448 on Indian industrial design

A while back I posted a picture of an Indian-designed e-moped, and proclaimed I kind of liked Indian industrial design. 

Then I got into a conversation with a friend about it, and tried to explain. In my opinion, what is the essence of Indian industrial design? 

My take was that American industrial design was great, as long as you have endless resources to burn. (The V8.)

 Japanese industrial design, I theorized, was all about being precise with fewer resources, with an eye toward the future and performance. (The sixteen valve four cylinder.) 

German industrial design, in my mind, is all about reliability and tradition, combined with efficiency. (The turbo diesel.) 

Spinning this out further, I theorized modern Chinese industrial design was all about looking as futuristic as possible, for as cheap as possible. And copying the guts. (All of Alibaba.)

But what is Indian industrial design? My thought was it is using available parts to create something basic but innovative. Which is also how I'd describe African industrial design, although with a degree more flourish. (Think a three wheel tuktuk with tons of beads.)

This got me curious, and led me to see what other people think. And the answer is not what I expected.

Indian industrial design was actually quite advanced, before colonization by Europeans. In fact, the first invading forces were met by rocket attacks. Europeans had never seen rockets, but India had them.

In general, people don't tend to go off invading other countries unless things are kinda shitty at home. Take the US, for example. When we were worried about running out of oil in the early 2000s, we invaded oil rich Iraq. But when fracking made us a net oil producer again, we pulled out the troops.

So there's that dynamic to think about with colonization. Things in Europe weren't so great, so they went looking for better. And things in India were pretty happening, so they stayed home. And got invaded. And had their technology stolen.

Under colonial rule, India was bled for resources. As a result, innovation wasn't part of the program for a couple hundred years. As a further result, every bright mind that could leave, did.

The current reality of Indian industrial design is a diaspora. There are Indian engineers working everywhere. 

This is a known issue. Gandhi sought to counteract the loss of resources and talent by emphasizing small groups of DIY creators. For most of the recent past, this has been the Indian model. Local self-reliance, with a few larger players. Basically, a non-industrialized model.

This, of course, left the population wide open to get creamed by multinationals, as long as they greased the pockets of politicians. As far as I can tell, that's the current state of things. Locally robust economies getting fucked by globalization. 

With 20% of the global population, Indian industrial design doesn't currently seem too concerned with taking over the world. Instead, it seems like getting the local population up to speed is a worthwhile goal in and of itself. 

While China is more than happy to sell off some extra doodads (for example, even ten years ago China was already making 26 million ebikes per year...25 million for domestic use, and a million for the rest of the world), and America is happy to buy all the crap we can (the joy of printing money), India is still working on plain old industrialization. (For better or worse.)

This is due entirely to a European/Western scarcity mindset that turned a jealous pursuit of spices into four hundred years of merciless killing and theft.

So, yeah, that's the state of Indian industrial design.

At least as far as I know. Which isn't very far.