Conversations with MP Ranjan. A chapter from Dekho.
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MP Ranjan is one of India’s most prolific design evangelists, with 40 years of experience in design education. His unending bravado, as he moves across platforms—national & international conferences, his Design for India blog, teaching, mentoring, authoring—is rooted in his deep conviction that design-led intervention can bring great changes for India. Talking to us, Ranjan reflects on his experiences as an educator, and shares insights into the way forward for design education in India—towards becoming a sensitive, responsible and dynamic agent of change.
You have been closely associated with the National Institute of Design (NID), Bamboo & Cane Development Institute (BCDI) and Indian Institute of Craft & Design (IICD) in India. Each of these were set up in response to particular needs in their respective sectors, in their respective times.
A new generation of bamboo crafts trainees at BCDI, Agartala being introduced to craftsmanship and design principles. Under the mentorship of MP Ranjan, a new curriculum was created and implemented between 2001 and 2004.
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The IICD and the BCDI are institutions that responded to some very specific challenges in the Indian reality. The first one (IICD) was a response to massive needs of the huge handicrafts sector of India for informed and motivated human resources that could bring change through creation of new knowledge, as well as a sensitive understanding of the needs of the sector through the design-techno-managers who would be the products of the school. The BCDI on the other hand, was a multi-disciplinary and multi-layered institute that could address the needs of the bamboo sector in India with design as its core driver. There are many more opportunities waiting to be addressed Do you think that with the emergence of and I am sure these will bring out uniquely new design schools, we will see a uniquely Indian characteristics if handled with Indian model of design education evolve? honesty and deep commitment—that are both critical to nurture a sector-specific design education programme.
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Moving forward, what do you envisage as the greatest motivator or need to create and sustain design schools in India?
Yes, new design schools are needed in India. We are calling for a serious rethink as part of our Vision First* initiative to try and influence the Government of India and NID itself to do these reviews as part of the 50-year celebrations of the setting up of the institute. The greatest motivator is our belief that design is a powerful force. It can shape Indian society and we can get others in power to participate in our conviction in the days that lie ahead. The opportunities are both regional as well as sectoral, and this kind of domain-specific approach will create many new schools that would be uniquely rooted in the Indian reality. India is a land of great opportunity as far as design thought and action are concerned—there is so much to be done across as many as 230 sectors.
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Design—our understanding of it and what it can do, is going through a sea change. The touch and involvement of design is at the heart of many qualities that get embedded into products, services as well as policies that shape the lives of our people. Design represents an ability and knowledge base that deals with the synthesis of all these services and offerings—in health services, the quality of experience that the patient, doctor or other participants have would largely be decided at the stage of design of these offerings. Similarly, banking and finance are facing severe issues of inclusion and exclusion of the poor and underprivileged. Innovative approaches need to be made and here too design can play an important role. Tranportation, education, agriculture and many other sectors, are all in need of urgent innovation of products, services, processes and policies that can be achieved with the use of design at many levels—tactical, application, and strategic.
Vision First is a citizen design initiative that came together spontaneously in response to Government of India’s decision to set up four new NIDs and took shape in the social networking space. Many design teachers, researchers and activists—all NID alumni, came together when the matter was discussed in online lists. These experienced practitioners and teachers were shocked by the fact that the initiative, though clearly needed, was being undertaken without any review of the situation and context, 50 years after the setting up of the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad based on a seminal report by Charles and Ray Eames. It was felt that a sustained dialogue with stakeholders must precede such a move, so that the real needs and insights from half a century of practice could inform the new initiative.
The experimental ’70s at NID. A light play orchestrated by Vikas Satwalekar and enacted by MP Ranjan in the photography studio, with a lighted torch in hand. 18
Can you share any particular experiences as a student at NID, which have influenced you as an educator?
I worked on three exhibition projects, live and critical during my student career at NID. The experience of working on two directly and the other from the periphery was a life-changing experience. The work ethic and team processes under pressure of time and quality benchmarks are at the heart of NID design education of the ’60s and ’70s. I got the opportunity to work with Dashrath Patel on Our India Pavilion at the Asia ’72 Expo, New Delhi and also on the Nehru Exhibition with Vikas Satwalekar. Field and studio experiences are fantastic for all students—then and now.
MP Ranjan in the studio with models and prototypes from his first year in the PG Furniture Design course at NID (1969).
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Live projects in classrooms—what are the advantages (and cautionary measures, if any)? Live projects are useful at the senior level, but controlled complexity is useful at an early stage so that the student can build confidence. If fear and responsibility are too burdensome, it can be counterproductive. Immersion in real challenges does have merit in design education but the teacher must learn to moderate and protect the student from the evil fallout of failures, although these can teach deep lessons if they are processed with care and empathy within the education context.
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Bauhaus sought to build courses and assignments that sensitized students to form and structure, and this is still at the heart of design education today, with the addition of real world knowledge and new technology. The Indian school system and its focus on rote learning and bookish knowledge has made our students incapable of making things with their own hands—no cooking, no crafts, no drawing and no confidence in themselves. This can be changed and design sensitisation at school level could be one way that has been ignored. Sensitising the student to design values and opening the mind to new ways of thought and action—from analysis to synthesis—is one of the core objectives. The foundation needs to change and we did have a conference on the subject at Kolkata as part of the series of Look Back Look Forward seminars that examined the contribution of Ulm School of Design to the area of basic design education. The term “foundation” may need review, and basic design is a better approach since this can be delivered throughout the long design curriculum and not just at the beginning stage. What is the objective of the foundation course in a design school? With a move from multi-disciplinary to interdisciplinary design, what are the new directions for a design foundation course?
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Second batch of Graphic Design students in the NID studios with international consultants (1968).
We need to innovate courses that can help students internalise complex analysis and build value systems that can help them address unknown issues and problems with their own perceptions and gut feelings, which is critical for making design judgments. The Design Concepts and Concerns course at NID was developed to help move design education in that direction.
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As an educator, you have always laid great stress on design documentation and writing, and sharing it—why is this important for design students and educators?
KNOWL IS NOT CREATE EXPERIENCE A BUT THROUG DEEP REFLECTIO THAT EXPERIENCE DOCUMENTATION RESEARCH SCHO SHIP THAT VIDE THE FOR REFLEC
All forms of education need documentation and scholarship of a high quality. Knowledge is not created by experience alone, but through the deep reflection on that experience. It is documentation and research scholarship that provide the base for such reflection. Prof. Bruce Archer had told us that design reflection needed contemporaneous documentation if the reflection was to be based on substance and not myth, since not all actions in a design situation are explicit and much of the process lies in the tacit domain. Most design schools are sorely lacking in scholarship, and this has been a very poor model for young and aspiring design teachers. Even major institutions themselves do not take this aspect seriously. Today with the availability of digital resources, there is no excuse to stay away from systematic documentation of all our actions in the classrooms and in projects that teachers and students handle as part of their daily work at schools of design.
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“Do it. Prove it”—You talk of this in your discussion of prototyping as an important design tool. What is the value of quick-and-dirty prototyping, for students and practitioners?
EDGE ED BY LONE, H THE ON ON . IT IS N AND OLART PROBASE SUCH TION. Referring to Bruce Archer
Plaster model being precision modelled by MP Ranjan for his design of a stackable chair for school children.
Prototyping is critical and I say this with deep conviction since the solutions that succeed are not the product of available knowledge, but the outcome of insights from experimentation done as part of the design explorations. Prototyping is not just to arrive at the final product—but is a series of small and critical steps that are needed before the designer is truly convinced that the solution will be true to the needs of a situation. These prototypes can move from being very basic explorations for components, to full-fledged and complete products that can be subjected to many tests.
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That the touching and feeling hand informs the mind is not in doubt when one examines the processes that led to the deep convictions in what should and on what could be made in each case. Just as the enormous evolution of mental faculties was witnessed in the upper Palaeolithic period when the thumb first came in opposition with the palm in making a grip, to hold and grasp a tool, we too continue to learn deeply when we handle materials and engage directly in contexts in the design process, our mental faculties get rewired by these experiences. This is the tacit knowledge that cannot be stored in any digital retrieval system, book or container and it is this kind of knowledge that forms convictions that aid design decision-making. Design therefore moves from intention to action through a series of explored compositions and judgments, “hands-on, minds-on,” which helps build deep conviction that can be shared through visualization
Source: Rich Contexts in Design Education: Lessons from My Students—Nilam and Neelam (Paper by MP Ranjan)
and modelling, the core abilities of a designer.
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Outside of a formal institutional curriculum, how can design students find inspiration and knowledge?
MP Ranjan’s student Nilam Iyer at work in Jawaja with the Raigar craftsmen, a community of leather workers of Rajasthan, while doing her diploma project at NID in 1976.
The whole world is full of real opportunities for design action and the design student must be introduced to some of these situations as part of school curriculum. With this, some very important shifts in attitude will take place. NID’s experiments with Crafts Documentation (for the textile design programme) and the Environmental Exposure module (as part of the foundation programme) have helped create deep change in student attitudes to learning. Exploring one’s interests and developing a passion for one’s hobbies is one way. 26
When did the Design Concepts and Concerns module start at NID? How did you get involved with the course? How has it evolved over the years?
I started teaching Design Process in 1988 when Mohan Bhandari left NID and the slot for a theory teacher became available. This evolved as we went along, and I documented all the courses right from the beginning and placed selected student documents in the NID Library. Our views of design were changing and the rigid idea of design methods too needed to change. We did a lot of reading and tried out changes in assignments as we went along. Over the years several colleagues worked with me and helped shape the direction of the course.
MP Ranjan with NID students in a session of the Design Concepts and Concerns course that he developed at the institute to introduce macromicro perspectives in design education and design thinking.
From all the influencing forces acting on design education programmes at NID, it was apparent that there was a need for a paradigm shift in the content and treatment of the Design Methods course. The first change was the renaming of the course in 1990–91 to “Design Concepts and Concerns,” since it was clear to me that design was not just about market success and profits, but also about social good and ecological sustainability which few other disciplines were adopting as their principle mandate. While in the ’70s the focus of the Design Methods course could be called “Classical and Scientific Focus,” the explorations in the ’80s led to the inclusion of “Environmental Focus” with specific reference to this course at NID and to the Foundation Programme as a whole. It was in the ’90s that we consciously introduced a “User, Environment and Systems Focus” that has gained in strength as our convictions grew out of classroom experiences and in the growing body of literature on social equity and systems design from a variety of disciplines.
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There is a clear need for designers to be responsive and responsible to their environment, to be able to future-proof design intervention. How do we build this into their foundation with design education?
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Katlamara Chalo (Let’s go to Katlamara) A long-running design and strategy development project of partnership between local bamboo craftsmen and farmers in Tripura State, that MP Ranjan has been a part of.
Discourse, dialogue and exposure—all bring a change in attitude and willingness to act when the need is presented. Values-based education is at the heart of such transformation in the young learner, and teachers must be willing to demonstrate conviction in their own actions if the student is to take it seriously. Hypocrisy is immediately seen through by the young. We need role models that can show the way forward, and design education must build a database of such role models as a core offering that comes from sustained documentation and discourse.
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Does design education need to move beyond the confines of design schools? Why and where can design education build new perspectives?
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INNOVATION FOR SOCIETY HAS DESIGN SENSIBILITY AS PART OF A THREE-LEGGED STOOL WHERE THE OTHER TWO ARE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER AND ART ABILITY. Most certainly. It must be sprinkled quite liberally into all forms of education as well as in professional training situations for all kinds of practitioners. Innovation for society has design sensibility as part of a three-legged stool where the other two are scientific temper and art ability. Unfortunately this critical input—design sensibility—is under-supported in our society today. We will need to explore and innovate assignments and examples that can take this kind of design forward in our country across 230 sectors of our economy. Our school education, for instance, could look at Handmade in India that maps out crafts skills all over the country. We can build policies that can open schools to exposing students to local crafts persons as teachers and mentors. Schools could encourage students to meet craftspeople and explore their own imagination with the materials and skills available in abundance.
A book documenting crafts of India co-authored by MP Ranjan
UNFORTUNATELY THIS CRITICAL INPUT—DESIGN SENSIBILITY—IS UNDERSUPPORTED IN OUR SOCIETY TODAY. 32
Who are the people who inspired/inspire you in your role as an educator? Charles Eames during his last visit to NID in 1978 seen here with NID Faculty Ashoke Chatterjee, MP Ranjan and S Balaram, in the background.
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The painting shop at Modern Agencies—a small factory in Madras—set up by Ranjan’s father. This was both playground and crafts prep-school for him as he grew up amongst these craftsmen before joining NID in 1969.
While I have learned much from my peers at NID over the past 40 years, I think that much of my inspiration has come from my reading and here, there are many authors that have inspired me to try new and unusual directions in education and to hold and deeply value the learning from these engagements. I have made a long list of these authors in my paper for the Istanbul conference keynote on the Three Orders of Design in 2009. I was also fortunate to meet in person many dadas of design thinking and action due to my association with the early days of NID.
KIM B CLARK STEVEN C WHEELWRIGHT JOEL KURTZMAN MORRIS BERMAN RITCHIE P LOWRY JOHN BERGER GERMAINE GREER STEPHEN F MASON ALLAN BLOOM MARILYAN FRENCH RUDOLF VB RUCKER THOMAS SOWELL HERMANN KULKE DIETMAR ROTHERMUND
MP Ranjan’s bookshelf at home that he designed as a stable and low-cost metal-and-plywood structure, without the usual diagonal braces. These books are a witness to his numerous curiosities over time.
What is the persona of the ideal design educator in India today? What are his roles and responsibilities?
Very difficult to articulate. The ideal design educator must be an inspired leader and committed participant in one or more sectors that they are deeply interested in. Also, staying in touch and being connected is one quality that students would value in their teacher. We need “Reflective Practitioners” in the tradition of Donald Schon’s book of the same title—someone who is willing to engage with reality through high quality involvement and in collaboration with many others, and is able to reflect on the body of experience and share this openly with insights from practice while being informed of world matters through experience as well 35_Learning Ground
as deep research scholarship. Tough and tall order, but we need this. The PhD is a bonus, but practise with scholarship is critical. There are ways of achieving this; change in old schools and new ones that can bring paradigm change to design education and education of design teachers. The person will need to be well read and well connected to his field of expertise, and students will recognize this. For this, policies of design schools will need to address the need for nurturing talent and supporting growth of the individual along their own trajectory. Very liberal and supportive policies are needed to nurture innovation and growth.
Personally, what is the most rewarding experience as an educator? Also, what is the most frustrating experience?
The most rewarding experience is to meet my students in the field and share in their success. There have been so many, that I am convinced that the NID design education, particularly at the undergraduate level is parallel to none other in the world and must be cherished and preserved for the future. Recent changes have tended to throw the baby out with the bathwater, like attempts to improve education standards by bringing in higher qualifications as requirements for design teachers. The most frustrating experience for me has been our inability to bring liberal norms of professional practice to design educators at NID due to the myopic policies of our Governing Council(s) over the years and the inability of NID Directors and Faculty to make a case for such change. This must change and be applied to all new schools of design that come up in the country. The efforts must go on and Vision First is one such initiative.
The book Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India involved almost one year of rigorous field work. Here the team is on its way back from the Apatani valley in Arunachal Pradesh with baskets and their notes all packed in the back of the Jeep. This picture was taken by MP Manohar of NEHHDC who joined the NID team of MP Ranjan, Nilam Iyer and Ghanshyam Pandya. The local guide for Arunachal, SD Narayan is poised with his camera. NEHHDC: North Eastern Handicrafts and Handloom Development Corporation
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What keeps you going as an educator?
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A deep conviction that we can bring huge change and that this will bring wonderful benefits for Indian society, as well as to those who are involved in the process at the creative level.
There are many, and that would need a lot of research and articulation on various schools of thought that operate in our environment.
I WOULD CALL FOR IN ADDRESSING RURAL AND URBAN POVERTY AS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT CHALLENGE THAT FACES DESIGN EDUCATION TODAY.
Is there an “ism” that describes Indian design? If you were to coin one, what would it be?
In my view, we are not addressing this need adequately. Government policies need to make design more central in their huge expenditure for development. Innovation in this space can show results that could not be achieved in the absence of such policies over the past 60 years.
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