12th edition of Jaipur Literature Festival gets under way

Yash Goyal
Jaipur, January 24

The 12th edition of Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) opened on Thursday with the Nobel Laureate Sir Venki Ramakrishnan stressing on keeping intact personal privacy and security in an increasingly digital world. 

“We need to recognise when people use scientific language to propagate nonsense without any evidence. When faced with these issues, we as citizens should be able to ask how valid is the evidence and how valid is the underlying science,” Venki said in his keynote address ‘The Role of Science in Today’s World’. 

“How are we to judge the reliability of science itself in an era of fake news where even the existence of objective truth is questioned? There is much at stake. Science with its insistence on evidence-based facts offers a counter to some of the threats today,” he warned.

“And we scientists must do better to bridge the divide between two cultures. Science is simply the systematic accumulation of knowledge based on evidence. In fact, we are all born scientists. And as children, we are intensely curious about the world around us. We constantly make deductions based on data. Poets and artists have reflected on the beauty of the night sky, but the images of the space from the Hubble telescope speak for themselves,” he said in his 20-minute speech. 

“Our literature and science are all ways of capturing essential truths about the world. But science has some distinctive aspects encapsulated,” he said. 

The JLF was inaugurated by Rajasthan Art and Culture Minister BD Kalla and a book on the Bombay Serial Blasts 26/11, brought out by the Indian Express group, was released by Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot. Amant Goenka of the Express group publications recalled with concern the terror attacks on Parliament and Mumbai serial blasts. 

The programme of the 2019 edition of the festival is vast and kaleidoscopic, with themes ranging from the classics, war, espionage, intelligence, politics, environment and climate change, gender issues, management entrepreneurship, science and technology, along with border areas such as fiction, adapting screenplays, mythology, crime, history, cinema, art activism and psychological aftermath of migration, its producer Sanjoy K Roy said while welcoming the guests.