country created the Industry and Technology Museum in Calcutta. In the 1960's and 1970's, due to the need of simple programs for rural communities and small villages, the idea of Mobile Science Exhibits (MSE) started. In order to take universal scientific concepts to those who could not visit museums, the Museobus was projected. At that time, the educational focus in museums changed from exhibiting artifacts to encouraging learning through "doing". The Exploratorium in San Francisco influenced the approach of museums in India. While the first Science Centre was built in Mumbai, the Planning Commission of the Indian government created a task force to study the development of Sciences Museums. In 1978, the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM) was created as an independent institution, which later became part of the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare. Twenty-five years after the creation of the Council, the movement for informal science teaching had acquired a solid background. In 1978, their priority was to expand the net of Science Centres and Museums. Now, the priority is to achieve better quality and more efficient communication. Nowadays, Indian Science Centres evaluate the impact their activities have on individual, social and economic reality. With new technologies and approaches, they try to emphasize their relevance in a society that is characterized by having a great number of languages and poor education in science.

Mobile science museums and centres and their history in the public communication of science

“…Among them are the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, in Kolkata, the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, in Bangalore, and the Nehru Science Center, in Mumbai. They also encouraged the creation of the national mobile exhibition program to serve the country's rural population, inaugurated in 1965 [Ghose, 1968;Ghose, 1986;Maitra, 1997;Mukhopadhyay, 2005]. Along with the success of the programme in India, other Asian countries also invested in the creation of mobile exhibitions: in 1980, Sri Lanka launched its first mobile museum and, in 1982, the Center for Educational Museums in Bangkok, Thailand, set up its two mobile units and The Republic of Korea introduced travelling science exhibitions which comprise items selected from the nation's annual science fair by the National Science Museum in Seoul [Bose, 1983].…”