“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 value left in fabrics considered old or useless. Namrata works directly with individuals to design products like bags, bottle holders, stoles etc, that are specifically crafted to suit they needs and preserve the sentimental value attached to the fabrics.

A lil bit about Namrata - Namrata Narula graduated as a Textile Designer from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. Prior to that, she completed a Bachelors degree in Textiles and Clothing. As someone who has loved fabric and it various forms since the time she can remember, her foray into design happened naturally.

I managed to sucker Namrata into talking about the initiative, her process  and experiences for Designwala.

RR - ” Ok, for the benefit for those who weren’t in the room when it happened, could you tell us how New Improved was born?”

NN – “Well, it began as my graduation project at Srishti. It started with my fascination with textiles and clothing being transformed into some new…I love old stuff, vintage, messy, torn. so when I saw material which were worn out, faded and old…their appearance changes, they age and they carry with themselves so many stories and experiences, which gives it a new character which no other brand can. Those fabrics represent us… plus the material still has potential to go on. The life cycle doesn’t end there.

RR - ” Prior to studying Textiles at Srishti, you studied Textiles and Clothing. How has that helped and influenced your work?

NN – “Yes, I did at Delhi University, I studied textiles and clothing as my major. It wasn’t design, it was just skill based, knowledge based study…very practical oriented. I learned techniques like tie and dye, block printing and developed a better understanding of fabric. It helps me now, cause after studying design, I can apply all that I have learned, in many creative ways, to bring new life to the old fabrics i work with. I want to incorporate all the techniques i know to enhance the up-cycled products that i am going to make in future.

RR - “Sounds amazing! Going back to your graduation project, tell me more about how it developed?”

NN - “So i started out with collecting old clothes from my friends, family and strangers…basically whoever wanted to share their old clothes with me, for the project..and then after i had a whole lot of clothing to work with, I kind of started with the process of deconstruction…I began with cutting up the clothes and tried to make new compositions. After much trial and error… I decided to make bags.”

RR - “Why bags, and not clothes?”

NN – “During the process I discovered that people in India, (especially since this has been my market), are very vary of using products made from recycled materials. Of course, that notion is now changing. I began to understand that people don’t like the idea of wearing something old- something that’s been worn by somebody else before…but with bags its not the same – they carry so many stories put together, in the form of old clothes and they don’t really come in direct contact with the skin. So i thought it may be something that opens up people’s minds to up-cycled clothing! I have always wanted to make clothes and I think I will at some point. I have already started with a dress and am on my way to making the second one.”

RR - “Nice! How has the response been to New improved?”

NN – “The response has been great, and it is very overwhelming to see how an idea that I had, one day in college, is shaping itself into something tangible!!People like the concept, appreciate it, and are fascinated by how clothes can turn into something new. But they still aren’t open enough to spend money on something that’s not entirely new!! Nonetheless, i have managed to do a few customs projects so far and am hoping for some more.”

RR – “Tell me a lil bit about your process, like after a client gets in touch with you, what’s the next step?”

NN – “Once a client gets in touch with me, I ask them about their material – like how old it is, who it belongs to, if it has a hand-me-down or if they bought it themselves, what do they want to make out of it, their needs and association with the material; if they have any stories, pictures etc. to share.Such questions help me get in touch with the material and its importance. Client projects are very special. After the first introduction, I start work on the design, based on what they want made…”

RR - “What tools are you using to market an publicise New Improved?”

NN - “Facebook and through friends. I have been featured in a couple of articles, in a few magazines and newspapers that gave me a great deal of visibility, plus New Improved went live on a local radio show as well!!

RR – “That’s fabulous. Publicity is always good.. do you think the project has developed since you began? where do you see it going?”

NN - ” I started retailing my products out of a store in Goa…I don’t know how commercial i want to make this project. Since i like to make products which are one off, and each product has its own individuality. I have been focusing on doing quality work even if it lacks quantity, and i want to focus on making my products with better finesse every time. I see myself working with people more…because that really inspires me to use people’s old clothes and give them back to the owner, after being transformed into a new product… I love the look on their faces. Also, i want to create a space where people can come in with their old clothes and get them up-cycled into anything they want…”

RR -  “As always, its been inspiring to chat with you. Its encouraging to see people be conscious about something as large and grey as waste. Thanks a ton for sharing your experiences and learning here. I love New Improved and wish you all the best and success with it!. (psst- where is my long overdue bag?” : )

NN - ” I want to thank you, Ria, for being a guide to me and New Improved, and I hope after reading this article, all you guys hit your closet and find clothes which you love but just haven’t worn in ages! Give them a new”, life now!!! (p.s -you’ll get a bag when u give me your old clothes!!!)

Namrata can her contacted directly at : newimproved.namrata@gmail.com

Her other work and play can be viewed here.

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 Emerging Markets department wanted to find ways to use simple technology to better the lives of marginalized communities.  Eventually, his group broke away and became an independent organization with advisory support from Microsoft. The group wanted to develop a way for farmers to share effective farming techniques with each other, to increase each farmer’s knowledge and skill-set.   Thus, they developed a method for training farmers: they taught them how to use video cameras and simple editing technology to produce their own films.

The philosophy is behind the intervention is simple – Seeing is believing. Using video as a tool to share information between farmers, generated by the farmers itself .Thereby reducing the disconnect between technology and the people and ensuring the quality of the content too. The Digital Green system provides structure to a traditional vocation of farming. It improves the efficiency of informal knowledge sharing by delivering targeted content to a wider audience and enabling farmers to better manage their farming operations with reduced field support. This system sustains relevancy in a community by developing a framework for participatory learning. It includes a digital video database, which is produced by farmers and experts. The content within this repository is of various types, and sequencing enables farmers to progressively become better farmers by learning from others and sharing information.

The main principals of Digital Green are –

• Cost realism, essential if we are to scale the system up to a significant number of villages and farmers
• Building systems that solve end-to-end agricultural issues with interactivity that develops relationships between people and content.

With content that touches upon agricultural practices across seasons to focused videos on techniques and practices, along with testimonials from other famer viewers; Rikin and his team have been working towards building the capacity of the farmer. Some other subjects that Digital Green has probed into include looking into different economic demographics and how it relates to the farmers community along with better sustainable practices and inspiring change in the behaviors of the farmer.

‘Today, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry and logging accounted for 16.6% of the GDP in 2007, employed 52% of the total work force and despite a steady decline of its share in the GDP, is still the largest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic development of India.’ < source – Wikipedia>

Given these statistics, the intervention spearheaded by Rikin and his team can only mean good things. Currently operating within 400 villages with 7 partner organisations, Digital Green hopes to extend its services to Africa. One of its immediate goals is to streamline and structure the process. The challenges lie on two levels – the human resource side and the technological development. On one hand they deal with training the trainers at a local level, and on the other – how to share video content? Especially in remote areas where there is no access to the internet.

 All videos produced are available to the public on their main website.

For more information, visit – http://digitalgreen.org/

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 examples of how people can get together remotely, collaborate and co-create stuff is Wikipedia. The idea of doing something similar except with the core being social entrepreneurship, was never too far from his mind. Also, every time he travelled, be it for work or play, he found himself being faced by a shade of reality that was different from the life he knew; and each time this happened, he felt that he could do something to change/better the situation. There were such obvious opportunities to do things efficiently, except that it was being ignored, opportunities that can make lives better and easier.

And so he did what he thought was important- travel. He quit his job, sold his car, pooled all his money and took off. Travelled across the country, met people, saw things and through this journey, he realised three things that he thought, are the hurdles to systemic development.

1.     There are many people with good intentions, but they don’t have the know-how or the access to expertise to make things happen.

2.     There were many people working on similar problems across the country, but didn’t know each other, causing redundancy, and often reinventing  the wheel

3.     There was no space for diversity in the thinking of solutions. So most of them were quick fixes.

So after 9 months on the road, there was this feeling that there is space for an idea that addresses all of the above. And serendipitously, while attending a Buddhist sermon that said – All things apparently random are actually INTEGRATING into the GREATER one – gave him the name of InteGreater. This is how InteGreater was born. It began with the vision to get all those who think they want to, and can help solve the world’s problems, together. An intervention in the form of a networking space for people to build contacts, interact, exchange knowledge, trade expertise and take ideas forward. It brings together resources and competencies of industry, academia, governments, NGOs & Social enterprises, and individuals, to enable development and implementation of ideas that will solve the problems of extreme poverty around the world and build a happy planet within 15 years.

There are two kinds of networks on InteGreater. One for social entrepreneurs and the other for those with demonstrated expertise in their respective domains. The idea is to let people find each within and across these networks. Since the inception of Protovillage, Kalyan has also been feeding of this network, and has been working on various ways to get experts from diverse disciplines to create more possibilities like Protovillage. Also, working full time on Protovillage, he has now stopped managing projects for social entrepreneurs and NGO’s, having decided to let them find each out and work on solutions. With no physical address, the idea is for InteGreater to stay online permanently, while constantly working towards widening this scope of the network. Currently, the network consists of about 2400 people offline and about 300 online; both globally and locally spread over 40 countries.

If you think you can contribute in any domain, you can join as the resource person, that the social entrepreneurs will call for when they need, or as a social entrepreneur, you can join to tap into this rich network of people who work under social and financial constraints to provide creative solutions for systemic development.

To know more, visit – http://www.integreater.org/

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 the country over the period of a year.

During this time, moving from the south right up to the north, Kalyan found that apart from the obvious poverty around; the statistics available on poverty was extremely dis-empowering. He found himself asking the question – Why is this number so important?  He also discovered that one of the main problems was the lack of access to expertise to come up with solutions and make them possible. Thus began InteGreater (more about it – coming soon). The main idea behind this venture was to bring together people with expertise, identify committed NGO’s, and serve as a common thread that brings them together.

Prototype began as a question posed in Kalyan’s mind – How does one define an ideal village? This began the quest to define this ideal village using a multi-dimensional approach which also looks at the definition of the desired state of being and more importantly, the word, enough. Another interesting route this project took was to create an “opportunity” get to that desired state and have sufficient access to factors that ensure dignity of life. While there is an infinite scope of extending this “desired state of being”, ProtoVillage decided to limit the possibility to ADEQUACY – which is achieving the desired state while maintaining the basic dignity of the people. The 12 dimensional approach to create a sustainable state of ADEQUACY have been defined as  -

Food Security

Water Conservation & Management

Shelter

Clothing

Healthcare

Energy

Income Generation

Education

Connectivity

Eco – Conservation & Disaster Management

Socio – Cultural Equality

Public Domain.

The force behind this idea being that “ If a multi-dimensional approach can comprehensively define  the poverty line, and effectively measure the population below it”, then team Proto believes that “ the definition of a desired state of being can be developed as a function of the same dimensions.” It is important to note that the idea isn’t merely about the supply of the above-mentioned dimensions but also the quality.  The 12 dimensions were arrived at from research and studies conducted by the team and the idea of ADEQUACY came from involving the residents of the chosen village-cluster.

One of the main objectives of this project is to document the development process into a robust theoretical framework that can be broadly replicated across the country. Having said this, there cannot be a formula-based approach and the proportions of each dimension cannot be defined. What Protovillage hopes to achieve is to define an outline, a broadly replicable framework of these dimensions that can be further tweaked and molded to suit each village-clusters individual requirements. This project also hopes to create a rural leadership model that will gradually take form and create an avenue for sustainable incomes for the villagers.

The village-cluster, currently being worked on, in situated in Andhra Pradesh. On asking Kalyan, how the village was selected, he said that they travelled to over 166 villages and chose this one primarily because he is familiar with the language. Given that they are currently in the experimental phase, it makes sense to chose a space that it more familiar than alien. It helps that this cluster has huge forested area in close proximity, giving them an opportunity to introduce the idea of social forestry to the villagers.

While Protovillage began as Kalyan’s idea and vision, he now plays the role of a gatekeeper. In his own words,  “I’ve brought people in, sent those who weren’t meant to be out and didn’t let the others leave”. The Protovillage team currently consists of peoples from various disciplines and with unique set of expertise, all of who are living of their savings and living their dreams. A small bunch of enthusiastic volunteers, who are more than happy to have people passionate about social innovations and participatory practices, on board.With 1091 days left to build the prototype of an Adequate Village Cluster, here’s wishing the project all the best with its endeavors. Anyone interested and willing to help can get in touch with the team at – kalyan@integreater.org or fra@integreater.org

To know more , visit – www.protovillage.org

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 the naked eye. In Yashas Shetty’s words, Artist and faculty member at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology as well as Artist-in-Residence at NCBS – National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) – “this mixing and matching of elements to create new things was a bit like what artists did. But instead of using paints and canvas, synthetic biologists used life itself.”

This thoughtful insight by Yashas Shetty led him to mentor a bunch of art& design students – who knew very little, if anything about science to participate in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last year. One of the aims of the competition is to attempt to build simple biological systems from standard, interchangeable parts and operate them in living cells.

The iGEM competition facilitates this by providing a library of standardized parts (called BioBrick standard biological parts) to students, and asking them to design and build genetic machines with them. Student teams can also submit their own BioBricks. Successful projects produce cells that exhibit new and unusual properties by engineering sets of multiple genes together with mechanisms to regulate their expression.

Information about BioBrick standard biological parts, and a toolkit to make and manipulate them, is provided by the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, or simply, the Registry. This is a core resource for the iGEM program, and one that has been evolving rapidly to meet the needs of the program. Beyond just building biological systems, broader goals of iGEM include:

• To enable the systematic engineering of biology.
• To promote the open and transparent development of tools for engineering biology.
• To help construct a society that can productively apply biological technology.

As per the rules of the competition, MIT sends all participants 400 bits of DNA. They are all numbered. One cant go to a database of parts on the web and find out which DNA makes what and then make your organism in the laboratory using the DNA bits.

NCBS had been sending students for MIT’s iGem competition for the last couple of years. Last year they decided to send art students – who knew nothing about science – to participate instead. They were called the ArtScience Team from Bangalore. And, unlike scientists, the artists came up with a project which only artists could have thought of: they were going to replicate the smell of first rain in a laboratory— that odour when pure water from the skies mixes with soil.” The English word for the smell is Petrichor, a non-lyrical name for a phenomenon that is so emotive. The primary cause behind the smell, however, has a slightly more lyrical name: Geosmin, an organic chemical.

The students did the scientific parts in the laboratory of NCBS. At the end of it, Shetty says, the experiment didn’t turn out the smell of first rain. Instead there was this smell of dampness.

But it was enough.

They won the third prize for science. The presentation, in which they explained how a group of art students became scientists for a season, got them a special prize for best presentation. “They said that they started off as artists and are now talking to scientists. I think that impressed the judges,” says Mukund Thattai of NCBS, whose laboratory the art students had used for this experiment. The ArtScience Team took synthetic biology to new groups, running workshops to teach designers to build working DIY microscopes using webcams and ran creative workshops at a school for the urban poor. This idea of “human practices” – that is, exploring the ethical and social implications of the technology – was a new focus of last year. What made this team stand out from the rest was the fact that they looked at the field from a beginners perspective and climbed their way up to the knowledge filed and shared it with anyone who was interested. While the other teams were focusing on a problem-solution approach they were more interested in making the knowledge that iGEM was distributing as accessible and open source as possible. Their process- start to finish, complete with drawings was documented in a handbook that was printed at distributed at the competition. It’s no surprise that they ran out of copies. The handbook is available for free download at – http://hackteria.org/wiki/images/a/a1/Handbook.pdf

When I asked Neha Bhatt, member of the ArtScience team – about her first hand experience with synthetic biology and its processes, she said “ it was a real eye –opener. For me, the competition’s process opened up a whole new area I’d never known existed. The field of artists doing science and the boundaries b/w art and science being traversed.”

Apart from being instrumental in changing people’s perspective towards synthetic biology, the participation of students of art+design in an otherwise science competition, threw open many discussions; primarily that was access. Should Science as a field and practice remain inclusive or should it open its doors to creative practioners as well; to explore and create? There were those purists, of course, who simply did not take them seriously, for they believed that artist’s are those who draw the bio diagrams; and the main question that they were faced with was – ” So if  you guys being beginners can be given the authority to play around with real life, can anyone looking to harm society also not to do the same?”

They’re answer was simply that their project was an experiment to these questions.

Team ArtScience 2010 is all set to make another appearance at this year’s IGEM. Here’s wishing them all the best and one hopes that more such lines between seemingly disparate disciplines get blurred, norms get challenged, more knowledge gets shared and that perceptions are constantly altered.

The iGEM 2010 site –

http://2010.igem.org/Main_Page

The wiki of Team ArtScience Bangalore -

http://2009.igem.org/Team:ArtScienceBangalore

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 in the countryside. Primary health centers and sub centers rely on trained paramedics to meet most of their needs. The main problems affecting the success of primary health centers are the predominance of clinical and curative concerns over the intended emphasis on preventive work and the reluctance of staff to work in rural areas. -(Source – Wikipedia)

This is where the Low cost self-diagnosis tool comes in.

Winner of the International Design Excellence Awards 08 (http://www.idsa.org/IDEA_Awards/gallery/2008/award_details.asp?ID=35918307), this is a mechanical self-diagnosis tool was created to help patients in rural India capture symptoms and provide them basic information about their disease. Made with recycled materials to maintain low costs, it aims to empower patients and aid doctors with accurate diagnosis and efficient recovery throughout the rural parts of the country.

Designed at Honeywell Technology Solutions in Bangalore by Ankur Sardana (NID) and Parag Trivedi (IDC), this tool displays relevant information. With simple rotation of rings & mapping on the chart, the tool provides -

1. Criticality of disease, basic suggestions (like – ‘how soon to meet the doctor’)

2. Kind of diagnostic tests would be done on them (this is based on the research finding that the villagers are quite suspicious of blood being used for testing & also unprepared for the expense which tests might require)

3. Cases in which they should meet a specialist directly instead of going to a general practitioner

4. Information & contact numbers of healthcare providers

The tool consists of a set of Rings (symptoms), a disease chart & other information. These rings could be made of cheap but durable cardboard. Each ring has set of symptoms. The patient rotates the rings (starting from smallest) & chooses his symptoms by bringing them in one line, below the marker. Each symptom has a number printed on it. The user maps the disease code (set of numbers, 1 from each ring) on the chart. The chart provides tentative result –disease name, severity, next steps, diagnostic tests required to confirm disease, doctor they should meet (i.e. which specialty) & contact information of doctors &hospitals. Made out recycled plastic/cardboard, it is easy to be produced locally in the villages.

The low-cost self-diagnosis tool was born out of the need to provide rural Indian patients with a method to help themselves. Healthcare has not been a priority of rural dwellers in India & they have been used to taking ‘over the counter drugs’ or getting quick relief in the form of a steroid injection from the unregistered medical practitioners- URMP’s (in villages there are usually no qualified doctors). Though an immediate solution, it is not a proper one, disease symptoms resurface & the patient is rushed to a proper registered doctor in the city, who now administers an emergency case where it could have been a case of normal diagnosis. With the tool, the rural dwellers can be empowered with basic knowledge about their disease & can avoid the mistreatment by URMP’s. This tool can also be used by NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and self-help groups (in cases of illiteracy) to increase awareness & help make disease symptoms more understandable to the patients. There is also a mutual benefit for healthcare providers and patients. The patients save the money and side effects of self-medication and time, while the doctors have increased inflow of patients and thus more usage of their services.

Currently, in its present form it has not been tested on a large-scale. Most of the feedback has been gathered from the villagers. The educated villagers usually becomes excited, as they understand that they can get empowered if they have some idea of what disease they have. What has been tested in the field (in UP) is a variant in which there are no results, just collection of symptoms. The results have been mixed. Literacy is by far the biggest problem.

While this tool doesn’t aim to act as the messiah of the rural health care problems in the country, it certainly is a step in the right direction. One hopes that it inspires other creative practitioners and problem solvers to delve deeper into this space. It certainly needs more such social innovations.

For more information about more the tool, contact: Ankur Sardana: ankur.sardana@honeywell.com

More on Honeywell at – https://www.honeywell.com/sites/htsl/

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 and heroines, the small deeds that were making a difference and filtering out stories of scandals, gossip, murders and other such morbid doing that made their way to mainstream news. The Better India consolidates material relating to the incremental progress being made by industrious people of the country who actually care about change. Focusing on developments being made on the social and economic front, and hoping to inspire people to create an impact, The Better India does something quite simple – it makes one believe that not all hope is lost.

The Better India began as a blog because of its low cost of delivery and easy accessibility. Acting as a filterblog, by posting relevant links of stories, after scanning through loads of materials from newspapers, magazines and other blogs; it started primarily via reader contributions and soon gained traction through individuals and social networks. While it is currently a self-funded initiative, Dhimant hopes to make The Better India a commercial, for-profit venture.

Nearly two years old – The Better India now publishes original content. With a new post every week – Dhimant and Anuradha are on a constant look out for stories. Each article is well researched, people interviewed and facts verified. They even recently began an internship program and currently have two interns working at The Better India. The interns are very involved with the news coverage and reporting and publish their own articles on the blog. The main objective still remains in letting people know of the good things happening around them, and connecting like- minded people. It also hopes to be a good resource base for people wanting to make an impact but not knowing what or how to go about doing it. Providing the readers with real life examples helps in illustrating the possibilities of various acts – however small, to create a larger impact.

With adequate press coverage and tie up’s with NGO’s, The Better India has gained large visibility in the city of Bangalore and throughout the country. Dhimant was even invited by IIM – Ahmedabad to give a talk on Positive Journalism.

Aside from spending most of his time with The Better India, Dhimant is also a writer. His foray into writing began when he was introduced to a friend’s blog, which led him to start him own. He began writing short stories as part of his blog. When his stories were well received by his readers, he decided to take ten favorite stories and put them together in a self – published book. His collection of short stories called “Neumonia and Other Sketch Stories” is also available as an e-book, can be downloaded at – http://www.sketchstories.com/

One can read more of Dhimant at – http://www.dhimantparekh.com/

The Better India at – http://www.thebetterindia.com/

]]> http://www.designwala.org/2010/04/the-better-india-positive-news-happy-stories-unsung-heroes/feed/ 1 http://www.designwala.org/2010/03/bambike-a-bamboo-bicycle/ http://www.designwala.org/2010/03/bambike-a-bamboo-bicycle/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:52:12 +0000 Ria http://www.designwala.org/?p=523

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 far from the truth. Well, at least, the latter. Today I had the opportunity to talk to Vijay Sharma – creator of Bambike- India’s first bicycle made of Bamboo. After accidently being enrolled at the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, Vijay’s foray into manufacturing bamboo bicycles began nearly two years ago, when his wife Niyatee bought herself a cycle to commute to work. Currently located in Bangalore, He began researching cycles online and came across the trike design. A trike (abbreviation for tricycle) is a three-wheeled vehicle, different from our very own cycle rickshaws in its placement of two wheels in the front and one at the back. While tricycles are often associated with the small three-wheeled vehicles used by pre-school children, adults also use them for a variety of purposes. In Asia and Africa, tricycles are used primarily for commercial transportation, either of passengers in pedicabs or of freight and deliveries.

The idea of trikes were far too irresistible for Vijay and soon he began to design his own. After a brief stint at a furniture design company, since he always wanted to have a workshop of his own, Vijay began his own workshop called ‘6mm Designs and Furniture’ along with two friends. It was in a rundown garage in a small alley of one of the crowded areas in Bangalore. Slowly they expanded and reached out to a bigger clientele, mass-producing furniture for them. The workshop provided Vijay with the space to continue his experiments with bicycles. The trike took 6 months to come to life – from the drawing board to execution.  Last year, a friend suggested he design a bicycle using bamboo. Armed with months of research, and with a few ideas of his own, Vijay made his very first Bambike in 3 days.  The first prototype was made with raw bamboo with metal sleeves on junctions. This resulted in a little fishtail wobbliness at high speeds. The second prototype was made using thicker bamboo sections and this time with a jig to hold all members and important junctions like bottom brackets, rear drop out, head tube and seat tube.  Here the parts were glued together without metal sleeves and using hemp fiber. A more streamlined and ergonomically superior one followed. After making the first prototype of the Bambike, Vijay met Arun Katiyar. Arun is involved with the Ride-A-Cycle Foundation that promotes biking and going green – a small way to give back to the environment. He was instrumental in encouraging Vijay to develop his bamboo bike further. While Vijay made more prototypes, Arun tested them out and gave him relevant feedback to improvise on the designs.

Bambike then went on to associate itself with TFN – Tour of the Nilgiris. The TFN is a challenging mountain bike event and would be a great avenue to test out the endurance of the bamboo bicycles as well as get it more endorsements. Vijay decided to create a bambike for the event, that would be awarded to the most sporting participant of the 8-day 900km cycling rally.

At 12 kgs, it weighs 3 kgs less than the first prototype and does not compromise on features, functionality or aesthetics. Bamboo serves as an apt material given its tensile strength and tubular structure. The fact that it is eco friendly doesn’t hurt one bit. Using Bamboo also cuts down the energy consumption as compared to steel, aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber. Bamboo has better shock- absorbing power for rough roads, and Vijay is working on a stiffer version for smooth roads.

Given the story so far, one would think that Bambike would have more buyers. This query led us to a discussion about the notion that most people have about Bamboo being a poor man’s timber. This notion tends to result in an expectation that given the material replacement, the cost of the bicycle should be tremendously cheaper. However what people seem to forget is the amount of effort that goes into the creation of a single handcrafted Bambike. While the idea of the bamboo bicycle has gained popularity in the country, it has had very few buyers. This doesn’t seem to deter Vijay’s spirit. He believes that he has achieved what he set out to, when he decided to design and create Bambike. While an increase in the sales of Bambike would definitely be a plus, he hopes for more people to start cycling for its health benefits and as an attempt by people to reduce their carbon footprints. It’s a hope for more environmental consciousness in an age of mass consumption.

For more information visit – http://handcraftedbikes.blogspot.com

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 voice and web features such as SMS, USSD, automated voice systems, and operator manned call centers, enabling employers and job seekers to find each other. The simple premises, upon which it built itself and continues to grow on, are –

• Everyone deserves to get a better job, no matter what their income or skill level, and
• Technology can enhance our ability to both hire more efficiently, and better communicate with those we care about.

While at Microsoft Research India in 2005, CEO Sean Blagsvedt co-ran the Advanced Development and Prototyping Team and worked very closely with the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, whose aim was to study and invent new ways that technology could be used to positively impact the social and economic development of the world’s poorest 4 billion people. Sean’s first thought was “Great – all they need is the village version of LinkedIn.com!” In reality however, in order to make such a system work, one has to overcome the problem that most low-income workers of the world may not be literate, nor own a mobile phone and rarely own or have ready access to an Internet-connected PC. Most people in India find jobs through people they know – namely their extended social network – and most employers – particularly when hiring employees that work in the home – would like to hire a person who someone they trust can vouch for. Another important factor with the increase of travel time (owing to the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads) and often-unreliable public transport has resulted in people looking for jobs closer to home, in their neighborhoods. More often than not, it’s the simply not-knowing that causes people to miss out on better-suited opportunities. Babajob.com is an attempt to digitize this process and information to efficiently “get the word out” and importantly provide an incentive for the folks in between an employer and employee to connect people together.

By leveraging web and mobile technology, Babajob scales and engages a wider audience creating greater efficiency for employers and further deepens the social impact on job seekers. Employers can conveniently browse job seeker profiles based on salary, location, languages, employment background, skills and references. Babajob offers several fee-based services to help in the matching and hiring of seekers.

With services available for all major cities in the country, Babajob is currently testing out a new voice application that will help communicate the necessary information into various regional languages. With a likely tie up with a mobile handset maker – the goal is to transcend, once again, the language and literacy barrier, to broaden the scope of Babajob’s services.

Babajob serves as a fine example of complex system design for a country that is socially and linguistically diverse; and where literacy is a major point of consideration, while attempting to make information accessible.  With a constantly evolving set of parameters and a strong belief in the transformative power of software on society, Babajob is social entrepreneurship at its best. By tapping into informal social interactions and streams of information, and using a blended value business model that combines a revenue generating business with a social-value-generating component, it provides us with a glimpse of the paradigm shift that is brewing with regards to businesses in emerging economies.

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 been popping up at a very frequent rate, in the art+ design circle here in Bangalore. Over the last couple of months, it has become a hotspot for performances, exhibitions, workshops and social interventions. To break it down, Jaaga, which means space in Kannada, is an urban community art-architecture experiment, currently situated in Bangalore. It is a modular structure that employs a participatory design process where the community helps build and use it. It includes web enabled workspaces and large multi-level public spaces. The fact that this building is mobile and can be moved to different neighbourhoods, cities and countries; taking with it its culture of pushing the envelope of innovation and pro-activism at a neighbourhood level to greater heights, is an added bonus.

Jaaga was born out of Archana’s insatiable desire for a dedicated space for the city’s artists who are rich in talent albeit not necessarily in funds, to showcase their work.  Together with fellow artists Suresh Kumar G and Shivaprasad S, they founded an artist collective called Samuha. With 23 artists of various disciplines like painting, sculpture, new media and performance arts, Samuha is running for 414 days, having started June 22, 2009. Each artist member owns 17 days at the space and can use it for exhibitions, seminars, workshops and interactions on art practices.

Samuha being in place, Archana’s quest for an artistic haven – a creative common place, was still on. A chance meeting between Archana and Freeman Murray, an American technologist in India, lead to the creation of Jaaga, Having successfully worked with pallet racks in the past through various projects in the US, he suggested constructing a modular sturdy structure using this warehouse shelving, usually used for heavy duty industrial purposes. Pallet racking is a material handling storage system designed to store materials on pallets. Although there are many varieties of pallet racks, all types allow for the storage of palletized materials in horizontal rows with multiple levels.

Jaaga is a massive structure made up of red and blue pallet racks put together and looks like a movie set. With the assistance of volunteers, Jaaga was built up in all of 15 hours. The flooring is made up of plywood and metal wires and the walls are made of billboards. Being fully mobile, it can be dismantled and reassembled within hours. Jaaga is currently redesigning itself into being more spacious and modular. The entire structure will be a dichotomy between a natural earthy airy area and cyber industrial space.  Jaaga’s USP is that it brings together art, technology and social change activists to share their practices with the world and with the neighbourhood. It also re-looks the concept and conception of space; and that real estate can be moved, folded and floating.  Archana wanted the whole structure to look like a Lego building. When they got the space, a 300 sq. ft plot, they had to clean it up, as there was a lot of garbage and weeds that had grown around it. Volunteers came in and helped remove the garbage and weeded the place out.

The first event at Jaaga was the Robert Bosch Art Grant ceremony. Since its inception, Jaaga has hosted various events, including a performance by the Attakkalari Center for Movement Arts, which had eight dancers performing in eight modular spaces. As a space, it is available free of cost and artists or anyone interested are invited to submit proposals with ideas on how they would like to use the space. The vision of Jaaga is that it becomes a future University that harnesses the power of modern technology to herald a new breed of creative thinkers and doers; also to be a virtual repository of avant-garde thinking stemming in India and rooted in the world.

To quote Archana – “We live the reality of a world whose path, starting from mass production – industrialisation, has created the tensions that the West worries about. We already live it. Being an artist in that landscape can only be interesting. As artists we are super sensitive to these cracks and tears in the fabric of society. Our works are reactions, imaginations, renditions, and explorations of the chaos that surround us. How can anything honest that comes out of such stark, harsh, cruel yet beautiful reality be anything short of exciting. India is a hotbed of superbness now.”

For more information visit – http://jaaga.wikidot.com/