Image 1.1: Map of various units under the NCSM42 (from the official website)
In this chapter, my aim is to introduce the NCSM as the main science communication institution in the museum sector. The following chapter is devoted to describing the NCSM’s organizational structure, goals and functions and critically analyse its rhetoric of
communication. The website of NCSM states that it is the largest network of science centres and museums in the world. From the map in Image 1.1, we can see that the reach of NCSM is indeed widespread. Functioning under the Ministry of Culture (and drawing its funding primarily from it), the NCSM has been built to co-ordinate all informal science communication activities in the museum space in the country. Its raison d’etre is specified on the website as described in the section ‘Genesis’:
The first science museum, Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM),
Kolkata under CSIR43, was opened on May 2, 1959. In July 1965, the second
science museum of the country, the Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum (VITM) was opened in Bangalore. After Kolkata and Bangalore, the work for the third centre at Mumbai was taken up in 1974. As the popularisation of science and technology through the Science Museums grew in scope and size, the
Union Planning Commission44 constituted a Task Force in early 1970’s to assess
the activities of the Science Museums. Task Force recommended to set up Science Museums in different parts of the country at National, State and District levels and also recommended formation of a central coordinating agency. In 1978, it was decided by the Government of India to delink from CSIR the two science museums already operating at Kolkata and Bangalore and also the one being set up at Mumbai and put them under a newly formed Society registered on April 4, 1978 as National
Council of Science Museums (NCSM).45
43 Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, an autonomous research and development organization in
India which was established by a resolution of the Central Legislative Assembly in 1942, in British India.
44 The Union Planning Commission was an institution under the Government of India, responsible for
creating five-year plans to steer the economy of the country and allocate resources to sectors of national importance, and to assess the various resources of the country. Among other things, it was interested in boosting the human resources and hence science museums were considered to be significant institutions which could bring about societal transformations. When the present central government came into power in 2014, the commission was discontinued and a new institution was created, called the NITI Aayog, which is an economic policy think tank.
45 This is the page that discusses the genesis of the organization: http://ncsm.gov.in/?page_id=636 (last
S Kumar, current director of the NCSM headquarters in Kolkata, in a personal interview said the following about the current state of the council’s activities with respect to its continued commitment in creating new science centres.
The NCSM currently has about 25 science centres, including the headquarters and the Central Research and Training Laboratory (which is in charge of training the human resource, R&D for display and design, conceptualizing and fabricating exhibitions and displays as well as providing infrastructural know-how to all the other museums). Apart from these, the NCSM also developed a number of new centres in different regions (in the constituent states and union territories of India) and then handed over their administration to the governments of those regions. The decision to do so was taken around 2001, when the Ministry of Culture (under which the NCSM functions) realized that it was not possible for the NCSM, with available manpower, to manage all the new institutions which were being set up, given that the government suggested that each state and union territory should have science centres.46
Here is the list of the centres which were set up by NCSM and then handed over to the respective states after the decision of 2001. These are categorized under the rubric ‘collaboration’47 in the council’s website:
Science Centers/Museums/Planetariums Date of Inauguration
Science Centre, Port Blair, A & N Island May 30, 2003
Mizoram Science Centre, Aizwal July 26, 2003
Nagaland Science Centre, Dimapur, Nagaland September 14, 2004
National Agricultural Science Museum, New Delhi Nov 3, 2004
Manipur Science Centre, Manipur May 18, 2005
Arunachal Pradesh Science Centre, Itanagar Dec 3, 2005
46 All text from interviews will be carried in italics to distinguish between interview quotes and those from
already published documents.
47 The page with the list of collaborations can be found here: http://ncsm.gov.in/?page_id=711 (last
Shillong Science Centre, Shillong, Meghalaya Feb 27, 2006
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Panorama, Amritsar July 20, 2006
ONGC Golden Jubilee Museum, Dehradun August 14, 2006
Kalpana Chawla Memorial Planetarium, Kurukshetra, Haryana July 24, 2007
Sikkim Science Centre, Gangtok February 22, 2008
Sub-Regional Science Centres, Kalimpong October 2, 2008
Sub-Regional Science Centre, Solapur February 14, 2010
Regional Science Centre, Ranchi November 29, 2010
Dharwad Regional Science Centre, Karnataka February 27, 2012
Chhattisgarh Science Centre, Raipur July 13, 2012
Regional Science Centre, Jaipur, Rajasthan December 29, 2012
Pimpri Chinchwad Science Centre, Pune, Maharashtra February 8, 2013
Jorhat Science Centre & Planetarium, Assam July 6, 2013
Regional Science Centre, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu May 6, 2013.
Sub Regional Science Centre, Jodhpur, Rajasthan August 17, 2013
Regional Science Centre, Pilikula, Karnataka October 1, 2014
Sub regional Science Centre, Puducherry May 3, 2015
Regional Science Centre, Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand February 3, 2016
In addition, NCSM has developed the following centres and galleries outside India:
List of Centres/Galleries developed by NCSM (Abroad) Date of Inauguration
Rajiv Gandhi Science Center, Port Louis, Mauritius Nov 30, 2004
India Gallery on Buddhism, Kandy, Sri Lanka Nov 6, 2013
From the dates of inauguration of a number of museums in the cluster, it is evident that the council has been very active in the last few years in setting up centres specifically in
suburban areas all around the country. What is equally surprising is how little attention,
academic as well as media, has been paid to this phenomenon.48
1.6 Narrating stories of science with objects: case of the Railway Museum, New