THE DESIGN PROFESSION AS A MEANS TO ACHIEVE SUSTAINABILITY: THE SPECIAL CASE OF INDIA

 

DOWNLOAD DOI: 10.62897/COS2025.3-1.238

Katalin Máthé
University of Public Service Institute of Environmental Sustainability, Ludovika tér 2,
1083 Budapest, Hungary
mathe.katalin@uni-nke.hu 

Abstract: Since the introduction of concentrated energy resources into economies and the corresponding exponential growth in production brought about the Industrial Revolution, the parallel processes of the concentration of wealth and the emergence of extreme poverty have occurred. Under such circumstances, the major challenge for the healthy functioning of human and non-human ecologies is the fair allocation of tangible and intangible resources to meet everyone’s needs. At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), in her famous speech (Gandhi, 1972), identified the eradication of poverty and satisfying other pressing human needs as a primary step to be taken towards sustainability.


This paper reasserts that historically, the invention of the design profession was one of the means to reinvigorating impoverished groups and locations. Indira Gandhi’s address will be examined in detail to identify her take on environmentalism and its connection to the ideals of her time. Through highlighting the major factors that contributed to the birth of design education and profession in India it will be shown that although we tend to view design as an ornament of the market capitalist society, the original motives behind developing this discipline were charged with humanitarian ideals and was part of a joint effort to reducing social and economic disparities and thus to build stronger and more resilient communities.

 

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