Biography:

Rajnish Khanna, M.Sc. Ph.D., is a Senior Investigator at Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford. Rajnish is the founder and CEO of i-Cultiver, Inc., Terre Local, and co-founder and Executive Director of “Urban Green Project”. He is a strategic biotechnology consultant applying multidisciplinary approaches for research and development. Known for empowering the industry through strategic partnerships with academic institutions, facilitating technology transfer into real world applications, and deploying advanced technologies at global scale for agro-eco projects. Rajnish is the host of TerreScience podcast/YouTube channel focused on soil and planetary health.

Abstract:
The rejection of some US-science books by the Texas Board of Education because of their presentation of climate change and evolution, as discussed in The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 17, 2023), is very disturbing and reminiscent to the struggle for science education in India, on which we want to comment. We document that “parochial nationalism” may be the major cause of the rejection of Charles Darwin’s principle of evolution in India. In addition, we argue that an understanding of light-driven carbon dioxide (CO2)-assimilation (i.e., oxygenic photosynthesis of green leaves) is of equal importance and show that an Indian scientist, Govindjee, contributed much of our current knowledge on photosynthesis, inclusive of net primary production of plants, algae plus cyanobacteria, and the evolution of this key process of the biosphere. Finally, we come back to the situation in Texas-USA, with reference to rising carbon dioxide (CO2)-levels, global greening, and climate change.