Before you read, click on a button to change Background Color to a colour of your choice

Written by Aarthi in March 2002. Dear Appa and Amma, This is one thing I thought I should write about because it might be what I take up next year, I don't have a very clear view of it as of yet, but I'll try to explain. Put it in your Newsletter and ask eveyone to reply. As you know, we just got back from Pattamadai last month.When we came back, we had to present a documentation of our experiences in Pattu in the form of a project. I was looking at the role of an individual in society and vice versa in relation to two environments (urban-rural). Not a very deep thing, just basic stuff. Then later, because of common points, five of us teamed up and had group discussions. We spoke about what causes the urban rural difference, what are the factors linked to which the two communities depend on each other, about the question of self sufficiency of a village. (This followed after learning that all the products made by the village - mats, cloth, pots, bullock carts, furniture, even agro produce- does not stay in the village it either goes to Thirunelveli or Madurai! In fact they depend on food from the next to next village, even though they produce enough for their own!) Then the next stage, we saw how our lifestyle was more or less getting imposed on theirs. Why? Do they adapt out of choice, do we impose by creating a need? Do we impose because we're not comfortable with the idea of two environments, and we want to work towards a grand unification of everything? Does the duality bother us? And how does it bother us, even though we're the ones who actually create the difference and widen it? And how is it that 25% of the population manages to impose on a 75% population? What we call progress actually works towards a whole set of imbalances- environmental, biological, economical. Our individualistic society is seeping into their social way of living. IS that a cause for concern at all? Then we came to the question of communication. We communicate to them, because we think we've progressed. And we think we're helping them out by giving them our technology. What we do- we've 'progressed' in one direction, and we give them our progress, thinking that we're 'saving' them the effort and time, because we think they're going to evolve in the same direction. But since they're an environment that is physically closer to nature, that need not be true. Communication is very related to design, because design is problem solving, and communication brings the problem into focus. SO how do two environments look at design. A word often used in design is simple. The urban definition of 'simple' is that which saves time and labour, even though the structure might be complicated. The rural def. of design is a system which revolves on a basic principle, which can be easily replicated, even though it might take more time and more manual labour. Design is about offering alternatives. Not making changes. The whole thing can be explained just by looking at the drawing of water from the water table in two environments. Then we realised that how we impose on them is- we sell convenience- we don't question that which is convenient. The design of a chair is not questioned. Its meant for sitting, its used. There are a million designs possible for a chair in terms of form, material etc. Then we came to a very weird thought- money is losing value at a very rapid rate. What if- it loses power? Then wouldn't the dominant population take over the country in the true sense. I'm not talking about the political system, but about the lifestyle. We put this thought in the form of a play, and that was our presentation. Okay, I've rambled for quite long. All this is a result of many hours of group discussion. Some assumptions in this might be wrong, thats why I need your feedback. All of you. We've basically tried to question the notion of progress and urbanization, whether that's the same as modernization, how imbalance coems about in a system, whether duality is not as accepted as it seems to be, etc? What do you think? And this whole thing gave us a very different perspective on design. Now in Srishti, the whole graphic design dep. has become Communication design, with social comm. as the focus. This might be laughed at. But we all realised design is not beautification. Design is problem solving that evolves from a very broad understanding of the problem in all its aspects- environmental, economic, social, etc. I'm not turning into an 'NGO' person. But there is an area which Srishti is looking at 'Transformed traditional technology'- instead of adopting tech from the west, and applying it here (which might not always happen), this looks at taking tech from grassroot innovators, evolving it in terms of design (form, practicality, convenience,etc) and making it more accessibilty so that we have a tech of our own to fall back on. We have a five week workshop (not foundation) in which people from our college are actually going to evolve 8 products- like a rain gun (modified sprinkler system), earthquake predictor,etc. (i cant remenber now. workshop starts Saturday). Foundation has been asked to sit in the workshop as observers. What I've said is nothing new, but it is very new for us. And we're highly excited about it. So basically what do you think? Love, Aarthi. PS- Appa, Amma, I spoke to Poonam (with two others in my group ) and seeing our extremely high level of interest in this, she suggested we work in an NGO in the vacations just as an experience! What do you think? PPS- Please ask everyone to reply. I badly need the feedback for the next stage of our project. BACK to the Main Page