About the PPST

The PPST (Patriotic and People- Science and Technology ) initiative was started in the late 1970s – early
1980s in Chennai with the aim of understanding the reasons for the rather unsatisfactory performance of
the S&T Sector in India since independence, both in terms of its contributing to the well being of our
people, as well as adding significantly to the corpus of world's Scientific knowledge. The explorations of
the PPST group led to a fundamental questioning of the Modern S&T System itself, both at the level of
theories and practices, as being something that originated and developed in the West essentially to aid in
the pursuit of their civilizational goals and purposes ; therefore far from being value free or universally
valid. That there could be other ways of acquiring and practicing knowledge ,including sciences and
technologies, was brought out strongly by the group's explorations into the scientific and technological
traditions of India in diverse fields. Through its studies (brought out in the form of the PPST Bulletins,
Traditional S&T Congresses, various specific Research Projects etc) , PPST concluded that the inadequate
performance of our S&T Sector was a result of our blind and uncritical acceptance of everything that
came from the Modern S&T system of the West, accompanied by a total disregard of our own long and
rich traditions in many fields of Sciences, Technologies and other Knowledge systems.
The PPST as a collective became dormant around the year 2000 though many of its members pursued
these investigations in their own fields of interest , and through the different institutions and organisations
that they set up for the purpose.
Most members of the PPST group came together again in 2020 to celebrate the birth centenary of
Shri.Dharampal, the first President of the PPST Foundation, and whose thought and work had had a deep
impact on them and their work. Some details of the work taken up and carried out by the PPST Group
since then are available at www.ppstindiagroup.in
The idea of starting the Journal “Dialogues on Knowledge in Society – a PPST initiative” arose out of
these dialogues and deliberations that had restarted in 2020.