Where Art meets Science and vice versa.
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
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 [...]
Bambike – A Bamboo Bicycle
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 too [...]
Babajob.com – Connecting employers with informal sector workers
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
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 has [...]
Empowering the deaf child – Vaani
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
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
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. [...]