How US helped India in Design?

It started with the invitation sent to Charles and Ray Eames from the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru. Charles and Eames were just not the influential American designers and architects who made significant contributions to various fields, including furniture design, industrial design, graphic design, fine arts, and film but also one of the important personalities who contributed in shaping the formal design education in India and based on whose report, India got its first formal design institute, National Institute of Design.

A background story to this is that soon after the Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru recognised the modern design and architecture as crucial for the country's industrial and economic development.

This initiative aimed to address the perceived 'backwardness' attributed to India during colonial rule. Inviting American designers Charles and Ray Eames in 1958, the Indian government sought their expertise to propose a design education program, resulting in The India Report in 1958.

Eames India Report 1958

https://www.academia.edu/7251176/Eames_India_Report_1958

This report laid the foundation for NID in Ahmedabad and the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay. These institutions played crucial roles in formalizing modern design education in India.

The Eames report emphasized training designers to act as catalysts for multidisciplinary problem-solving, bridging the gap between tradition and technology to preserve the Indian identity in economic development.

They admired the evolutionary nature of Design in India opposed to revolutionary nature of West design. While Charles and Ray Eames were not Indian themselves, their impact on design education in India was substantial, and their contributions continue to influence the field to this day.

• To know what’s in the report, wait for the next post!
• Do you know ‘Lota’ (the Indian vessel) has a mention in Eames report.