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

Ever had to catch one of those New Delhi auto-rickshaws? You know that you are being taken for a ride then. The rickshaw drivers are rude, they refuse to go by the meter, they always seem to be going the opposite direction to where you want to be going. I have questioned the local transportation system in the capital a bunch of times. The new metro system is a part of the solution but will not really replace the rickshaws as far as short distances are concerned. The government intervened in 1998 only to implement CNG or LPG for all auto-rickshaws and the bus fleet in the city. However, there were no service changes in order to improve any of these transportation systems. Recently, I came across a non governmental organization called NyayaBhoomi. The two main centers of focus for this organization are public transportation system and government accountability.

NyayaBhoomi has been developing a venture called the ‘Auto Star Club’ for sometime. The venture is focused on developing an auto rickshaw service that creates an ecosytem of profit generation, client services, long term growth options for the drivers, and technological innovation. NyayaBhoomi published a handbook for the auto drivers that tells them about their rights and duties. The book is aptly titled “Samaadhan” and was published in June 2007. They have also facilitated advertising on auto rickshaws by creating an organized framework for such advertising and got the Municipal Corporation of India to approve this initiative. Around 10,000 rickshaws are registered as volunteers under this system and around 5000 of them are expected to be included in the Autotisement initiative.

A new initiative called Auto Star Club is an initiative that aims improving the auto rickshaw service in India. They intend to have a call-in rickshaw service, very much like a taxi service. The auto’s would be equipped with GPS system to calculate distance and estimate the fare. The drivers would undergo and intensive etiquette and manner training sessions to deal with customers. They also want to create an organized sector for employment by giving the drivers uniforms, health-care and other retirement benefits. This would be made possible by money from the advertisements as well as higher fares.

The ‘Mission Mafia se Mukti‘ initiative is aimed at freeing up rickshaws from the clutches of the Mafia. NyayaBhoomi is still trying to raise money in order to put the some of these systems in place. Their main goal is to understand the underlying problems that causes the rickshaw service in India to be flawed, inefficient and corrupt and then work on solving the problem. It is almost a bit scary to think how we live through broken systems everyday and do very little to rectify them. NyayaBhoomi has taken that step and I hope they succeed. They made this very entertaining but very educational film about future possibilities in this sector that can be put into place as soon as Oct 2010. A hopeful film and perhaps a future possibility.

Jinal Shah is a digital strategist and works for Electric Artists in NYC. She describes herself as a thinker, writer and storyteller and jots down her thoughts in her blog - Constant Beta. She also started a blog called Dsplaced that aggregates stories from people and talks about their sense of displacement from home and country. She spoke to Designwala about innovation in India through incremental change. She also talks about examples where storytelling has been used in education, women’s empowerment and social change.

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/bpl-studylite-by-studio-abd/ http://www.designwala.org/2010/03/bpl-studylite-by-studio-abd/#comments Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:58:37 +0000 Ria http://www.designwala.org/?p=684

In India, power cuts during exam time is every child’s biggest anxiety. One breaks into a sweat, starts pacing up and down and even goes to the extreme of praying to the Almighty; promising reforms, pledging away a life of sin and the long dreadful countdown to when the lights will turn back on.

This very real, and seemingly life-threatening fear is what served as a starting point for Studio ABD when they began designing StudyLite – a LED lamp, in collaboration with BPL. Studio ABD firmly believes in story telling as integral part of designing products and services; and so it seems fitting that the lamp was inspired by the ring of halo that hovers above the head of the wise and saintly. Light is the quintessential metaphor of enlightenment.  Designer Abhijit Bansod visualised a ring of light glowing over the head when a child is studying. In the StudyLite he has tried to keep things simple yet unique.

This iconic and animated study lamp embodies a smooth and seamless form to allow maximum user interaction as it’s designed especially for children. It is extremely eco-friendly with its solar charging capability and low power consumption; and has a 6-hour battery back up to provide uninterrupted source of light while studying. Ergonomically simple, portable and lightweight StudyLite has recently won the prestigious Red Dot award. Red Dot stands for belonging to the best in design and business. The red dot is an internationally recognized quality label for excellent design that is aimed at all those who would like to qualify their business activities with the help of design. This is a proud moment and a big leap forward for Indian Design, being perhaps the first Indian company to receive such critical acclaim.

Another refreshing feature of this rechargeable lamp is that every lamp is marked ‘Designed and Made in India’.  Studio ABD wanted to highlight the fact that the components of the lamp, the assembly and the design were all done here, within the country – promoting the use of locally available resources, materials, people and technology.

StudyLite came into existence by the sheer genius of the design team who worked directly with the end users without much interference from the manufacturers –BPL. The biggest challenged faced by them was to tackle the mindset of resistance from the manufacturers. While they were extremely supportive of original design and idea, the concept of having a halo head for the lamp seemed a tad unnecessary. Fortunately, it was nothing a little patience and persistence couldn’t contend with.

Another problem they had to deal with was the pricing of StudyLite. At the moment, being marketed at a little more than Rs, 1500, there seems to be a slight apprehension to spend that much, despite its pleasing aesthetics, functionality and sheer practicality. Again, it’s a matter of tackling mindsets. Studio ABD hopes that the right marketing and publicity will go a long way in helping them do so.  Winning the Red Dot has done wonders for StudyLite in making its presence felt in the Indian market. Currently available throughout the country, it is now gearing up to be hopefully exported and retailed internationally.

To know more about Studio ABD, please visit – http://www.studioabd.in/

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/

Most people in the US of A, may have already heard about the Uniform Project. But for those few who still don’t know, here is a quick update. Uniform Project is the brain child of this quirky, fun and fabulous girl called Sheena Matheiken from Brooklyn, NY. She was born and raised in South India and like most desis in the US, came here to study and then work. Her concept for the Uniform Project is simple. She has decided to wear one dress for a whole year as an exercise in sustainable fashion.

She has 7 pieces of the same black dress designed by her friend and fashion designer Eliza Starbuck, one for each day of the week [incase you were wondering when she does her laundry]. But she wears them in different ways everyday. Every day she reinvents the dress with layers, accessories and all kinds of accouterments, the majority of which are vintage, hand-made, or hand-me-down goodies either donated or bought on ebay. The point of this entire year long exercise is to raise funds for a charity called Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots non-profit founded in Mumbai in 1990 through the volunteered efforts of college students devoted to bringing education to children living in the slums.

She is on her 270^th day today and has already risen over $53,000 in funds. And you can check out her daily outfit updates and make a donation at

http://theuniformproject.com/home/daily/Transverse-planes.html?month=January

Part of this entire adventure which I am sure Sheena had intended was to raise awareness about education of underprivileged children in India. And using design and sustainability to do it, worked perfectly well in the whole realm of “doing the right thing”. But the idea is so fabulous that the awareness has spread wide and how? Interview with BBC, appearance at the London Fashion week, fund raisers in Ireland, New York and now our very own Mumbai, India.

A week ago Sheena was in India, traveling to check out Akanksha projects, meet the children in person, and she where her project funds are actually going to be used. The trip turned out to be an opportunity for Vogue India, Bungalow 8 and Akansha to collaborate with Sheena on yet another fundraiser to help the cause. And what is amazing about this fundraiser is that it is still in tandem with the entire concept of Sustainable Design.

Six of India’s cool fashion designers took on the challenge to convert old saris into fabulous new modern-day wear, accessories and footwear. I mean how cool is it to have zardozi on your ballet slippers? All the proceeds from the sales at the event go to Akanksha’s cause. The designers included Little Shilpa, Miriam Sterhlau, Dadablui, Xylem, Sanchita and the amazing Indian couture guru, James Ferreira. I really wish I were visiting Bombay soon to check out the goodies and instantly add them to my wardrobe. What better way to get some retail therapy than at the cost of good karma?

For more information on the Uniform Project visit http://www.theuniformproject.com/

Unlike the westerners Indians use water to clean themselves after going to the toilet. However while traveling in cramped trains, the toilets have running water, but dont have containers or mugs to store the water to clean with. This unique problem has been addressed by Paul Sandeep. He designed a sustainable, disposable mug that could be distributed/sold by local vendors.  The mugs could also carry ads for local businesses and will be made out of recyclable paper and organic glue. It should be able to carry 1.2 litres of water.

For more details check out Paul Sandeep’s explanation of the product on INDEX awards.