TEDx Kumaun: A Design Researcher's Point of View

On December 12 & 13 I joined a group of 10 speakers and 40 participants for the TEDx Kumaun conference. We met in a remote Himalayan village to discuss and share knowledge on the major social issues facing India today. The event was organized by CHIRAG (Central Himalayan Rural Action Group) and hosted at the Himalayan Village Sonapani. For a foreigner trying to absorb as much as I can about India, it was a crash course in politics and social programs. The conference focused on the tension between India's economic growth and the enormity of its problems relating to poverty, poor healthcare, low quality education, lack of food, pollution and rampant corruption.

There was the tone of activism in the air and a sense of optimism as people shared their ideas and current plans of action in their fields. While a few people believed that, through the free market, wealth would eventually trickle down to even the poorest of Indians, most of the participants were stating that it hasn't happened yet and that much work needs to be done to enable those at the bottom of the pyramid.



The 18-minute presentation format with no Q&A meant the sessions moved quickly. During the breaks we had time for informal chats over organic chai while gazing out at the Nanda Devi range. We were not the underserved! The speakers just had time to outline their area of expertise, usually with a presentation of depressing statistics (5,000 children die in India each day), a few anecdotes (a high profile news story from last week about a patient dying in an ambulance after being refused care by three hospitals), and closing with some ideas for solutions.



The solutions tried to attack the problems on the macro scale. It was recognized that lots of work is being done by distributed NGOs to vastly improve the lives of people in many locales, but that the majority of poor Indian citizens still lack basic services. As a design researcher, I am compelled to see the faces of these underserved people and hear some stories from their points of view. “Points of View” was the title of the conference anyhow; but the points of view, while illuminating, were largely academic. I want to ask rural farmers and urban slum dwellers what they are missing. Do they want to be part of India's globalized workforce? What do they aspire to? How does corruption help or harm them in their daily life? What is their view of the government? How are they solving their problems on their own? How do we tailor the solutions in a country with so many subcultures, languages, religions and geographies? Where are the lines drawn between the modern values of having an educated workforce living in a sustainable environment and the desires and needs of the individuals being “grown.” In the talks, I missed the human grittiness, spirit and ingenuity that I've been witnessing as I wander around Delhi and the surrounding areas on the weekends.



A few themes and ideas stood out. First of all, policies need to be crafted and the monies budgeted for social development needs to actually serve to implement those projects. Accountability for taking action is one of the biggest political gaps. For instance, the right to universal primary and secondary education has been in the constitution since 1965, but is still not a reality. Over and over I heard that for this to happen, The People need to know what they are missing out on and use their democratic power to demand it. 

This leads to the media intervention and grassroots organizing theme. “We need to capture the imaginations of all Indians and get them to take control,” said K Satyanarayan in his Education for All talk. His next idea was the most brilliant of the conference: A reality show for teachers. The best teachers in India would compete against each other for their ability to engage their classes, come up with creative lessons and mentor their pupils. Could teaching be as cool as Big Boss? Perhaps. And TVs are in even the smallest electrified shacks. After the session I saw the speaker chatting with a few people from TV production circles. I'm looking forward to seeing the pilot soon.

The most interesting angle from a design perspective and what we’re fascinated with at frog are the emerging wide reaching social services and the tools needed to facilitate them. Smart cards for identity, health information and food assistance qualification were described in various stages of pilot programs, dreams and reality. Software and tagging to track the flow of money and food would add efficiency and act as a watchdog for leaks. Campaigns are needed for getting out the vote and educating people on their democratic rights. Leaping off from TR Raghunandan's talk on the Decentralization of Corruption through the Corruption of Decentralization, I would say that if even a small percentage of the monies leaking out from the many layers of Indian bureaucracy were directed into the hands of designers, we could whip up some culturally appropriate artifacts to help set this country's social programs on the right path.