Fashion station

The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, has come up with interesting ideas for Mumbai’s monorail project.

January 31, 2015 03:27 pm | Updated 03:27 pm IST

Colour in the skyline. Photo: Paul Noronha

Colour in the skyline. Photo: Paul Noronha

The last memory I have of Mumbai rails is half a decade old. Not so long ago, I presume. A bunch of men hanging out of its dusty brown gates, a young woman running the track at a poorly patrolled crossing to catch a train on the other side and the vast amounts of human faeces that corrodes the rails; the train swishes past smudged clouds in the light blue sky, evoking the joys of rolling through the Mumbai’s suburbs. I grudgingly admired the Indian Railways-the government-owned monopoly, a bloated but efficient institution that provides work for an estimated 0.15 crores people, houses its higher-level staff in comfy “colonies” and almost pledges that its employees will hold their jobs for life.

So when I heard of the new pinks, greens and blues on these suburban skies of Mumbai’s elevated aerodynamic trains that whisk over some of the financial capital’s slenderest lanes, I was intrigued. A little rooting around revealed that, instead of hiring swanky foreign agencies for its design ideologies, the MMRDA (Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority) sought help at National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. A bunch of professors and graduate students got the ball rolling and changed the stereotype, forever.

“Now look at this handle. Instead of one person holding on to this, at least four people can use it.” Praveen Nahar points out a multi-grip handle in a report he drafted with Vivek A and Naim Shaikh, graduates of NID, for the Mumbai Monorail project. Coordinator for Product Design and mentoring Product Design and Transportation & Automobile Design Programmes at the institute, the young Prof. Nahar is sinking in several feet of documents towering atop his filing cabinets and stacked on the floor. “Back then the typical approach was to look at design from the manufacturers’ end or from an engineer’s vision or from the perspective of ease of manufacturing. It is barely from the passenger’s perspective. That is where NID differs,” he says. An Industrial Policy Resolution in 1953 resulted in the government sanction this design institute to serve as an aid to small scale industries in India and since then, it’s been an altar for design junkies where they are trained in different art forms and work on hypothetical projects.

Recently, the Indian Railways have created a few design projects where a team of professors, students and recent graduates develop design concepts beyond the mundane. “Indian railways posits an exciting challenge because of the sheer scale at which they operate,” says Nahar. “It is one of the world’s largest networks, which caters to massive diversity-children, senior citizens, men, women, rich and the poor. It spans across hundreds of regions, cultures, languages to become a symbol for people and to design keeping all that in mind. For an institute like ours, response to that becomes easier because We integrate textiles, product design, graphics, films and animation. We can cut across many sectors and disciplines and work together to respond.”

Isn’t design a trend-oriented concept too, I ask. “We do look at lot of international trends. Materials and manufacturing, colours, textures, patterns. So for the colour scheme of the Mumbai monorail, we used a celebration palette.” He notices my confusion and stops to explain. “Royal pink, apple green and ice blue for different trains to celebrate vivacity and to break the monotony of the landscape. Mumbai’s citizens show an increased awareness of public spaces and infrastructure and this goes with their vision too, hence a contemporary colour palette. Also, colour usage has become a statement for automobiles off late. Have you seen those pink SUVs yet?” he smiles, as he pulls out another dusty report from his stack.

“Design for a long time has been associated with aesthetics but the social importance of design It is supposed to travel from the top of the social milieu to the bottom of the pyramid where it impacts most”, he says, and then goes quiet for a few moments, mulling over his thoughts. “Simple things such as leaving enough spaces for easy cleaning- or less ridges behind seats and in the walls. The idea is to bring users it to the centre of the periphery. And people who are cleaning the train are users too, after all.”

“In cars, trends can still have a big impact,” says Nahar, wrinkling his eyebrows and closing his eyes, trying to find the best words to explain. “But, in trains, there is no such extreme trend change because functionality and durability are more important. But it is still possible to work with trends. You have to think about the colour schemes and how they will age with years, dust and grime.” How will the repaint affect them and what does the colour palate communicates?”

“The ultimate goal is to reduce the stress levels in these tightly packed trains,” says Nahar, waving his hand as if to dismiss everything else. “For the monorail, we worked on providing more seating spaces, bigger windows, more handles and places to lean on, better seats made with hard substance that are less prone to abuse, forced ventilation for Mumbai’s humid and hot climate. Even Kolkata metro has started copying our designs…I mean, adapting our designs”, he grins.

He points to the pink edges of the seats to show how they’ve avoided sharp edges. “One of the biggest complaints of a case study we did of the BEST buses was the sharp edges where clothes used to get stuck and tear.”

“Some of our designs were implemented. Others weren’t. It is important to have that quality support from the suppliers. Metro coaches are not manufactured in India and so it gets difficult to implement designs” he explains. “This has to change if are to get design-progressive. Bombardier Transportation has now started manufacturing but all this is a slow process. I’m not asking anyone to upturn an apple cart but in 3-4 years if we are able to transit and build enough confidence, even that would be a good step forward”.

We leave the room and walk onto a gravelled pathway. A few students practise death in the backyard, their drama teacher lurking in the shadows. Another bunch dry ceramic dolls made with barbed wires and beads. Nahar points out NID’s incubator cell, which supports designers in turning their ideas and concepts into successful competitive businesses. “The Railway ministry was supposed to set up a railway design centre here.” Former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi, had said, “I had occasion to visit this Institute with a view to harnessing their expertise in design. A dedicated Railway Design Centre is proposed to be set up in the NID campus with an endowment fund of Rs. 10 crore to be utilised for developing concepts.”

Nahar smiles. “Then he got sacked.” We have had a lot of railway boards come in and go after that but nothing has materialised”, says Nahar. Does the government pay for such projects, I enquire. “Not all. Some projects are paid for but not as much as you would pay to a foreign consultant. See the thing is, we also these projects for our own studies. Besides that, these activities are strictly for public interest. We have done a lot of work at grass roots level in the past too, especially in the craft sector like that of bamboo furniture makers of North eastern, helping them innovate their products and concepts.

“I wish there was more funding. We could do so many hypothetical projects with students,” he says. “Through workshops, we have trained a lot of people in the Railways in terms of design functionality, ergonomics etc. And some have gone higher up and come back to NID, looking at exploring projects with us. We have helped them improve conditions of locomotives, loco pilots (train drivers) ... I just wish there was more funding, or may be less red-tapism.”

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.