Kingston student reports on India trip
As previously featured on the FADA blog, Kingston student Karishma Rafferty won a British Council funded place on a trip of a lifetime travelling the length and breadth of India to look at new design projects. The MA Curating Contemporary Design student joined 450 other young people for the trip that will last 15 days and cover 6,000 miles. Please visit http://blogs.kingston.ac.uk/fada/2011/12/14/student-books-her-passage-to-india/ for more information.
Below is Karishma’s account of the trip.
On Xmas Eve 2011 I found myself standing on a crowded platform with around 600 others waiting to board the most ambitious train journey in the world. Journeying almost 8000km in 15days, the 450 participants in the group came from 24 different states in India and 23 countries worldwide. This annual journey called the Jagriti Yatra or awakening journey seeks to inspireparticipants to thinkentrepreneuriallyaround India’s development.
Each day the train pulled in at some new part of the country and we were whisked off on 10 buses to listen to local role-model speak about their enterprises. The speakers and visits were incredibly diverse. In Bangalore we heard Narayana Murthyexplain the vision and values that his silicone-valley like IT company with over $6bn revenue while in a small village in Rajasthan,Bukner Roy explained howGranniesfrom rural areas all over the world were coming to Tilonia to learn how to be solar engineers atBarefoot College.
Coming from a comparativelysmall country like England, it is hard for a first time visitor to comprehend the scale and diversity within India. Living on a train with people from 24 out of the 28 different states certainly helped highlight the huge differences in culture, attitudes and language across the country. Almost 70% of the 1.2bn population live in rural environments and most of those areas will each speak a language other than English or Hindi. India is filled with multi-millionaires and many cities are thriving ports for business and development. In contrast, villages such as Nerankati in Tamil Nadu felt relatively untouched my modern technology or ways of living. Need in different parts of the country vary from lack of basic sanitation and power (both in rural and urban environments) to modern issues such as lack of infostructure capable of handling the rubbish created from all the new consumer products.
The country is morphing and developing at such a rate that it is hard to imagine how these changes will be manifest themselves in even just a few years. You’ve almost certainly heard theprediction thatIndia will soon overtake China as the largest population in the world, well it will also be the youngest population in the world meaning a big opportunity for new ideas and attitudes to blossom. Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre and Chair of Culture for the 2012 London Olympics joined us for the last leg of the journey. She spoke inspiringly in Rajasthan about the role of women within this change. In a time of whirlwind transformation in these ancient lands, social and cultural change as well as every other, is in the making.
A running joke on the train was that everyone from Britain was a designer and every Indian was an engineer. A cliché maybe but it really felt true at the time. The train was filled with young Indians wanting to become entrepreneurs, a strange new concept to many. Explaining my design background to crowds of engineers proved a daily challenge despite it being a key aspectof many of the organisations we visited. The vision at Arivand Eye Care in Madurai is to eradicate unnecessary blindness, a widespread problem in India. By re-designing the whole system of treatment, each Arivand surgeon can treat 200 patients a day as opposed to 5 a dayin the US.The hospital nowattracts top medical students from all over the worldwho study at Arivand to learn the ethos and model that makes the (once) unbelievable a reality.
Although my whirlwind experience was mostly spent seeing India through a train or bus window, it was enough to get a feel for the challenges and opportunities the country has to offer. It was wonderful to be surrounded by so many young entrepreneurs looking at ways to make a positive contribution to their country. Given my design background, I couldn’t help imagining the incredible opportunities for designers in the country too. This dual potential for designers and entrepreneurs to shape a country is something that I am really excited about. Change is afoot and India is at the frontier. What did I learn on the train journey of a lifetime? I learnt that there are incredible opportunities out there; the most important thing you is a vision.
For updates on my new project, a platform for discourse on the crossovers between design and entrepreneurship follow @designpreneurProject on twitter and for more on my Indiatrip visit www.designyatri.wordpress.com
Karishma Rafferty is a current MA Curating Contemporary Design student and a graduate of BA Graphic Design at Kingston University.