M. P. Ranjan is a senior member of the faculty of the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, India and Chair of the Task Force on GeoVisualization set up by the Government of India. Ranjan is highly respected in the design community as a person who has unique insights about wide range of opportunities and responsibilities that lay before designers. He has deep knowledge of design applications in high tech sector, at the same time he has pursued projects to explore potential of bamboo, and other appropriate materials. Ranjan continually explores cultural, ethical, technological, and social issues that pose intellectual challenges for the design community.

 

 

Design as Culture: Design can bridge cultures with its core ability for the sensitive creation of value from channeling human intentions through informed thoughts and actions. Design helps a society connect all of human knowledge with its deeper sensibilities and aspirations and it was an integral part of social and economic action till recent times. Access to new technologies and the democratization of global communication promises give new meaning to creative expressions in a two way process that we are now attempting to build into the “Design with India” initiatives going forward.

 

Design if a powerful integrator at the systems level while it may continue to be operative at multiple levels and work across multiple sectors, materials and fields of business and social life. Our conviction about its effectiveness stems from the experience of numerous development projects that we have in India over the past fifty years of using it as a critical tool for economic and social development. Other countries too are veering towards this new view of design as a vehicle for culture and it is here that we are likely to see its true value for human development.