Sadanand Menon: Confused debates over design

CRITICALLY INCLINED

In Shantiniketan, last fortnight, I was part of a symposium on 'design' coinciding with the birth centenary of Gauri Bhanja, daughter of Nandlal Bose, the legendary director of Kalabhavan. After finishing her tutelage under her father and the visionary architect Surendranath Kar in 1928, Gauri Bhanja taught in Kalabhavan for 44 years, imparting skills in disciplines like ornamental design, alpana, tie-and-die, batik, leather work, embroidery and papier mache. She was also among the first women from Bengali 'high' society, way back in 1926 (and pre-dating Rukmini Devi Arundale), to perform as a dancer on stage.

Gauri Bhanja's believed in beauty and decoration as integral to ordinary, everyday life. The symposium in her memory dealt with several questions. Does design make culture or does culture make design? Is design about embellishment and decoration or is it about the elimination of ornamentation to enhance function? Do crafts-persons express design or do they express identity and aesthetics?

I could not resist pointing out some terminological ambiguities and confusions. In the Indian context, in particular, it is important to mark these distinctions. We are compelled to negotiate the space between 'designer', 'artisan' and 'craftsperson'.

'Designer' has a modernist connotation. These are professional practitioners in our times, working in advertising, fashion, graphics, publications, film and animation, industry, urban architecture and town planning, software and IT, and so on. This is a community of persons linked to the global industrial economy and, perhaps, is not more than a quarter-of-a-million strong.

The core Indian artisanal base, however, would be easily over 80 million strong. These are our vishwakarmas and sthapatis "" the masons, carpenters, silver, gold and ironsmiths, the master builders of looms, musical instruments, cooking and water vessels, boats, bullock carts, mosques and temples. They are essentially linked to a production economy of appropriate technology, ergonomic design, low resources and high performance.

Then there is the vast unorganised pool of over 180 million craftspersons spread across the country, part of a skilled but subsistence economy, who represent the real diversity of this land. You can make a textile map of the country just based on the names of specific textile traditions "" Chanderi, Paithani, Masoola,Kanjeevaram, Benarasi, Sambhalpuri, Sanganeri and so on in a rich profusion of forms, colours, materials and techniques. They also represent a life-enriching intervention in daily life, which is also a result of being close to nature.

The bubbling ethno-musicologist, the late Komal Kothari of Jodhpur, had documented in one district of Rajasthan alone, over 2,000 varieties of musical instruments, songs and ways of singing. It is this saturated crafts base which contributes to the richness of Indian life on the streets and at home.

Now, the issues relating to the above three categories are unique and entirely different. It is a violence and an injustice to lump them into the same basket and hope to come to any satisfactory understanding or solution. We do have a tendency to indulge in what I like to categorise as 'rear-end' thinking. Instead of respecting the complexity "" and, therefore, the productive potential "" of these distinct fields of activity we waste a lot of time trying to push the crafts-persons from behind into becoming artisans and then pushing the artisans to forcibly fit into the industrial economy. Like, getting the NID to mess around with crafts and convert the craft-object into a 'product'.

In a sense, this is a betrayal of some early attempts, from the 1920s, to creatively tackle this. If the Tagorean vision of cultural, economic and political revival addressed the question of crafts-persons, the Gandhian vision addressed the artisanal base. For Gandhiji, this was deeply linked with the issue of rural renaissance and his dream of antyodaya, the economic well-being of the very last person.

However, in the post-nation state scenario, the designer is almost a criminal who collaborates with big capital and the military-industrial conglomerates to integrate to what are euphemistically called new and emerging markets. As the aesthetic and the utilitarian, in our times, are not only conflated but subsumed in the commercial, everything including architectural projects to paper flowers, industrial products to artisanal goods, dress codes to disposables "" all become expressions of design.

The system encourages this because there is no inherent 'resistance' within contemporary design. It's the industry and the market that drive design as opposed to the resistive imaginaries of certain kinds of art and craft. The biggest problem with design is that it inaugurates a routinisation of transgressions and, as such, becomes the primary currency in what French philosopher Guy Debord described as 'the Spectacle Economy'.

The entire crafts and artisanal base in India is now poised to be cannibalised and assimilated into the stealthily set up 'Creative and Cultural Industries' sector. It is interesting that this huge move to capture the nation's creative capital has not only been routed through the Planning Commission, but has been sanctified in the 11th Five-Year Plan proposal. It is projected as a benign, 'developmental' initiative of the State, whereas what is being put in place is a suction instrument to enable global agencies to mop up the estimated Rs 60,000 crore value that the sector constitutes.

If modernity and colonial industrialisation effectively marginalised and pauperised the Indian artisan and craftsperson, the global market is poised to suck them dry and transform them into fodder for disposable commodities markets. Tagore and Gandhi reflected on both the creative sustainability and economic potential of his huge chunk of humanity. The present Indian state can only think of comprehensively parasiting on them.