Mr. Amitabh Kant spoke about the need to go back to our roots and bring out design as a differentiator for India.
Our keynote speaker at the Forum, Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO NITI Aayog is well known for his leading role in initiatives such as Kerala Tourism’s God’s Own Country, Make in India and Start-Up India. His pet subject is also the topic of his book - Branding India. In his talk, Kant took the example of God’s Own Country to talk about branding, advertising and design.
“Everything we did, took Kerala back to its roots”, he emphasized. “Kerala differentiated itself in every single way.” Key to this singular achievement was how the new product differentiator pushed up the value of Kerala increasing tourist traffic, creating a vast number of jobs and much higher earnings per day. A believer in investing in design to get quality returns Kant reminded the audience, “If you give peanuts, you get monkeys.”
These precepts also gave direction to shape the making of Incredible India, to promote India as an attractive tourist destination. The Government engaged professional creatives such as Bharat Bala and Piyush Pandey to carry out the campaign. There was a vast creation of new infrastructure, says Kant, and the occupancy shot up from a mere 18% to 100%. With this engagement, Kant became convinced how the nature of design and therefore branding should closely connect to who we are as people.
“The Western tourist is already stressed out… if we imitate the West, they are not interested,” said Kant, who firmly believes, "Design should stem from our roots and draw from our ethos."
The role of design
The interactive session, post his talk, brought out the salient points that needed to be addressed. One was his point on the Atal Tinkering Labs under NITI Aayog’s AIM that fosters an atmosphere of innovation, creativity and scientific temperament in school-going children: this is linked to many concerns that were raised for design in education. The other was Kant’s take on design as a differentiator in branding our nation and creating a global brand for India, which will penetrate the global market and push up our value. The third was the need to innovatively address the process of urbanization, and how it raises urgent issues of waste management, water and resources at a time of scarcity. The fourth was addressing a $5 trillion economy with an average demographic of 29 – the youth factor.
Dialogue snippets
Amitabh Kant threw a challenge to the audience, asking why India is not able to create a global brand, penetrating markets across the world - “After all India has a great competitive advantage,” he said.
Kant was especially emphatic about how cities are the centres of innovation, and especially so in the last century. Archana Shah, Bandhej, an ardent crafts supporter, voiced her concern about how people should be given jobs and livelihoods where they are in rural areas, and this would ensure they stay. Kant countered Shah that the process of urbanization cannot be reversed. “Whether you like it or not, people will go from rural to urban,” he said.
Kiran Bir Sethi of Design for Change brought up the global crisis of compassion and empathy. She said that the new consciousness of design thinking is still associated with the product, not the process. ‘Insaan aur insaaniyat main bahut farak hai’, she quipped. Satish Gokhale of Design Directions spoke about the need to make closer inroads with the Government of India, noting he had a solution for the water crisis, and there should be a way to take such schemes by designers forward.
Sunil Malhotra of Ideafarms raised the point of how important it is to get people to believe that they can do something, taking the example of cricket and Sunil Gavaskar’s century moment. This changed the world of Indian cricket. Architect Madhav Raman of Anagram Architects point was to create IP for design in India and thus make design a valuable commodity for the nation. This would also pave the way for a global brand for India.
Mr. Amitabh Kant concluded the session on a positive note that NITI Aayog will be very happy to partner with NID, designers and professionals of the community to drive the Design First policy.
Further reads:
Cover letter: Let’s Make History
On Saturday, the 8th of February, we had our first forum of 2020 on the special theme of DesignFirst in our Gurgaon studio . . . Read more
Dialogues over DesignFirst
The opening session brought together four panelists who represent different sectors - Social, Technology, Policy and Education - Archana Shah of Bandhej, Jatin Bhatt of Ambedkar University, Sunil Malhotra of Ideafarms and Abhimanyu Nohwar of BCG to discuss DesignFirst . . . Read more
Twin Peaks
Anthony Lopez of Lopez Design presented the two Forum initiatives - What Design Can Do and Design First Policy . . . Read more
Forum Post Mortem
A critique by 4 Forum participants on the Forum with an eye on how the future of India can be shaped through design, the relevance of Design First, and first steps towards its implementation . . . Read more
2020 Steps Forward
Design means different things to different practitioners. Although we all aim to look at a better quality of life and bring value, accelerate development and foster nation-building, the actual implementation in education, business, crafts or management require us to address diverse agenda . . . Read more
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