CSSP's Unit on Science and Technology Archival Records System (UNISTAR)

In contemporary times, it would perhaps not to be presumptuous to state that science and technology has overwhelmed our society in unprecedented ways. Science, whether as praxis influencing technologies or as cognitive maps to explain realities, is now considered as being central towards framing social, economic, political and historical processes. UNISTAR is being institutionalized so as to provide a systematic source of information and data of all sorts to aid teaching and research in the broad field of STSS. 

Six Basic Components of CSSP Archives 

1. POLICY PAPERS will encompass chronological documentation of the various committees/commission reports and policy resolutions for the entire twentieth century w.r.t. economic, industry, finance, parliament and other important bodies. UNISTAR will organise a section devoted to current information, documentation and data bases from ASEAN, OECD, UN agencies and international regimes in S&T and related bodies in intellectual property rights etc. 

2. INSTITUTIONAL PAPERS and annual reports pertaining to initial years of CSIR, DAE, ISRO, ICMR, ICAR etc. and a few unique science establishments like UDCT Bombay, TIFR Bombay, IACS, Kolkata etc. will be collected. 

3. PRIVATE PAPERS of both deceased and living policy makers and elite scientists such Homi Bhaba, M.N. Saha, S.S. Bhatnagar, C.V. Raman, among others, who have organized and lead the growth of science in India. 

4. ORAL ARCHIVE will tap the self expression of men of science who had a say in policy formulation, building S&T institutions and professionalisation of disciplines by documenting their retrospective views through personally recorded interviews. 

5. CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVES will deal with documentation of alternative policy literature generated by various contemporary science and technology movements, policies, events etc in India. 

6. PHOTO, AUDIO AND VIDEO ARCHIVES to preserve the sense of by-gone and current events. 

Location: UNISTAR is located in CSSP. 

JNU Advisory Committee: Prof. Aditya Mukherjee; Prof Bhagwan Singh Josh; Prof. Deepak Kumar; Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan, Prof V.V. Krishna, Dr Rohan D'Souza, Dean, SSS (Ex. Officio), Chairperson, CSSP (Ex. Officio).