The story of design education in India begins with Jawaharlal Nehru's vision of modernising a nation weakened by colonial rule and centuries of feudal power. Nehru believed that India needed to enter the industrial age that was transforming the world, and he saw design as a key instrument in this national project.
To shape this vision, Nehru invited Charles and Ray Eames, whose recommendations led to the establishment of the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad. Charles Eames authored what later became known as the Eames Report on Indian Design. However, many early Indian design educators who went on to shape NID rejected the report's emphasis on rapid industrialisation and assembly-line production. They argued that large-scale industrialisation was a distant and uncertain prospect for India.
Instead, they believed that India's villages already possessed a strong base of craft entrepreneurship. Modernising existing craft practices could generate livelihoods and economic growth more effectively than waiting for an industrial miracle. This thinking drew significant inspiration from Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, who played a central role in organising and advocating for India's textile and craft sectors.
NID subsequently adopted pedagogical influences from the Bauhaus and the Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm), which had shaped modern European design education. These approaches were adapted to Indian conditions, particularly to engage with the craft sector. Early NID educators emphasised leadership, entrepreneurship, and consultancy, rather than preparing students solely for salaried employment.
At the same time, Nehru established the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at IIT Bombay to address the needs of India's emerging manufacturing sector. IDC focused on employment-oriented industrial design, closely aligned with factories, production systems, and industrial processes.
Parallel to these developments, and mainly due to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya's sustained efforts, textiles—with their deep and widespread presence across India—were recognised as a distinct sector. This recognition led to the establishment of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). Unlike NID, NIFT structured its pedagogy around market demand, exports, and cluster-based development, combining employment with consultancy and fund-management models.
As a result, three major pedagogic frameworks came to shape design education in India:
NID – focused on craft entrepreneurship and consultancy, influenced by Bauhaus and Ulm traditions, and supported by government design projects.
IDC – focused on employment within manufacturing and industrial sectors.
NIFT – focused on market-driven, export-oriented cluster development, blending employment with consultancy and fund management.
In essence, Indian design education came to revolve around three core orientations: entrepreneurship, consultancy, and employment.
However, these institutions also shared a significant limitation. They largely accepted standardisation for assembly-line production as the core principle of modern design practice. In the craft sector, this translated into an emphasis on system design—restructuring craft production to resemble industrial workflows. This approach aimed to make crafts suitable for elite and urban consumption through product enhancement, aesthetic refinement, improved communication channels, and selective use of machine tools.
Those familiar with Indian craft communities are aware that their entrepreneurial skills are often strong, as is their pride in traditional crafts and their desire for independence. The assumption that crafts needed to be reorganised primarily through industrial logic frequently overlooked these social and cultural strengths, and at times conveniently ignored them to serve sector-specific government interventions shaped by socialist policies.
In practice, design promoted largely through NID and IDC came to function as an intermediary between government, industry, and craft communities. Designers often acted as implementers of government programmes or as associates of NGOs, executing fund-based policy interventions or corporate CSR initiatives within communities and craft clusters.
The internet boom of the late 1990s began to alter this landscape. Numerous private design institutes, many specialising in service sectors, emerged across the country. Several were led or guided by retired NID and IDC faculty, effectively creating multiple "proto-NIDs" and "proto-IDCs"—modernist, sector-focused training centres.
One notable exception was Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru. Conceived as a post-industrial and post-modern institution, Srishti focused on the service sector, rather than manufacturing. By placing art and technology at either end of design in its very name, it signalled a different pedagogic ambition. Drawing inspiration from leading Western design schools, Srishti adopted an interdisciplinary curriculum for both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and initially refused affiliation with any university.
Srishti primarily catered to the aspirations of urban students shaped by a liberalised and globalised economy, supported by a high fee structure. Many of its graduates did not aspire to become employees of Indian companies; instead, they looked towards opportunities abroad or pursued freelance and studio-based practices.
In 2014, government regulations required all design programmes to come under a university framework. Although Srishti retained an interdisciplinary character at its margins (except for media disciplines such as film and animation), it too gradually became a sector-oriented, modernist training institution. Its focus, however, remained firmly on the service sector rather than manufacturing.
By this stage, four major curricular models were shaping Indian design education:
NID – Sectorial, modernist, focused on craft, community, and service sectors.
IDC – Sectorial, modernist, concentrates on the industry and service sectors.
NIFT – concentrate on craft, community, consumer markets, and exports.
Srishti – interdisciplinary, post-modern in orientation, primarily serving the service sector.
The growing emphasis on the service sector across Indian design schools was primarily a consequence of the IT boom and the rapid expansion of the service economy. The service sector's share of India's GDP rose from around 31 per cent in the pre-liberalisation period to nearly 48 per cent by 2017. At the same time, industrial growth remained relatively stagnant, with the manufacturing sector remaining at 16 per cent from 1991 onwards. This stagnation steadily reduced demand for design programmes focused on manufacturing, further pushing design education towards service-sector–oriented curricula.
Indira Gandhi’s Centralisation and Its Impact on Design Education:
Between Nehru’s modernist socialist vision and the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, India underwent a significant phase under Indira Gandhi that profoundly shaped the structure and direction of design education.
The political centralisation of policy frameworks, extensive nationalisation, the expansion of public sector undertakings during the period, and the strengthening of the role of the bureaucracy, especially during the Emergency (1975–77) under Indira Gandhi, gradually turned design institutions from relatively independent academic spaces into instruments of state policy and priority.
Before this phase of centralisation, the National Institute of Design (NID) was a small institution under the Ministry of Commerce, operating on a modest budget. It survived mainly as a regional institute under the patronage of an industrial family close to the political power centre. Apart from a few notable community-based projects, NID remained limited in scale, offering mainly undergraduate and a small number of postgraduate diploma programmes. Its reach was constrained by regional dominance and a state-defined communication design operant.
As the political power became increasingly centralised under Indira Gandhi, institutions such as NID and the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at IIT Bombay came under tighter bureaucratic control. Decision-making slowly shifted away from academic leadership towards administrative authority. For these institutes, these developments had reduced institutional autonomy by narrowing the space for experimentation and critical thinking. Design education began to align more closely with the execution of government policies rather than reflective or exploratory practices.
The rapid expansion of PSUs during the 1970s and 1980s further shaped this shift. State-led manufacturing in sectors such as heavy engineering, infrastructure, transport, energy, and telecommunications created a demand for designers who could work within rigid industrial systems. IDC, which offered only postgraduate programmes, became closely aligned with these needs. IDC's pedagogy focused on functional design, engineering compatibility, standardisation, and preparing students for employment in extensive production systems. Creativity was largely confined to solving problems within predefined industrial frameworks.
Similarly the early emphasis on leadership and craft entrepreneurship at NID, slowly gave way to a more development-oriented role. Increasingly functioned as a bridge between government policies and craft communities, NID designers were often placed in the role of implementing state-sponsored programmes, rural development schemes, and export-oriented craft initiatives. Engagement with crafts shifted from imagining independent futures for craft communities to managing state-driven modernisation priorities. Keeping System design protocol at the core, standardisation, and product enhancement aimed at elite or export markets became dominant approaches in NID design pedagogy.
Although the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) was established later, it was shaped by the same political and economic constraints. Within a centrally planned economy, Textiles were treated as a strategic sector and NIFT’s design education was organised around export promotion, market preparedness, and cluster-based development. NIFT designers were trained to function within supply chains and government-aligned market forces.
Across NID, IDC, and later NIFT, a common approach to design education emerged. Standardisation for assembly-line production came to be accepted as the core of modern design practice. Priority was given to systems thinking, workflow reorganisation, and consultancy-led projects, while critical theory, cultural independence, and speculative design were gradually sidelined. As a result, design education became administratively well organised and efficient, but increasingly cautious in its intellectual ambitions.
The effects of this period continued long after economic liberalisation. Even as private institutions emerged and markets opened up, many design schools retained bureaucratic structures, modernist-industrial assumptions, and rigid sector-based divisions.Indira Gandhi's Centralisation and Its Impact on Design Education:
Between Nehru's modernist socialist vision and the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, India underwent a significant phase under Indira Gandhi that profoundly shaped the structure and direction of design education.
The political centralisation of policy frameworks, extensive nationalisation, the expansion of public sector undertakings during the period, and the strengthening of the role of the bureaucracy, especially during the Emergency (1975–77) under Indira Gandhi, gradually turned design institutions from relatively independent academic spaces into instruments of state policy and priority.
Before this phase of centralisation, the National Institute of Design (NID) was a small institution under the Ministry of Commerce, operating on a modest budget. It survived mainly as a regional institute under the patronage of an industrial family close to the political power centre. Apart from a few notable community-based projects, NID remained limited in scale, offering mainly undergraduate and a small number of postgraduate diploma programmes. Its reach was constrained by regional dominance and a state-defined communication design operation.
As the political power became increasingly centralised under Indira Gandhi, institutions such as NID and the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at IIT Bombay came under tighter bureaucratic control. Decision-making slowly shifted away from academic leadership towards administrative authority. For these institutes, these developments had reduced institutional autonomy by narrowing the space for experimentation and critical thinking. Design education began to align more closely with the execution of government policies rather than reflective or exploratory practices.
The rapid expansion of PSUs during the 1970s and 1980s further shaped this shift. State-led manufacturing in sectors such as heavy engineering, infrastructure, transport, energy, and telecommunications created a demand for designers who could work within rigid industrial systems. IDC, which offered only postgraduate programmes, became closely aligned with these needs. IDC's pedagogy focused on functional design, engineering compatibility, standardisation, and preparing students for employment in extensive production systems. Creativity was confined mainly to solving problems within predefined industrial frameworks.
Similarly, the early emphasis on leadership and craft entrepreneurship at NID slowly gave way to a more development-oriented role. Increasingly functioning as a bridge between government policies and craft communities, NID designers were often placed in the role of implementing state-sponsored programmes, rural development schemes, and export-oriented craft initiatives. Engagement with crafts shifted from imagining independent futures for craft communities to managing state-driven modernisation priorities. Keeping System design protocol at the core, standardisation, and product enhancement aimed at elite or export markets became dominant approaches in NID design pedagogy.
Although the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) was established later, it was shaped by the same political and economic conditions. Within a centrally planned economy, Textiles were treated as a strategic sector, and NIFT’s design education was organised around export promotion, market preparedness, and cluster-based development. NIFT designers were trained to function within supply chains and government-aligned market forces.
Across NID, IDC, and later NIFT, a common approach to design education emerged. Standardisation for assembly-line production came to be accepted as the core of modern design practice. Priority was given to systems thinking, workflow reorganisation, and consultancy-led projects, while critical theory, cultural independence, and speculative design were gradually sidelined. As a result, design education became administratively well organised and efficient, but increasingly cautious in its intellectual ambitions.
The effects of this period continued long after economic liberalisation. Even as private institutions emerged and markets opened up, many design schools retained bureaucratic structures, modernist-industrial assumptions, and rigid sector-based curriculum.
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