‘NID has taken key steps to bring industry to campus’

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: bring industry to the campus, and has also made efforts to connect the campus with industry across the country. Many industries now make it a habit to come to the campus. Industry has become aware of the need for user-centric good design. Through industry programmes, we have trained over 2,500 working professionals in the last 5 years, thus taking the message to different segments of industry. Significant consultancy projects and highly challenging new programmes have helped to serve high-growth industry segments. Bridging the demand gap for designers has helped industry a great deal in recent years.

As the key architect of the first National Design Policy, could you give us insights into the background work that went into shaping this policy and what is the blueprint, with particular focus on the role of design education?

I have been inspired by the design policies of some Scandinavian countries and also of the Korean Design Policy. Today, India has a National Design Policy that is looked upon as an important document for evolving the Indian design scene. The policy lays special emphasis on the spread of design education, and has endorsed NID becoming a deemed university, for which work has already been completed. In the near future, NID will become India’s first National Design University. More campuses in the lines of NID are also envisaged, apart from a major initiative to introduce design in the engineering curriculum.

NID has succeeded in creating industry-sponsored research chairs. What is the concept and how has this helped build the industry-institute nexus? What is the actual role of research in design?

I discovered quite early on that design has been a strange victim of practice. Industry-funded research chairs--the first of which was set up with the help of Jindal Stainless and the latest being that of the Jamsetji Tata Research Chair with a corpus of Rs 325 lakh--are focused on generating new research opportunities for faculty and students. Without fundamental and applied research, Indian design will remain incremental. From a follow-the-leader policy to design leadership, the journey is tough and can be achieved only through cutting-edge research.

How has NID enabled industry to take the ideas to the marketplace? What is the scene for designers and design consultancies in the country?