Recognising the Roots: NID accorded status of "Institute of National Importance"

Recognising the Roots: Indian Cabinet approves status of an "Institute of National Importance" for the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.
Prof. M P Ranjan

Sand sculpture extending the buttress roots of the Big Tree in the Gira Gautam Square at NID Paldi in Ahmedabad created as part of the class experience of Media explorations by Textile Design students under the guidance of teacher Jayanthi Naik (J L Naik) last week. They must have had a premonition about the Indian Cabinets' forthcoming act of passing a resolution according the status of "Institute of National Importance" to the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad at the meeting held on 10 January 2013. See PIB News release here.

The National Institute of Design was set up in 1961 based on a report by Charles and Ray Eames called the India Report of 1958. In the past 50 years the Institute has had a remarkable journey of exploration and discovery that was informed by the spirit of the India report but the Government that had set it up with a great deal of vision  and enthusiasm in 1961 seemed to have been all but forgotten over the next 50 years with the Institute being managed by a small department within the Ministry of Industry while the other major national institutes such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of  Management were placed under the Ministry of Education which is now the Ministry of Human Resources and they were accorded a status of importance that NID was never given for over 50 years of its existance.

The return of the echo of the dramatic roots in the sand sculpture by Naik's students somehow reflects the Governments belated recognition of NID and its value system and the contributions that it has made and the critical role that it can make in the building of the nation in the years ahead which now becomes possible with this significant act of recognition. NID can become an equal partner in the journey of nation building in the years ahead along with the other streams of knowledge that are already recognised and well funded. We should not let this occasion slip into another bout of  extended amnesia since it is so easy to forget the contribution of design since most of it is intangible and hence cannot be measured by the yardsticks of science, technology or management and it needs to be sensed and felt long before the hard measurements begin to make sense. The dramatic roots of the Big Tree  at the Sarabhai plaza were covered up when the platform was built in their honour just as much of NID's educational experiments were undermined by the search for formal recognition from the educational systems that dominate India. NID went through the whole process of trying to get the status of a Deemed University in a mistaken level of enthusiasm that many of us had labelled "Doomed Univerity" since the search seemed to be for qualification and not competence and sensibilities that are so important and central to design action. I hope that the efforts to write the history of NID will look at these significant moments and efforts and contributions and not gloss over the shift to grades and marks (quantitative systems of evaluation) in search of recognition of a deep and stable educational system that was an experiment at NID (qualitative systems of evaluation) that needs to be cherished and perhaps used to inform all of higher education in India in the days ahead.

We need to ponder on those values and processes of education that NID had built and through decades of hard work in the face of great opposition from outside as well as within and this is something from which so many of its alumni have found substance and sustenance to face the challenges of a very hostile Indian landscape for the uncertain and the new that has been India of the past 50 years from our experience in the lack of recognition from both India Governments as well as from Industry. This is not surprising since we live in a very controlled economy even with all the bouts of liberalisation and design can only flourish when there is real competition and an open economy and India is now heading in that very direction and design  will be the core activity going forward from here.

Gautam Gira Square and the Big Tree from the Wood Workshop end. The extended roots were covered when the commemorative platform was built to celebrate the founder Chairman of NID
- http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Badminton%20Ball%20Tree.html -

What are those roots that have been covered or even lost at NID and in Indian design as a whole when design education was struggling to find its feet in the larger Indian eco-system? The gradautes  and alumni of the school must ponder about this and help articulate what may be taken forward and this is a call for such an articulation since we do need a new imagination for design education in india that can inform the next 50 years or more. These roots must be uncovered and revealed and from this uncovering we will reflect and build new knowledge that will help us navigate the future in the days ahead.

The Big Tree when I joined NID in 1969 and later in 2007 after the platform was built.

NID needs to take on the mantle of leadership that has been bestowed by this act of Government and build models for designerly thought and action across the 230 sectors of our economy and not remain restricted to the pandering to the needs of large corporate industry and their short term needs for car styling and graphics when the country needs serious design investments in urban mobility and public transportation, just to give one example where we need to shift our emphasis in real earnest. We need to enumerate such actions and extend these concerns across the 230 sectors of our economy in as many conferences and workshops that may be needed to reach out to stakeholders and build a new agenda for action in the days ahead. We need to invest in design  faculty and the young designers coming out of our schools so that they may serve the real clients, the people of India in addressing their needs with imagination and sensitivity as wel as design expertise and not remain happy with the Jugaad - patchwork quilt of poverty driven innovations for India - that seems to be celebrated by management gurus as the core capability that the world is talking about as the only major innovative ability of India today..

Prof M P Ranjan
Professor - Design  Chair, CEPT University, Ahmedabad
13 January 2013

Indian Institute of Crafts and Design: IICD, Jaipur: Looking back in 2008

IICD, Jaipur: Reflectiions on its inception and establishment as a sector focused design institute, perhaps a model for the 230 other sectors that need design in India today.

1: What is Craft: A model from the IICD Feasibility Report of 1993

The Rajasthan Government exhibited an unusual degree of imagination and vision when they commissioned the National Institute of Design in March 1991 to conduct a research project leading to the creation of a feasibility report for a new School of Crafts, as it was called then. The then Chief Secretary, Mr M L Mehta and the Commissioner of Industries Mr R S Sisodia were the high level team that spearheaded the Governments’ initiative and at the operational level it was the management of the RAJSICO and the Office of the Director of Industries that was given the responsibility of steering and managing the project as it went through the research, evaluation and proposal phase over the next two years. The feasibility report submitted by the NID team of J A Panchal and M P Ranjan was approved in April 1993 by the State Government and under the direct control of the RAJSICO it was decided to set up an instuitute at Jaipur as proposed in our report, the draft of which had been discussed at a well attended round-table and workshop that was held in February 1992. The feasibility report itself was based on a set of nine models that captured the contours of the domain that was to be influenced and led on to the products and by-products of the proposed institute. These models defined the term crafts as an economic development activity that was located in the cusp of core areas of employment in the rural sector that drew their opportunities from the major agricultural sector on the one side and the social and cultural activities on the other while the central focus had the crafts as an industry that employed the largest number of people after the agri-sector in India. Other models spelt out the linkages and constituents and the profile of programmes and activities. The schedule of education programmes as well as that of spaces led to an organizational structure that was developed with the assistance of faculty from the IRMA, Anand and the IIMA, Ahmedabad. These also envisaged the stages of creation of the institute and the ideal location for its establishment and the impact that it could have on the crafts sector as a whole. The last model enlisted the proposed outcomes. These nine models helped make visible the core ideas that were included in the text of the document and these were particularly significant since many of the stake-holders were not expected to read the full text of the document but could still get a birds-eye-view of the substantive proposals that were included in the report. From our experience this was a very effective strategy since most people had a clear understanding of the intentions of the institute if not the methods and means to realise the stated objectives.

2: Schedule of Programmes for the IICD from the Feasibility Report

The institute was commissioned in early 1994 and a Governing Council was constituted which included representatives from the Rajasthan Government under the Chairmanship of the Chief Secretary. The external members included the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, the Directors off NIFT and NID as well as some prominent master-crafts-persons and this composition demonstrated the seriousness with which the Government viewed the role of the institute at the very inception. The stated mission of the institute, which was accepted by the State Government, was to make an institute of national importance that would focus on the creation of knowledge and human resources for the benefit of the crafts sector using design as the prime driving principle. This was a visionary step at a time when all the resources that were being invested into the crafts sector were entirely in the nature of grants and aid that supported the training of craftsmen as well as support for crafts promotion activities such as market meets, museums and retail stores for the handicrafts sector. While doing our research we found that there was not a single institute or university department anywhere in the country that was mandated to develop knowledge resources for the crafts sector although NID and NIFT as well as some design programmes at the IIT’s had taken up this task on the basis of faculty interest at these institutes. It was therefore decided to make the creation of knowledge in design, technology and marketing as an area of focus and the creation of educated and capable “agents of change” as the mission for the proposed institute. This was easier said than done. While the mission was understood in its abstract statement the translation of these intentions into action was quite another ball game particularly since most people who had previously been involved in the crafts sector were steeped in their concern for the craftsmen and their present condition and the need for innovation and a shift of focus to these “agents of change” was often seen as another elitist endeavor that took the attention away from the plight of the craftsmen in the field. This mindset was perhaps the biggest stumbling block in the early years of setting up of the institute. The need for a new institute was not disputed and it was agreed that, I quote from the feasibility report – “ There is an urgent need for the creation of an institution of excellence that is charged with the mission of developing the crafts sector in an integrated manner. Design, as defined in the broadest possible sense, shall be the discipline used and nurtured by this institute to affect the envisaged development mission and to realize its objectives. The range of tasks and challenges, which such an institution would need to undertake, implies the use of information and knowledge-rich approach over and above the usually accepted component of skills. Only an institution operating at a level of excellence will be able to command the respect of and attract the best people from various fields to participate as faculty and staff in furthering and realizing its mission and objectives”. – Unquote.

3: Proposed Education Programmes for the IICD from the Feasibility Report

The State Government made a valiant effort to set up the institute and get it running while plans were afoot to find a location for its proposed building to commence the education programmes. A core faculty team was appointed in 1995 and the basic activities of curriculum building commenced soon thereafter. The institute was formally registered and a committee of teachers from NID and NIFT were given the task of developing the curriculum for the first Craft Design programme in the country. This task was completed in April 1997, which set the stage for the commencement of the first batch of design students at the Post Graduate level. In the intervening years the institute conducted several craft specific training programmes of three and six months duration as well as commissioned and undertook a number of craft documentation and design projects that were handled by the faculty as well as other resource persons from NIFT and NID on a sponsored project basis. This helped the institute commence a number of activities that could be handled in a collaborative mode even when its own staff and faculty strength were still at a nascent stage. The next year the faculty strength was stabilized with the induction of fresh members and the PG programmes were commenced from rented premises in Jaipur city. The first batch of students gave the faculty a realistic platform to develop a design curriculum that could address the needs of the crafts community across many material and technique categories as well as the huge number of locations in India where an enormous variety has been catalogued and studied. The challenges of the programme and the fledgling institute were many. However the spirit was one of exploration and discovery in which all members took great pride in participation and the journey was quite exciting for all participants. I was involved directly for two years as an acting director in the years leading up to the first programme at the request of the Government and NID made this possible by offering my services on a part time basis in a project format that was handled under the Outreach Programmes of NID. However this arrangement was not continued and the NID involvement got disconnected due to political uneasiness that seemed to emerge from the two roles played by an NID faculty, one as a director of a new institute while continuing to teach and work at NID.

4: Expected Products from the IICD as expressed in the Feasibility Report

The State Government appointed a full time director with administrative authority and the institute expanded its programmes and activities over the next few years. However it was felt that the massive role that was set for the institute could only be achieved if the organization had the autonomy and the requisite funds without being burdened by the Governmental mode of functioning although in the intervening years a new campus had been established and a number of batches had graduated successfully. Last year the State Government decided to transform the management style of the institute by inducting an industry partner to fund and manage that activities in a flexible and effective manner while the ownership of the instutute remained with the Government. A call for partners culminated in the selection of the Ambuja Education Foundation being co-opted as the private sector partner with Suresh Neotia as the Chairman of a new Governing Council which was established with five nominees each from – the Government, the partner and from a pool of independent expert members. This Governing Council has now taken charge and a new director, Prof Sangita Shroff a graduate of NID and a former faculty of NIFT, has been appointed to lead the institute on a planned programme of growth and experimentation as envisaged in the feasibility report.

5: Handmade in India – Evidence of a living tradition that can support the Creative Economy of India

Read more about the Handmade in India book here
The crafts of India is indeed an ocean of opportunity and with the anticipated evolution of the creative economy we see a new role for the crafts based producers in becoming a vibrant entrepreneurial pool of resources that can help transform the rural and urban employment settings by creating value added opportunities that can help create wealth and sustainable livelihoods for a huge population of skilled people in the country. The institute will need to scale up and expand its activities in research and knowledge creation tasks so that the needs of this creative economy can be supported by the products of the institute which would be both in the form of trained human resources as well as design, technology and market strategies that would be innovated as part of the research driven agenda in the years ahead.

Download Feasibility Report as pdf file 386 kb
Link to the IICD website here

10 months of Design for India: Google Analytics view

Ten months of visitors on the Design for India blog: Google Analytics view

It is interesting to be able to look back and see how the blog has been used, something that is difficult if not impossible to do with print based publications. We write papers and books with the hope that someone would read them but we would never really know. However with the blog space the scene is quite different, we get instant feedback, and in many cases actual contact with the readers.

So looking back over the past 10 months of blog activity using the Google Analytics tool has shown an interesting pattern of visits, visitors and interest areas which is useful feedback for the author.

In the past ten months the activity to the blog has been steady with a few peaks but otherwise a steady stream each day. Globally we now have had over 17,000 visits from 12,000 visitors from 116 countries and 1800 cities and from India we have had 9900 visits from 76 cities, with the metros leading the pack. It is gratifying to see as many as 30,000 page views over this period. This still makes me wonder why the penetration of design ideas in India still very low indeed and we will certainly need to devellop strategies to reach a wider audience here in India. The National Design Policy should perhaps focus on broadening the base for design use in India and not just restrict its reach to the metros and a few big cities. The real impact will be seen only when the use of design reaches the masses across India and in as many as 230 sectors of our economy

The Mission Statement posted on 14th July 2007 is quoted below

"Design is a powerful force that shapes culture and it is a professional activity that is beneficial for both community and business alike. This blog is for all those who are interested in exploring these wider manifestations of design as a critical human activity and would like to shape its application across all human cultural and economic activities. Design uses all of human knowledge and is informed by the deep sensibilities developed through skillful and playful exploration of nature and the human spirit. It is a responsible activity that is driven by value systems of culture and society which are beneficial for sustainable and equitable existance of the planet earth and its inhabitants. Design is an intentional activity that generates value and in its processes it uses the creative potential of the actors to build a better future for all. This blog primarily focuses on issues and concerns in India but would be open to cooperate and engage with all other like minded groups in achieving the larger objectives of the blog."

While the focus is on the Indian dimension we are eager to discuss all other global development perspectives that may have a bearing on the promotion, support and use of design in the Indian context. Both this blog and the discussion list will be coordinated to facilitate easy archiving and dissemination of the posts as we go forward with our efforts to meet the objectives of this blog.

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed

Image: A page from the booklet "Design for Services" launched by SEE Design Network of Design Wales, Cardiff. Full pdf files can be downloaded from the links below.

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed

Service Design is an emerging discipline that lies between the various fields of Design and Management. It is the cusp of both these major disciplines, which in India have rarely met or exchanged expertise in an educational setting. Design schools do not teach management in depth nor do management schools teach about design, leave alone design management. We have thousands of management schools in India when the pressing need is for the creation of experts who can innovate great services across a huge number of sectors of our economy. In my view design is needed critically in as many as 230 sectors of our economy and I have written about these in the past.

Across the world many management schools have started embracing design and innovation as a core offering to their students and in this the charge is led by the Rotmans School of Management, Toronto and a less known school in Scandinavia called the KaosPilot, both of which have been covered in previous posts on this blog. In the 80’s the London School of Business had produced a book on Design Management and at both the Stanford University, USA and the University of Industrial Arts, Helsinki, there have been concerted efforts to bring together Design, Technology and Management through a planned series of projects that bring together faculty and students from all these disciplines in a transdisciplinary format. The Design Council, London had spearheaded an initiative called RED where a series of innovative design and management exchanges had led to the development of some very interesting new services, all designed by keeping users in mind. The Design Wales too has been working with SME’s and local businesses to assist them to refine their service offerings and their booklet on service design is a very refined offering that can be downloaded as a pdf file. (see link below)

Several unusual experiments have been taking place in this space and the work done at the Mayo Clinic, USA is one that stands out in using the IDEO methodology to improve the service offerings of the medical establishment and their hospital chain, which has been covered in an earlier post on this blog. This year the KaosPilot school from Sweden has deputed 35 of their students to spend their “Outpost” session of three months in the field at Mumbai, and they are in the city till the end of May 2008 to explore the creation of new and compelling services that can build local entrepreneurship in a number of areas of service offerings from transportation to health systems. The Welllingker School of Management in Mumbai has started a masters programme in Design Management and NID Ahmedabad has a programme on offer called Strategic Design Management, but these are very little for a huge country like India and many of the other management schools should consider offering such programmes if we are to make headway in improving our services with the use of design and innovation, all managed by expert hands that are trained to do the job. The National Design Policy must take this into account when we try and take design forward in India.

There are many online resources that provide insights into service design and its emerging boundaries and some of these are listed below for immediate access:

1. Design Council, UK: Service Design

2. Rotmans School of Management, Toronto: Integrative Thinking

3. KaosPilot, Denmark: Design of New Businesses

4. Service Design: Wikipedia: Definition and links

5. Service Design Research: Rich Collection of Papers

6. ServiceDesign.org: Resources hosted by live/work UK

7. Design Wales, Cardiff: SEE Design Journals

8. SEE Design, Design Wales, Cardiff: Service Design booklet Download pdf files links: Part 1: Part 2:

9. Design Management Institute

10. Domus Academy - Business Design Department

Rainwater Harvesting: Furaat Systems Design addresses many levels

Furaat Systems addresses many levels of design in Rainwater Harvesting

Image: Poster from Furaat Earth Pvt Ltd showing the systems overview
Science is the search for knowledge that we all depend upon to tell us how nature works and it is also the vehicle through which this knowledge is refined and tested through a process of hypothesis creation and peer evaluation. Technology on the other hand includes the methods, procedures and tools employed to use this knowledge into shaping dependable and predictable results. However it is rarely understood that generic design which is a natural human activity usually precedes both these stages in the creation of imaginative new products and solutions which may be at first intuitively and creatively apprehended into a workable manifestation and then refined by a process of evolution through multiple cycles as in the case of our crafts and numerous traditional applications. In the case of water harvesting systems in India we have a long tradition of applications that have been evolved through the fertile use of local ingenuity and hard earned insights over centuries of evolution and refinement.

Modern design on the other hand contributes to both knowledge creation as well as in helping in the application of existing knowledge in systematic ways to create compelling new solutions that include the multiple dimensions of economic, technological, sociological as well as the aesthetic besides addressing the functional and emotional needs of the user and helps meet the requirements of the task at hand in an elegant manner. This multidisciplinary quality of synthesis is unique to design innovation since it is a framework that enables each contributing specialization and the knowledge held therein to be brought into a particular configuration that opens the huge potential and inherent value in a manner that it can be harvested by a number of stakeholders in a manner intended by the collaborators. Design as we know it today is therefore a negotiated space and an expert procedure that helps unlock the value potential that is found locked within the particular situation. This unfolding has been the subject of much recent research by world design thought leaders as seen in their books such as Tomas Maldonado, Nigel Cross, Harold Nelson, Bryan Lawson, Klaus Krippendorff, Peter Downton, Roger Martin, Don Norman and others who have written books on the subject dealing with design theory and action. Many of them are members of the Design Research Society, which is composed of members who work in the area of design research and who have contributed to shaping the field in recent times through their writing on the subject. I too have many papers on design theory which try to explain the field and these can be downloaded from my website. In this particular post I am looking at how design has helped unfold value in the specific area of rainwater harvesting system and I will expand on this a bit later. In future posts I wish to look at many other fields where the use of design has made a huge difference and these too will hopefully help us see how design can be used across fields, and in my considered view India needs this kind of design action across 230 sectors of our economy.

Many places in Western India, particularly in Gujarat and Rajasthan there are age old traditions of water harvesting that include both the significant forms in which this art is performed across the region. The balancing of the underground aquifers through the strategic location of small ponds and lakes near a village has served our villages well over the years in helping the people manage their water resources for a year round availability. However with a greater dependence on ground water utilization by pumping in both our rural as well as urban locations we have increasingly seen the water table receding year on year till we reach a crisis point of no return. Many of our regions still receive good precipitation during the monsoon season but due to rapid drain-offs from the catchment areas into the storm drains and rivers we see very little of this water being recharged into the underground aquifers since even the old lakes have now been filled up in the creeping habit of urbanization. Cities like Delhi and Chennai have been facing an acute shortage of drinking water and this crisis is being experienced in many other parts of India as well. The traditional wisdom of holding the rain water run off in shallow ponds near the village seems to be replaced by a new fangled dependence on the deep bore pump and the imbalance of the situation is now showing up in the water shortages in the near term and in climate change at the macro level. Sensitive activists have raised this issue in a number of public for a and some have gone further to use documentation and scientific arguments to show us the consequences of our continued use of ground water resources while not addressing the need for recharge both artificially as well as in the natural way as far as possible.

Great examples of traditional water harvesting systems exist all over Gujarat and Rajasthan. The best known and celebrated examples are the Step Wells of Gujarat in Patan and Adalaj near Ahmedabad. In Ahmedabad city, houses in the traditional Polls had used the underground tanks to hold clean rainwater for use through the year. Most traditional houses in the Polls were equipped with such a well-designed system of copper pipes and dark underground sumps sufficiently large to hold a full year’s rainwater supply for drinking needs. Gandhi’s house in Porbunder is a specific example of this kind of rainwater harvesting that was practiced in the Gujarat region. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi showed leadership in the awareness building activity through their book on traditional water harvesting systems called “Dying Wisdom: Rise, Fall and Potential of India’s Traditional Water Harvesting Systems” that was published in 1997 by Anil Agarwal. The CSE has sustained its efforts at this awareness and legislation provoking efforts and studies over the years. As a result, today we can see many parts of India have new laws in place that make it mandatory to implement water harvesting systems in all new constructions and in some cases even in existing buildings. The CSE has published a “Water Harvesting Manual” with case studies from Delhi that provides guidelines for public action. However the creation of guidelines and principle diagrams to manage the flow of rainwater from rooftops and catchment areas without contamination into filter beds and then on to the storage or recharge systems is not sufficient to make it happen in a functional and a high quality manner in the real world. Each site needs to be planned and designed to meet the volume of run off as well as the storage or recharge capacity that the system should address. Alternately this leaves a space for several design opportunities for the creation of new products and services that can be offered in a professional manner by an entrepreneurial intervention. It is in the creation of such dependable and efficient as well as elegant systems does design come into play and this can demonstrate the value that is inherent on the situation, much of which is not easily visible to the eye of the perceiver.

Image: Furaat System under installation by two persons team.
It is one such offering that has been made by the Furaat Water Harvesting system that has been designed for the Ahmedabad based company by an NID graduate of Product Design, Dinesh Sharma. The company, Furaat Earth Pvt Ltd, was set up by the entrepreneur brothers Habil and Yusuf Attarwala with the intention of reaching action on the ground with a small investment rather than just talking about the need for awareness and local action. In the last two years over 400 installations have been achieved and this year has seen a growth in both acceptance and in business with over 500 installations being considered, each costing approximately Rs 30,000 and their message is being heard due to the value that they bring by the use of their successful modular design. The Furaat system can be used for both kinds of applications, that is, storage type or ground water recharge type of application. In the first case the system on offer can form the first stage of the collection and filtration process while a variety of storage types can be used downstream, and in the second case the modular units can be installed in a variety of capacities to recharge deep ground water reservoirs using deep bore wells as the preferred route for the ground water recharge process. While there are so many traditional and scientifically developed systems why are we looking at one that is developed by an industrial designer using the principles of design? This will become clear when we compare the features as well as performance across a number of parameters at the same time and see which ones stand the test of the harsh reality check that is done in the marketplace without subsidies of any kind.

Image: Details of the Furaat Rainwater Harvesting System
The product will have to meet customer requirements across these multiple attributes if it is to become successful in the marketplace. It has to be cost effective and this is achieved by the modular construction that is on offer. Two key components are used in the product – an octagonal horizontal component and a rectangular vertical component – each with a simple locator detail that uses spherical glass beads in a patented configuration to lock the components in place. These are made in high quality concrete castings with precision and durability and in the long run these offer reuse and recycling possibilities in case the location is to be changed in the future due changes in the underground water table characteristics or in new structures on the surface as the site is developed. This is a hidden feature that protects the investment and also significant is the ease with which the well components can be assembled, maintained and cleaned after a few monsoons. All water handling accessories too are made of industrial grade metals of high quality that provides durability, performance and filtration standards that are extremely high and the sand and gravel beds at the first and the last stage too can be cleaned with ease since the design affords easy access as it is like a step-well with the dimensions matched to human proportions for lifting, access and climbing as well as being secure in the quality of filter performance that is guaranteed by the company. The pdf file available at their website gives a poster showing areas of application and more details of the construction and the features can be downloaded from their site here. The modular construction gives the user and the planner flexibility in making the particular unit to suit the needs of the site condition as well as the available budget since a one level, two level or three level or even a multi-level unit can be made with the same basic components in a very short time. Installation can be completed in less than a day by one or two semi-skilled masons without the use of hoists or cranes to erect the well components. Ground water recharge if done carelessly can be quite damaging for the aquifer since it is easy to use artificial recharge to help introduce contaminants and surface pollution into an aquifer if the filtration process is carelessly handled.

Image: Postcards designed to reach the message of rainwater harvesting to school children
Water is serious commodity that needs great care and attention and we need a variety of systems that can take care of local variants from the point of view of precipitation, terrain, geological attributes as well as population stress and other factors. Design can play a great role in examining and building imaginative solutions that are economic, appropriate and culturally suitable for the particular location. John Thackara in his recent book review has strongly recommended a book on water management titled “Dam Nation: Dispatches From the Water Underground” by Editors Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, July Oskar Cole , Laura Allen, and Illustrator Annie Danger. This brings up another point for us since design need not end with the product in need but can extend to the graphic and systems devices and methods that are used to promote and build awareness about these systems in our wider population. Here the communications too could be designed and the Furaat team has produced posters, flash cards and other communications that can help bring awareness to local schools as well as to parents through their children so that eventually the action on the ground is both significant and effective. Water and its effective management is definitely one major sector that can benefit from design thought and action I would like to see that the Government to include it in the National Design Policy initiatives and just like this one neglected sector (from a design opportunity perspective) we have another 230 sectors that too need urgent public funding and design attention. John Thackara has called for a movement to be put in place to support "collaborative innovation in all public investment in the UK and we can certainly benefit if we can bring these actions to India across our vast landscape with its huge diversity of regional, climatic, biotic, cultural and geological variables that renders central planning so ineffective. The National Design Policy could take a leaf out of the DOTT07 initiatives of the Design Council UK and now the DOTT07 Manual is available online in part as a digital file and as a print product it is available at cost.

Rockytoys as a Model: The Mini Wheeler Series

Rockytoys Experience: The Mini Wheeler Series and beyond
Image: Mini Wheeler series designed for Rockytoys in 1975 using spindle moulder profiles for mass production.
The Dinky Toy™ range and the Matchbox™ range were an all time favorite at our shop ever since I first saw the little cars in the late 50’s during our frequent visits to our shop, Rockytoys on General Patters Road. Die cast in zinc with a great attention to detail, each car was a fine replica of the one that the toy represented. Kids and their parents seemed to love these and those who could afford them had large collections and they were used for imaginative play. As little children, my brother and I had a large collection of these Dinky Toy cars, thanks to our fathers liberal position about our access to these toys when we visited the shop, and this extended as well to the Meccano™ construction kits that brought us hours of fun and productive labour in building and dismantling wonderful structures at our home in Guindy in Madras. My father was an avid collector of old toy prototypes and on one of his visits to Calcutta he came back with an enormous set of Hornby™ Model Railway engines, wagons and a huge supply of 0 gauge tracks. It was enormous and we could set up tracks all over our long bedroom at our old house at Guindy and it has stations, level crossing and changing tracks, all made in tinplate construction that was precise and robust in construction. Two clock-work engines and two complete sets of passenger and goods wagons came with the set. He has also obtained a number of catalogues of toy company Tri-ang™, and we spent several hours each day pouring over these books while playing with what we had at hand.

This experience must have been in the back of my mind when I decided to develop a range of little cars for production in our factory using wood as the primary material. I remembered having seen an old book in my fathers collection that showed the creation of the Noah’s Ark and all the animals using a cart-wheel type construction that was then turned on a lathe in the profile of each animal and the animal shape was revealed when the “cart-wheel” was eventually sliced radialy into narrow slices such that the cross section was the shape of the animal concerned. These slices were then whittled and shaped to make a range of realistic animal shapes which could then be included in the Noah’s Ark toy. Each lathe turned “cart-wheel” would produce a large number of identical animals, very clever indeed.

Image: Detail of the BUG, DIX and other three-letter named car toys made using moulded wood profiles in stained wood finish.
Inspired by this process I developed a range of spindle-moulded car shapes using a small number of cutter blades since there was little investment funds available to make these cutters. I mixed an d matched the cutters for the front and back of the cars and thereby produced a range that I called the Mini-Wheeler series”, all an extension of the same design strategy that had started with the making of the Big Wheeler and Small Wheeler range, that of using one size of wheel and wheel assembly to produce a range of new offerings. I used a uniform size of drill holes to suggest windows and the form was an extreme simplification but the message was clear. Each car and train set were made using a limited number of cutters and the intention was to offer these in graphic packaging that had large typography and the profile of the car on the outside of the box which was to be printed using the screen printing technique since once again small scale production would be used to establish the product and if they turned successful theses could be scaled up using other manufacturing techniques. These toys never reached large scale production that I had intended but several hundred sets were produced and sold in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The wheels were turned using rosewood stock that had come from a bulk purchase of root segments from a forest auction that my father had participated in during the 60’s and these were ideal for making the wheels since the material was rock hard and the small components were not too difficult to manage from this stock. The body was made using white cedar and another wood called “Manja Kadamba”, which was a local hardwood that was fine grained and white in colour. I used dye colours to shade the finished blocks and no painted version was offered for this range since the stained and natural versions were found acceptable in the market.

Image: Mini-Wheeler Train set and the range of cars using the spindle moulding process.
Much later when I had returned to NID I developed another toy which was prototyped but never produced which I called the “Acrobats” which was based on the spindle moulded dolls, boy and girl shapes that could be stacked in a variety of ways, being modular in dimension, and these would form a human pyramid when stacked by the child like in the “Janmashtami” function of “Matka Phod” that is very popular in Bombay and all over Maharashtra State. However, design is an investment, and it can be encashed at anytime if the conditions for that particular offering are dusted out from the shelf and offered to the market in an acceptable form and price. These toys can have a life of their own once again and I do hope that some young enthusiast will revive some of these as modern versions and reach these to children who need them for play and learning. Crafts communities in India and elsewhere could use these design offerings and the process of innovation that these represent to kick-start entrepreneurship in their own locations and offer some of these toys to the local markets in a sustainable manner. This form of innovation can be a great driver of the economy but it is still not understood in India for what it truly is. One year after the launch of the National Design Policy in India last February, the Finance Minister today in his 2008 Budget speech made no mention of any special allocation for Design Promotion like Korea has done or Design Support like the Wales model both much needed in India today, just as in the last year the only mention about design was at the tail end of his speech when the service tax on design services was announced for the first time in Parliament. I wonder when design, as we understand it today, will be recognized in India for what it can really do in the core areas of our economy and society and not just for the superficial qualities that are those dealing with the aesthetic quality of products, which is perhaps well understood, but unfortunately these are equated to luxury products and services and not for the core applications across 230 sectors of our economy as I have been arguing here on this blog.

TATA Nano and Design Education Challenges for India

Image: NID students and faculty at the Auto Expo 2008 send back images of TATA Nano.
The TATA Nano is sexy and cheap; a potent combination when taken to market and that is exactly what Ratan Tata has done. Consumers and designers alike are enamored by the offering. Many designers on the DesignIndia list have chosen to praise Ratan Tata for achieving the price sensitive Nano which was unveiled at the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi. I too admire the achievement in a qualified sort of way, particularly in automotive design, engineering and marketing and Ratan Tata has taken a step ahead of the Japanese car makers in offering a competitive price point with quality and having met the existing benchmarks for cars of this kind. The will surely be a different place from now on.

However I am afraid that at another level this will contribute to the growing mess that is now our Indian city and I would hold Ratan Tata just as responsible for that since he is among India's business leaders who has the means to make a real difference by working at the systems level and in influencing government to act responsibly as well. In the emerging world of Web 2.0 all of us are responsible and the clear cut separation of responsibilities that have been carved out for each in the era of industrial specialization, the separation of church and administration, and later the separation of industry and governance, have all but blurred to give us an online community that responds in an online democracy in real time responses. The theories of economics from the industrial era all hold that the consumer and market responses will somehow shape the events that flow in the free-market but I have some counter arguments for that and we are at a stage when we need to rethink our macro-economic theories and bring in innovation and design into the equation which is not being done nor has it been done at anytime in the history of man. Innovations were seen as individual pursuits or as business activities of individual companies that would need to be therefore protected by law so that future inventions could be encouraged in society. This may be so in the pre-internet era of poor communication but today we need a new paradigm and the open-source movement and the creative commons are helping rewrite the way innovations happen in our society but business still goes on as usual and countries compete, companies compete and individuals compete as if this is the only way forward for society since we are all victims of the Malthusian beliefs and the theory that he had proposed and we are not able to operate at any other level of imagination. I believe that we are entering an era of massive cooperation where our notions of competition will be challenged and will need to be replaced by new attitudes that foster a dialogue between the players and a whole new way of creating our future.

We need to explore ways in which we can get business leaders and politicians from all parts of India to listen to some of our dreams as well and the design vision can then be a driving force for the shaping of tomorrow’s cities. I have been working in bamboo for many years and we have several break-through innovations that promise to give a good future for our rural folks and we have numerous failures from which we have learned a lot about the material as well as about human behavior. Design for social good is a mission that can be achieved but too little is being invested into that direction because we do not have faith in that direction since it is not yet a measurable offering as science, technology and market offerings are in labs, tests and the market with a look at the bottom-line only. Companies such as Infosys are among the most respected ones in India, in my personal view, since they have exhibited extremely high ethical standards in all their operations but several other large companies in India cannot be included in their league of ethical operation even when the government itself is moving onto a regime of extreme transparency with the new Right to Information Act. Design is an act of faith and a matter of judgment. Faith by itself is not a bad thing if we can support it with insights drawn from experience in the real world and from our imagination of what can be achieved and what needs to be achieved. Blind faith, on the other hand, is to be feared since it fosters fundamentalism and extremism as a reaction. However, design thought comes in the first category, faith based on experiential insights and on informed intentions but it can never be subject of reason unlike science and technology. Therefore design looses out on every engagement that requires proof before it is accepted and in India huge investments are made in Science-Technology schemes while design has been left out and this cannot be the responsibility of the design community alone, especially since design can indeed offer real solutions if only we tried. Design good cannot be proved but it can be sensed and modeled or simulated and tested through that route, if only the necessary investments are made in that direction and when sufficient time is given to create the models that could be appreciated and apprehended first conceptually and then in more rigorous ways.

Image: NID stall at the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi.
I have moved some distance in my journey in understanding design and I am now convinced that we need to take our arguments to the business and government without being apologetic in any way. Design is complex and while I can admire the engineering achievement of Ratan Tata and his team I bemoan the huge catastrophe that this will portend for all of our society and us in the days ahead. I have been thinking about the directions that we have chosen to take in our educational ventures and sometimes I feel that we need to stop and think a bit about both direction and speed. While a hyper-fast "mind to market strategy" may be a desirable activity for business success it could also be a sure sign of disaster for society if the direction of movement is wrong for the context in which it is applied. Speed and efficiency need to be tempered with relevance and direction that is desirable if we are to benefit from the speed and efficiency that is on offer by raising the bar and coordinating our efforts. I would have liked to see some imaginative public transport solutions rather than just some more sleek automobiles being exhibited at the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi. Perhaps we need to take systems design more seriously and get all our disciplines to work together in the final years to show India just what can be done by a determined young team of designers, all moving in the desirable direction. This direction should come from our analysis of the Eames challenge that he had set in 1958, "what qualities does India and Indians consider to make a good life?"

The TATA Nano has raised many questions which need to be answered in this context and as the premier National Institute of Design we are just as responsible for our actions as is Mr. Ratan Tata as the senior Industrialist and businessman of India in the 21st century. I do hope that these matters are discussed at the Institute and in the design community in India since design at the systems level, which is being ignored by both industry and government for over fifty years now, since the Eames India Report was written and which led to the establishment of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, needs to be reexamined in the light of our current needs and aspirations as well as in the context of global warming and social conflicts of the day, for us to find direction forward from here.

There has been much debate about the Nano in the DesignIndia forum and the note by Sagarmoy Paul that Arun Gupta has so kindly shared with all of us at NID and it is just one such debate that is in progress there which can have a wider participation within design schools across the country.

Image: City Tablet – A concept scenario for socially accessible transportation for our cities by NID student Varsha Mehta in the DCC class.

Image: Water Focus – A concept scenario of water based alternate transport for Indian cities by NID student Vinay Jois.
I would like to share here two design opportunity visualizations that were prepared by two of our students in the last semester as part of their Design Concepts and Concerns course at NID. They were looking at mobility options in the city and came up with scenario visualisations based on the insights that they had garnered in their group brainstorming and research in this very short foundation course in design. I propose that such socially relevant challenges be taken up at the systems level in senior years in our design schools and that these be funded and supported by our industry and government agencies who are looking at the whole area of transport design in India. Such assignments could be conducted in a collaborative space that is carved out from a new partnership between design, engineering and management schools in the same city and there may be other possibilities to get several multi-disciplinary teams together, if there is a will to do so.

Will the design community pursue the government and industry to make this happen? I do hope so for the good of all of us. Perhaps it is also time to explore new theories of economics that is informed by the possible use of disruptive innovation as a way forward not just as a market driven mechanism of competition between nations, companies and individuals in the WTO framework but a new order that is based on open-source ideology of cooperation and community based innovation particularly for innovations of objects, services and infrastructure for public and social good. This can only happen if we are able to take the understanding of design and layer it with a new theory economics and politics of innovation that can be set in motion in a cooperative framework going forward. Design schools have a role to play in shaping these frameworks and much of the initial explorations that are needed by society can happen within the classrooms of the future and these in turn will help us build scenarios that will be moderated by the community to actually build a desirable future for all of us.

First National Conference on Geovisualisation: Welcome Address by Prof. M P Ranjan

Image: Screenshot of village study done by NID students as part of the Data Visualisation course to explore applications for geovisualisationWelcome Address delivered to the 1st National Conference on GeoVisualisation held at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad on 28th to 30th November 2007. This was co-sponsored by The NRDMS (DST) Government of India, New Delhi and the NID, Ahmedbad.

Prof. M P Ranjan
Chairman, Geovisualisation Task Group
and
Faculty of Design, National Institute of Design

Welcome to NID and this is a good time to raise some questions as well as to try and provide some answers.

I have four key questions and a host of associated answers. So let me begin with my Welcome address by addressing these one by one.

1. Why GeoVisualisation? What is it anyway?
What are the Issues and opportunities? What are the domains of application? In my personal agenda is another big question, which is, how do we make complex data dealing with geographic spatial implications visible and usable to the ordinary citizen in India.

We stand on a great tradition of cartography in India. A few years ago NID was requested by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India to work with the Office of the Survey of India to develop an exhibition to celebrate the Great Arc project which was the first ever mapping of a part of the globe and this had happened in India some 200 years ago. Since then India has been at the forefront of cartographic traditions and now it is time to take leadership again through excellence in Geovisualisation. In this we would be happy to partner with the NRDMS-DST who have sponsored this event as well as reflect on the work done in Ahmedabad by ISRO and many other organizations that has set a platform for this new field of Geovisualisation to take root in India with a strong partnership between Design and science and technology initiatives.

2. Why Design?
Design is now being defined as a much broader field that takes intentions to the creation of value to society and ecology through a process of thoughts and actions. Design deals with products and applications and it has a user focus while the dominant ideology is having a technology focus especially in the fields of application that we are dealing with in the areas of geovisualisation.
Through design we intend to address the needs of many sectors including education, development, planning, management and most critical of all in the induction of innovation into this sector and all the potential applications so that we can unfold huge value in the process of both creation as well as delivery.

3. Why this Conference?
The geovisualisation agenda can only be addressed by adopting a multi-disciplinary context as a given condition for moving forward since so many disparate skill sets would need to be integrated and this is an attempt to bring all these skill sets to a common platform to address our complex needs and opportunities. This is also an attempt to bring together the multiple knowledge domains of geography, cartography, computation, visualization and design in the service of real challenges that call for the use of geospatial data and representation for the core tasks of local planning as well as in decision support systems in a number of domains of application. We also need to build awareness, commitment and the linkages that are necessary to make the whole operation to be useful to the people at large in many parts of the country as well as in many walks of life and at many levels, local and national.

4. Why at NID?
The Institutional objectives of NID has taken us down a path of discovery and in recent years NID has set up a number of new initiatives that deal with technology design fusion that has culminated in the setting up of new programmes and disciplines and the setting up of two new campuses in Gandhinagar and at Bangalore. Both these initiatives are to supplement the work that has been done over the years at the Paldi campus dealing with promoting design as a core ability in a huge number of sectors of our economy, in my estimate, about 230 sectors that are in critical need of that discipline. NID has proposed the setting up of a Centre for Geovisualisation to provide a platform for research and design explorations in the various sectors of application of geovisualisation which would need a strong interface with the already developed areas of science and technology with particular emphasis in making these applications user friendly by addressing opportunities in usability and accessibility by those who need it the most. We hope to use this conference to help build the agenda for research and education to be conducted by the proposed centre and I would call on the participants to provide directions and suggestions for the NID team to take forward in the days ahead. We are also interested in showing through our interest and actions that the various investments in science, technology and management need to be supplemented by investments and the use of design in this very critical new field and that this would influence other such initiatives for partnership across disciplines in the days ahead.

Welcome to NID and to Ahmedabad. I would, like to take this opportunity to welcome all the speakers and delegates, students and experts to NID as well as to compliment the NID and DST teams that have done the background work to make this happen. I would particularly mention Dr Bibuda Baral and Rupesh Vyas of NID and Dr D Dutta of NRDMS, DST, Government of India and to their teams for their sustained efforts to help realize this event. I would also take this opportunity to thank the Geovisualisation Task Force team as the Chairman of the Committee for their active support in leading the deliberations that have culminated in the launch of the first National Conference on Geovisualisation and for setting in motion a chain of events that will be of huge significance in the years ahead. I will be speaking later on the theme of usability and in my presentation I will share my views on areas of application and on the design opportunities that I see for the read ahead in the field of Geovisualisation in India.

World Usability Day at Bangalore: Lecture on Social Equity and Design

Towards an Accessible World: Opportunities for Designers was the title for my lecture. This image is part of the model prepared by my students who as part of the Data Visualisation course at Gandhinagar Campus visited one village called Sahpur in Gandhinagar to look at design opportunities in a typical Indian Village. Looking at the particular as part of usability was my focus in my lecture. rather than talking about the Target Audience we need to look at the needs and aspirations of Meena and Mohan in the Indian context.

The World Usabality Day is a concept driven by volunteers across the world and by industry visionaries who have found value in supporting the event with corporate sponsorship. This year I was invited to speak at the mini conference at the National Institiute of Advanced Science (NIAS) auditorium which is located at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. From 3.00 pm to 7.30 pm on a Monday evening when Bangalore is hard at work dealing with the worlds information technology opportunities about 200 or more IT professionals from some of the leading national and multinational companies managed to get away to look at usability and design in critical areas of our lives. Braving the traffic and driving all the way across Bangalore they stayed till the end of the show only to spend the next hour or two to get back home after an eventful evening. The lectures were stimulating and informative and the crash workshop in envisioning usable new services and product concepts in three areas of need that was on the minds of the organizers, all volunteer IT professionals working in the usability space.

The enthusiasm and commitment that they brought to the workshop session was quite amazing. After some lead lectures by Dr. Girish Prabhu, a case study of a new internet access computer developed by Intel, Prof M P Ranjan speaking on design opportunities that can bring social equity to Indian villages and the lead organizer Sarit Arora of Human Factors, Bangalore sharing a usability test on the new Indian Railways ticket booking site the conference broke up into assigned teams to explore the design challenges. Three broad areas included services for the elderly, a low cost cell phone and a health information system for Indian villages. Each challenge zone had three teams and the format for innovation was intense and got all the creative juices flowing for a few action filled minutes of discussion, ideation and modeling. The half hour extended to another quarter and the five jury members went around reviewing one group at a time, each in a two minute show and tell format, very exciting.

This exciting interlude was followed by two more lectures and case presentations. One by Dr Reynold Washington and his IT colleague H Gururaj on the health care information system that he had helped develop for sex workers in Karnataka and Maharashtra and the insights that were gleaned from this pilot study which is now being rolled out in an improved format. The second was by Sean Olin Blagsvedt from babajobs.com sharing the prototype services that they had developed for converting the informal networks that all of us use to get domestic assistances and their efforts to design and build it as a viable business proposition. The challenges in these two case studies revealed the huge opportunity that existed in India at the non industrial sectors for IT services and value added web services that could address latent needs that have remained outside the ambit of organized business at the bottom of the pyramid.

Dr Prabhu reflected on why the Intel efforts had failed in India although they had used the best of class problem solving techniques in developing the product and the technology for the village based internet kiosk project. I saw that they had focused on the technology. Battery backup, heat tolerance and dust resistant casing and all the other front end and back end systems that should make the system work, but it failed, why? The focus seemed to be on making a robust and low cost solution but I did not hear what the village folks were supposed to do with the whole offering and it seems to me that this may have been the key to the failure of the whole effort, focus on technology and economy and missing the user and their particular condition in the location. The effort to evolve a general solution may have led to the local opportunity being missed and the product failed. There may be other reasons which we will only know if we look deeply It is ironic that the case was presented at a conference on usability when the core reason for the failure was caused by a lack of it.

Sarit Arora presented the Indian Railway ticket booking system and the tests showed a series of gross failures in addressing usability issues in the web based system and the interface. The home page had no picture of a train as one would expect and the user testing protocols showed a whole lot of missed opportunities and missed cues to help users move forward to achieve their objective of booking a ticket. My own assessment was that the case showed a stark failure of design from first principles which cannot be set right by usability testing. However most administrators and corporations would invest in usability testing of a poor solution rather than invest in a good design solution in the first place, a common problem that we see all the time in India. With huge investments being made in product testing and standardization and very poor investment in innovation and design across all fields of application.

The healthcare case by Dr Reynold Washington and Gururaj too was another example of a great challenge of a problem located in a complex context which was dealt with a huge commitment by the use of dedication and use of technology however in spite of all the data that was shared about the stated success of the efforts in containing the spread of HIV and Aids there seemed to be a complete lack of the use of design, once again the promise of technology and administrative diligence are held out as dependable and justifiable and measurable answers while we can envision that by using design at the macro micro level as a system the impact and effectiveness would be different. The use of the integrating force of design is missed here in their presentation which I do believe will make a significant change, if only they tried. Once again a missed opportunity for the use of the multiplier effect of design in a truly wicked problem.

Sean Olin Blagsvedt made an exhilarating presentation on their efforts to build a startup internet service called babajob.com and explained the business model of the social networking site which was also a business with clients, agents, mentors and applicants. The task is complex and it holds promise of delivering some real felt needs at an affordable price. A lot will depend on the quality of decisions that they take at both the strategic levels as well as at the level of detail, both will need to be addressed adequately if the offering is to be sustainable and valuable at the same time.

My own presentation dealt with design opportunities that could usher in social equity particularly in the rapidly changing rural landscape across India as well as in the numerous sectors of need across the thematic sectors such as Nature, Life, Work, Health and Play. These categories were used to get our students in the Design Concepts and Concerns course to explore and inform the range of possibilities and these explorations can be seen on our education blog here. The call for moving our focus from the general to the particular was characterized by the need to shift our attention from talking about a target audience at the general level to thinking and looking at “Meena and Mohan” as they live and work in their own situations and context in an immersive manner if we are to ensure a proper fit and result in bringing empowerment and social equity to all their transactions with business and society in general. The electronic voting machine and a study of a particular village are offered as case studies for the proposed design approach. The presentation 1 MB pdf file can be downloaded here.

The conference organizers here in Bangalore, the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) and the CHI Bangalore have proposed to place the video recordings of the lectures on YouTube and when they do I will provide a link here. You can see more about the World Usability Day, Bangalore conference at this link here.

PDF file of 1 MB size of my lecture can be downloaded from this link here. Towards an Accessible World: Opportunities for Designers

Quarterly Review: Google Analytics view after three months

Quarterly Review: Google Analytics view of visitors to the Design for India blog after three months
Image: Google Analytics map view after three months
Image: Google Analytics Dashboard with daily flow of visitors
Image: Google Analytics map of India with traffic for the past three months
In the past three months the activity to the blog has been steady with a few peaks but otherwise a steady stream each day. Globally we have had 4407 visits from 3041 visitors 561 cities and from India we have had 2653 visits from 38 cities. This makes me wonder that the penetration of design ideas in India is very low indeed and we will need to devellop strategies to reach a wider audience here in India. The National Design Policy should focus on broadening the base for design use in India and not just restrict its reach to the metros and a few big cities. The real impact will be seen only when the use of design reaches the masses across India and in as many as 230 sectors of our economy.

The Mission Statement posted on 14th July 2007 is quoted below
"Design is a powerful force that shapes culture and it is a professional activity that is beneficial for both community and business alike. This blog is for all those who are interested in exploring these wider manifestations of design as a critical human activity and would like to shape its application across all human cultural and economic activities. Design uses all of human knowledge and is informed by the deep sensibilities developed through skillful and playful exploration of nature and the human spirit. It is a responsible activity that is driven by value systems of culture and society which are beneficial for sustainable and equitable existance of the planet earth and its inhabitants. Design is an intentional activity that generates value and in its processes it uses the creative potential of the actors to build a better future for all. This blog primarily focuses on issues and concerns in India but would be open to cooperate and engage with all other like minded groups in achieving the larger objectives of the blog.

A discussion list has been set up on googlegroups to facilitate live discussion on areas of mutual interest and to build a community of shared concerns about design and its use for India. The design-for-india@googlegroups.com list on googlegroups is moderated to encourage and facilitate a sustained dialogue about the scope and impact of design across all the 230 sectors of the Indian economy. While the focus is on the Indian dimension we are eager to discuss all other global development perspectives that may have a bearing on the promotion, support and use of design in the Indian context. Both this blog and the discussion list will be coordinated to facilitate easy archiving and dissemination of the posts as we go forward with our efforts to meet the objectives of this blog.

The moderator's home page can be viewed at this link Prof Ranjan's website"

Sustainability and Social Equity in Rural Agriculture and Handicrafts Sectors in India

Sustainability and Social Equity in Rural Agriculture and Handicrafts Sectors through Design Research and Action in India
Image: Metaphor of a Scare-Crow used to understand the dimensions of Farm Fresh Produce from the point bof view of bringing Sustainability and Social Equity through the entire Supply Chain, from Rural areas to Mass Markets in India. This model was created by a group of students at the NID Bangalore R & D Campus as part of the Design Concepts and Concerns course conducted by the author this week.

The concept of sustainability is usually understood in the West as a call for environmental balance and ecological considerations in the creation and management of systems and services for human consumption. However economists have recorded a rapid shift in nations endowed with substantial wealth and those with increasing deficits and the gap is growing alarmingly. The same situation appears in the disparities that are surfacing in the urban-rural divide and the process of globalization and development seems to be leaving the disadvantaged groups in an ever greater bind than ever before. A large number of farmer suicides in several parts of the country as well as the desperate migration of demoralized rural folks to the rapidly expanding urban slums is another visible indicator of this inexorable shift in India. This is an exodus that already started many years ago but of late the desperation seems to have peaked with an increased evidence of violence in many parts of the country that needs to be looked at in all seriousness. This is not just to be seen as a local law and order problem that can be suppressed easily as in the past by the use of a counter force in the form of State sponsored violence as we have seen in the Nandigram and Singhur episodes in the recent past as an outcome of the land acquisition exercise by the State Government to promote new SEZ initiatives in partnership with industrial giants from India and abroad. Both these incidents occurred in the State of West Bengal, both in connection with the accelerated process of industrialization that was being planned and supported by the Governments at the Centre as well as the State level on the premise that this was the only route that could bring in rapid development of wealth and progress which would in the long run trickle down to the peasants and the disadvantaged people of the State and the Nation. These events were precipitated by an active political opposition in the State which can be accused of political opportunism but notwithstanding these accusations we can see that the policies themselves may not be the only way forward and there may be other options that could be explored if only we used our imagination and creative explorations in the form of participatory action and test case developments using design research and action as a vehicle for these proposed explorations.

In many parts of the world this rural urban shift has almost been completed due to many reasons that are local as well as global in nature. However in India a huge rural sector has survived and sustained one of the biggest human settlements that have remained relatively unchanged for a very long time in the nature of its occupations and in many ways insulated from the massive change in other areas of the world. The sectors that have provided rural employment and self sustenance have been agriculture first and the hand crafts as the second most significant avenues that have remained open to poor and marginal rural populations. Today this very fragile base is being looked at as an area of opportunity for multi-nationals and major Indian corporations as a source of fortune at the bottom of the proverbial pyramid. Charles Handy in his paper titled “The Citizen Company” has outlined the new perceptions that have come into the question of citizenship particularly when they apply to business enterprises in transition from an era of exploitative relationships to one of stakeholder participation in a democracy. The same rules would apply to the rural poor in agriculture and the self employed crafts sectors that today employ a very large proportion of our rural populations although these are at a subsistence level and under pressure from the rapid change in communication that is both rapid and deep in nature. In my own paper titled “The Thick End of the Wedge: Skill Building to Support Livelihoods” which I had presented at the workshop on “Education for Sustainable Livelihoods” at Centre for Environmental Education (CEE), Ahmedabad in 2005 (download pdf 15 kb). Here I had called for a change in national policies to focus investments in the area of skill building across our rural population in order to nurture a creative base that could be empowering and liberating in the building of a new future for our rural poor. Urban India too is in need of ability building in addition to the usual education that is offered by our school system if we are to become a creative nation and have a population that was willing to experiment and build creative future which I call action at the “thick end of the wedge” as opposed to innovation investments only in hi-tech labs at the so called “leading edge” of our developments on matters of science and technology in our citadels of education, all at the expense of the gross neglect of the rural areas in India.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his paper (239 kb pdf)“ A Systems Perspective on Creativity” asserts that creativity is not an individual phenomenon, however gifted the individual may be, but an event that would occur when a person explored his interests and interacted in a field of the rich cultural system and in a domain of a supportive society if real breakthrough innovations are to occur in a regular manner. Therefore our attempt would be to examine the possibility of building such a rich cultural context as well as a supportive social climate as a catalyst for the sustainable development of the rapidly depleting energies in the rural sectors in India today. Vandana Shiva in her paper titled “Monocultures of the Mind” outlines the loss of diversity that occurs when traditional knowledge systems are replaced with so called modern knowledge and the loss of wisdom is debilitating for the social and economic fabric of the otherwise sustainable rural community and groups that are to be found all over the country even today (download pdf 60 kb). This is particularly true of the communities that depend on local bio-diversity to grow their food as well as meet their material needs for their economic crafts and other festive activities that are at the heart of their local culture. So the question that occurs to me is that we would need to examine the role of design in the creation of such a society and a culture in which the rural farmer and craftsman can find answers that are both sustainable as well as socially and economically equitable all the way down the supply chain in a globalised world. Can design help in such complex situations and if so what would design education have to learn by way of methods and attitudes to make this happen?

It was with the express intention of finding some answers that I had decided along with my teaching colleagues at NID to use the Design Concepts and Concerns course this year at NID to explore the whole question of sustainability as well as that of social equity, both of which have been on our educational agenda ever since the Eames India Report was drafted in 1958 based on which NID was set up in 1961. However in recent years we have been drifting to the swan song of the runaway Indian Industry which has adopted the mall culture wholesale as well as the growth first mantras that are being sung by all our governments as well as their opposition parties while the bickering is on technicalities and not on the principle that is being adopted. The National Knowledge Commission too has called for a renewed examination of the Creative Industries of the Future and on behalf of the National Planning Commission Rajiv Sethi a leading India designer has put together an approach paper and a collection of lead statements from numerous India thought leaders on the strategies and approaches that could be adopted by the Nation in this period of massive change and stress. The assignments that the students at NID are handling should be seen as an exploratory venture that could give some valuable insights to the approaches that could be followed even if they do not give complete solutions since they are after all very brief engagements bur could be a precursor of a sustained design development effort with official sanction and support if creative outcomes are to be achieved that are both effective as well as relevant to the present Indian condition.

New students at the NID Bangalore Centre have been assigned the task of exploring creative alternatives and insights towards a sustainable and socially equitable supply chain in which the intention is to protect and nurture the advantages of the rural disadvantaged, the small scale producers and the small farmer in today’s challenging environment. Their work can be seen at the Design Concepts and Concerns blog here as it unfolds and they are expected to come up with a multitude of design opportunities at the end of this course as well build visual scenarios to articulate those opportunities that they would individually feel is a priority and show us the form of their imagination for each one of the selected design opportunity. The areas of focus assigned for the supply chain research and articulation cover three areas namely, Farm Fresh produce, Dairy and Poultry products and handcrafts and Handloom produce, all to be examined from the intention of achieving sustainability and social equity in the respective supply chains all the way from the producer to the end user and these in an innovative manner. Further we believe that an exposure to real problems and opportunities within education would lead to a change in perception in the student themselves and a new focus in their career orientation to be able and willing to take on some of the complex challenges that face our country today. These explorations were also catalysed by the thoughts expressed by Tomas Maldonado a great teacher from the HfG Ulm in his book titled “Design, Nature & Revolution: Towards a Critical Ecology” (1972).

References

Prahalad, C.K "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" (Wharton School Publishing, 2004

Charles Handy, “The Citizen Company” in Creative Management & Development, third edition, edited by Jane Henry, SAGE and OU Business School, 2006, pp 3 – 17

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “ A Systems Perspective on Creativity” in Creative Management & Development, third edition, edited by Jane Henry, SAGE and OU Business School, 2006, pp 147-58

Vandana Shiva, “Monocultures of the Mind” in Creative Management & Development, third edition, edited by Jane Henry, SAGE and OU Business School, 2006, pp 199-217

M P Ranjan, “The Thick End of the Wedge: Skill Building to Support Livelihoods” paper presented at the workshop on “Education for Sustainable Livelihoods” at Centre for Environmental Education (CEE), Ahmedabad, 2005. (download pdf text file 15 kb and presentation file part one pdf file 2.6 MB and part two pdf file 2.9 MB)

M P Ranjan, “Creating the Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education”, (download pdf file 50 kb and presentation pdf file 4.1 MB)

Charles & Ray Eames, “ The India Report”, National Institute of Design, (1958) reprint 1998 (download pdf file 359 kb)

Tomas Maldonado, “Design, Nature & Revolution: Towards a Critical Ecology” Harper & Row, 1972