Vinod RAINA (India) 

Title of Speech: Cultural Diversity and Universal Knowledge: Education in Multicultural Contexts

Vinod Raina, a physicist by profession, resigned from Delhi University to devote full time to grassroots work.  He is one of the pioneers of the People’s Science Movement in India that attempts to empower people to plan and implement their own developmental ideas and needs, so as to reverse the trickle-down paradigm of development. He is founding member of Eklavya, an NGO which has been advocating alternative education for more than two decades, whose curriculum was adopted in the state school educational system. Vinod has helped set up the All-India People’s Science Network (AIPSN) and the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS). He is presently a member of the apex educational body of  the Government of India, the Central Advisory Board for Education (CABE).

He has been a Homi Bhabha Fellow, a Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Science Writers Association.  A member of the ARENA (Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives) Executive Boards 1994-2000, he was the Chair of the ARENA Council of Fellows for the term 2003-2006. Vinod’s involvement with ARENA began after the Bhopal Gas Disaster and the anti-Narmada dams campaign. As a Board member, he helped conceptualize the Victims of Development project and co-edited the subsequent volume The Dispossessed.

Vinod is also a member of the International Coordination Committee of Jubilee South; a member of the India Organising Committee, and the International Council of the World Social Forum which he writes regularly about.