Eaglezview

Do you remember anything about the first time you walked? I don’t remember that. My memory fails me with a whole bunch of similar things – the first time I uttered a meaningful word, my first day at school, the first prize I won at school and a numerous  other things that would have meant the whole world to me at that time ? I am sure, as I progress towards adolescence and beyond, there would be countless occasions to cherish and many others to be just left as bygones. When I look back now, I realize that many of these probably didn’t merit such a furor of emotions and attachment. Nevertheless, it is exactly these milestones, the highs and lows that has shaped me more than my education or anything else. For the outside world, I am what I am because my cognition and behavior was  and is guided by these unseemly or joyous occasions. Internally, I define myself with these milestones more than anything else. I judge myself with these, chastise and pat myself, predisposed by these blips on my life’s radar. Some blips are as large as the ocean, drowning me forever, others are like the tip of a pin – pricking and poking. Then there are the huge helium balloon blips, that lift me off the ground into weightlessness, into the ethereal experience of joy.

How did I choose them, when did I give them form and identity? Or is it that my environment and the people around me gave them to me? Do I share my milestones with others around me? Are there school friends, college friends, family members who share the common experience? Did they recognize the same events as a milestone in their lives? Did they give it the same shape and form? A hundred questions!

I think, I chose my milestones partly driven by the judgment of the outside world and partly because of my fad during that period. So, if being good in sports as well was an emphasis at home and Boris Becker inspired me, then the simple act of playing tennis after school for 3 months became a cherished milestone for me. Why ‘milestone’ and not just another leaf from the pages of memory? Because, those 3 months did give me a part of me which still lives in me and is not yet history. Of course, there are the obvious landmarks of marriage and graduation which are more concrete. Do I share milestones with friends? Except for mere completion of academic courses, on the calendar, I don’t share much common milestones with my friends; which is sad to a certain extent.

Milestones – we may formalize them or we may not even acknowledge them when they happen – no matter what we do, we can neither deny their existence in our lives nor the power they sway over us.  

I didn’t post on the biggest scam that shook my country’s corporate landscape in the last few weeks; but then, how could I not write a piece for one of the most historic moments during our lifetime – it is like been born in the era of the moon landings – even if you had nothing to do with its occurence or its preparation, you felt special just because you existed in that era of triumph. A black man in the white house is definitely as monumental as the moon landing. Obama’s got the charisma, the gift of the gab, a sound head on his shoulders and unsurpassed support from all quarters. Coming with this kind of hype, he needs all those supporting hands to deliver even an iota of all the claims that some would call are the tallest of the tall political rhetoric. On the sidelines, I think, it would be interesting to read the two books he has written to get an insight into the man of the moment’s mind. It would be interesting to watch this period of presidency as it rolls on. Challenges are hard and high, the man looks the part, the cameras have started rolling – the verdict will not be far behind. Good luck Obama!

The issue that I want to discuss here is prevalent across all spheres of life in India and is encountered by all – young, old, urban, rural, rich, poor, educated, illiterate. It is the endemic lack of design in India. When I say, “design”, I speak of it in an all encompassing aspect – design of products, services, policies, laws, infrastructure and institutions. Surely, I can’t and shouldn’t paint the whole lot with a single brush; there are a few terrific light posts of elegant and enduring designs in the form of institutions, policies, products etc.; but, they are few and far in between this mass of old, archaic, unusable, irrelevant, middlemen fostering, corruption inducing design. I argue that if only we opened our eyes a little wider, changed our perspectives a little to add a bit of color to our thinking and execution we could solve many of our problems with simple, elegant, durable and cost efficient means. 

Let us look at the fallouts of this present state of affairs. The effects of a  lack of design are enormous in terms of

•  Discomfort in our daily lives
•  Ineffectiveness in preventing injuries, disease &  suffering
•  Loss of time, money and productivity 
•  Ineffective disaster management

These are only a  few pertinent points but surely there are many more. Let me try and deconstruct the above for a more closer look.

Discomfort in our daily lives - Right from the moment I get up in the morning till the time I hit the bed, I have to live with mediocre products and services.  The house I live in can be better designed with probably only a marginal effect on its affordability; the bus I get into can be better designed for me, leave alone the physically challenged, the  bus drivers’ training can be better designed to incorporate a sense of empathy in them – so that they don’t shout and herd me into the bus , the foot paths can be better designed – I remember once walking towards the airport terminal in Hyderabad’s old airport from the adjoining main road. I had to get down from the foot path after every two steps! The reason being that some planner had this idea that the access road from the main road to the airport had to be an avenue; consequence -  I would come face to face with a huge tree trunk every two steps and the only way to go beyond it was to step down from the kerb, on to the road and thus circumvent the tree. What a lack of empathy in design! What a waste of money to make something superficially good looking but wholistically dysfunctional.  I could go on and on with examples, the point is that we need to understand that our very approach to engineering, policy making or rather problem solving needs a tectonic shift.

To start with, one has to dispel the myth that good products and services cost money. Yes, they do, but in the process of creating a better product and service the whole economy itself is uplifted as a consequence of the value creation. Hence, in the end, the growth in prosperity compensates for the cost of a good product or service – meaning – you have a better life but surely you are no more richer than you were before. Isn’t that what an egalitarian society should be like?

There is another myth, one which I think I have induced inadvertently in the above paragraphs,  that poor people don’t understand, demand, expect, or deserve  better designs. Wrong. They deserve and demand better designs in as strong a way as any rich person. Look at the success of robust, low cost models of sales of mobile phones like the Nokia 1100 and you will understand what I mean.  When it comes to expecting and demanding better design in public amenities, they settle for what is dished out to them because they don’t have a platform to exert their distress.  Hence, although they dislike poorly maintained stinking public toilets, poor service at the Government hospital, they settle for it. Why can’t we design better amenities?

Ineffectiveness in preventing injuries, disease  & suffering - When we look at household & industrial injuries, endemic diseases originating from lack of hygiene, etc. from a  perspective of design, we get a lot of possibilities to prevent these in the first place. When I look at say a construction site in India, the scene today is different from what it was a few years ago. It is encouraging to see that in projects run by large construction companies the workers are mandatorily asked to wear hard hats, straps and reflective jacket of some sort. In addition to these, metal scaffoldings have replaced age old bamboo frames; nets are used to prevent a fatal fall. These are absolutely encouraging signs. Isn’t it obvious how these simple devices help in industrial safety. So is the case with appliances at home.

If we could come up with better designs for products, appliances  and mechanism for use within and outside the house, like in garbage management, we will have cleaner homes, cleaner roads, cleaner neighbourhoods and better health figures. 

Loss of time, money and productivity and by extension the loss of GDP. Let me ask, “Can better design boost GDP?”. The ominous answer is – yes; and this is universally known. Better design helps in streamlining processes, reducing time spent on a process, reducing cost, enhancing  productivity. Focus on design as a driver of revenue and profitability is the key to all this; this is closely linked of course to affordability of products, which I think isn’t a big hurdle to overcome.

Ineffective disaster management - Better equipment, policies, processes and training can help us deal effectively with disasters of large magnitudes. We don’t need to look beyond the current state of security and the mood in the nation to bring this point out emphatically.

Neither is all of what I have said is in the realm of unknown nor does it potray a dismal and irreversible situation. What is needed is the change in outlook. No facet of human activity can be precluded when it comes to design.  Better designs is one of the cogs in the wheel of progress. Better designs lead to better lives. A lot of ground needs to be covered here.