“New-Improved” : Haute Waste
by Ria Rajan
“New-Improved” is a label started by Namrata Narula, a textile designer based in Bangalore India. (She is also is a close friend and classmate of mine from college). “New-Improved” stems from the age old habit of recycling, preserving and jugaad especially amongst Indians. The idea behind the label being that there is still use and [...]
Digital Green – bettering farmers’ livelihoods via technology
by Ria Rajan
Image – Digital Green website Rikin Gandhi made it to Technology Review’s Young Innovators list 2010. And rightly so – his NGO – Digital Green aims at educating farmers of developing countries using innovative, simple technologies. The seed of Digital Green was sown while Rikin was working at Microsoft Research Labs, India, a few years ago. At Microsoft, the [...]
InteGreater – Networking for Social Enterpreneurs
by Ria Rajan
Following the conversation with Kalyan Akkipeddi about ProtoVillage, I decided to weasel a little more of his time and get him to talk to me about InteGreater. I reckoned it would help me understand the larger framework within with the ideas of social entrepreneurship; sustainable habitats and knowledge sharing are situated. One of Kalyan’s favorite [...]
PROTOVILLAGE – Adequate Village Cluster
by Ria Rajan
A Prototype, by definition, is a typical example of something. That is exactly what PROTOVILLAGE aims to be. An initiative of InteGreater and brainchild of Kalyan Akkipeddi, who, in a trend that is fast becoming popular with those who are opting to BE the change they want, quit his corporate job and went travelling across [...]
Where Art meets Science and vice versa.
by Ria Rajan
In simple words, Synthetic Biology is about making living organisms do things which nature had not intended on them doing. Its about taking tiny bits of DNA, splicing them together and inserting them into bacteria. In effect, a bacterium could be made to change colour or made to be bright enough to be visible to [...]
Low-cost self-diagnosis tool for rural India
by Ria Rajan
Primary health centers are the cornerstone of the rural health care system. In 1991, India had about 22,400 primary health centers, 11,200 hospitals, and 27,400 clinics. These facilities are part of a tiered health care system that funnels more difficult cases into urban hospitals while attempting to provide routine medical care to the vast majority [...]
The Better India – Positive news. Happy Stories. Unsung Heroes.
by Ria Rajan
Tired of the sensationalized reports and negative journalism of Indian newspapers and magazines, Bangalore based husband and wife duo – Anuradha and Dhimant Parekh decided to set up a platform that focuses only on happy stories. Thus The Better India was born. It was an honest attempt to celebrate and bring together those unsung heroes [...]
Bambike – A Bamboo Bicycle
by Ria Rajan
Bruce Sterling’s short story The Interoperation , featured in the Technology Review published by MIT, (Massachusett’s Institute of Technology) can be briefly summarized as a tale of a future where robots build and tear down buildings based on pre-set programs and a future where people ride bamboo bicycles. In present times, this story is not [...]
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 [...]
Jaaga – Creative Common Ground
by Ria Rajan
Having spent a long weekend with Archana Prasad –Co Founder Jaaga, National Institute of Design alumnus and Bangalore based artist, in Pondicherry, where she was performing with her group The Manjunauts, (she is also a VJ) at the Freedom Jam; I had the chance to engage in a dialogue with her about Jaaga. Jaaga’s name [...]
Empowering the deaf child – Vaani
by Ria Rajan
VAANI is an organisation that works to empower the deaf child. Its role is to act as a catalyst. Rather than delivering services, VAANI supports the development of accessible sustainable services for deaf children and their families whilst working closely with the overall development strategies of the country. VAANI works with local organisations to build [...]
ReThink Waste = Thunk in India
by Ria Rajan
India’s headcount of approximately 1.17 billion people consists of more than one-sixth of the world’s population. In a country as large as this, it is rather alarming that there is no Indian policy document, which examines waste as part of a cycle of production-consumption-recovery or perceives the issue of waste through a prism of overall [...]
Designers as Change Makers – Part 1
by Shagun Singh
Janani Kannan is an interior designer working in NYC and an old friend from CEPT (Center for Environmental Planning and Technology), Ahmedabad, India. She is also the subject for the first Designwala feature on ” Designers as Change Makers“. She elaborates on practices that would help different sectors in India grow because of design thinking. [...]
