Disrupting women’s hygiene in rural India through design thinking.
by Shagun Singh
Having grown up in a middle class family in India, this came as a shock to me – 88% of women in India do not have access to sanitary napkins. They resort to using rags, ashes, newspaper, dried leaves and husk according to a study by AC Nielsen. According to an article in Fastcoexist, girls [...]
Fair trade comes to India
by Shagun Singh
As the buying power of the Indian consumer grows in the coming years, it is time that they start making educated choices about what they are consuming. The market is flooded with products from all kinds of producers that clumps mass produced industry made products with the ones produced by the fast dwindling race of [...]
The Sustainable Urbanist – Jyoti Hosagrahar Part 1
by Shagun Singh
Jyoti Hosagrahar is faculty at Columbia University, New York and Director of Sustainable Urbanism International at Columbia University, and Bangalore, India. Architect, planner, and historian, she advises on urban development, historic conservation, and sustainability issues in Asia. Her research interests include urban heritage, cultural and environmental sustainability of cities focusing on the intersections of nature, [...]
Notes on funding for social change
by Shagun Singh
On May 26th, I attended a workshop on ‘Funding for Social Change‘ organized by WorldStudio at SVA. Andrea Pellegrino is a business partner at WorldStudio with Mark Randall. She orchestrated the workshop and it was very useful for people who are taking baby steps towards building projects that are socially responsible and don’t necessarily have [...]
The city and the internet
by Shagun Singh
For some of us who grew up back home in India, we understand the perils of living in an unplanned city. Dodgy transportation system, consistent power cuts, inefficient waste disposal and sewage systems, gridlocked roads and a broken, corrupt bureaucratic government. People develop ways around problems. They adjust. The idea is to work the system [...]
FreMo: A BikeShare Initiative in India
by Shagun Singh
I visited Paris in the summer of 2007. After spending a couple of weeks of learning french and reading the lonely planet, I was prepared for a week or two of intense historical, cultural and architectural overdose. Everything was pretty much as imagined except the law that allows one to open a bottle of wine, [...]
“A Grand Idea – Inhabit” Competition Brief
by Shagun Singh
What is this competition about? This competition is focused on design solutions that can change our immediate urban environment into places that we can truly inhabit. The first series of ‘The Grand Idea Initiative’ is called ‘INHABIT‘. The ultimate challenge of which is to create solutions that introduce fun, sustainable, and innovative ways people use [...]
Babajob.com – Connecting employers with informal sector workers
by Ria Rajan
Babajob.com is a Bangalore-based start-up that uses the web and mobile technology to connect employers and bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) informal sector workers (i.e. maids, cooks, drivers, etc.) with the goal of creating a scalable, replicable and profitable solution to combat poverty. Babajob aims to do this by creating greater market efficiency in the informal sector through [...]
The Indovators – Part 1 | Lina Srivastava
by Shagun Singh
Lina Srivastava is the Principal of Lina Srivastava Consulting, LLC, which focuses on employing strategy, innovation, engagement and the use of cultural assets to create and demonstrate social change. For our new feature ‘The Indovators’, Lina talks about opportunities for indian designers in the fields of service design, information design, systems design, climate change and [...]
Social Lending in India
by Shagun Singh
dhanaX is an online-offline person-to-person lending platform that allows Indians to lend and borrow money from each other. For a lender looking for a social investment, or a borrower seeking an affordable loan, dhanaX provides and option by facilitating lending or borrowing of small capital using scientific, credible methods. dhanaX works in partnership with a [...]
Stopping open defecation in India by 2012
by Shagun Singh
“This is the first toilet in the world — in the world — where you use the toilet and you get paid,” Nair says. Now India is trying a different kind of cash reward to encourage toilet use. The Nirmal Gram Puraskar, or “clean village prize,” gives 50,000-5 million rupees to local governments that end [...]
Justice on wheels
by Shagun Singh
“We must take justice – fast justice – to people,” vowed Mr Singh. “When a verdict takes 10 or 20 years, it destroys their faith in the legal system.” According to the government, Indian courts are bedeviled with a staggering backlog of 15.6 million cases. It is not uncommon for minor cases to drag on [...]
Ideas and their roleplay in the future of India
by Shagun Singh
TED talk by Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys. Nandan talks about ideas in India which include Ideas that have arrived, ideas in progress, ideas in conflict and ideas in anticipation. The talk essentially circles around the role of India as a global player and the role ideas play in this process. Watch the talk on [...]
Designing for effective education
by Shagun Singh
Barefoot college in Tilonia, Rajasthan, is a system of education that believes in the capability, knowledge and skills of the rural community and trains them further in specialized fields like solar engineering, rain forest harvesting, health and hygiene, wasteland development, and traditional media to name a few. The education is practical and combines indeginious local [...]
