
I was fortunate to spend a few hours at Ai Weiwei’s monumental show, Making Sense, at The Design Museum in London in July 2023. After seeing and trying to absorb what he was trying to say, I sat on a bench and wondered why we weren’t seeing such a powerful expression on that scale in India; it’s not that we are less talented. I went back to a talk by the design legend Kenya Hara in Bangalore. Hara, talking about design, stressed the quality of soil to be good for it to bear good fruits. The soil he spoke about was a metaphor for the ecosystem that nourishes the artist or the designer. This is the basis of agriculture, but the truth holds good for all spheres of life. Our soil today is non-nourishing; we need to change that and make it fertile. I quoted him in an essay titled Art Is the Answer (Published in Bangalore Mirror in 2013): “Our soil today is non-nourishing; we need to change that, make it fertile”.
While driving to work, I listened to a talk by Mr. C Balagopal, a noted industrialist in medical device manufacturing. He said the main reason for the lack of growth in the manufacturing of medical devices in India is the need for a supportive ecosystem. Because of this, we are importing most medical devices, which also pushes the cost of healthcare.
Reading Jeroen Kraaijenbrink’s case for organisations to be people-centric rather than just profit-centric on LinkedIn, I was struck by the urgency of the need for a nurturing ecosystem. Today, being human-centric means being eco-centric, a topic for another essay. Urbanists Jane Jacobs and Richard Florida have convincingly argued for cities to be people-centric, with creativity as the economic driver. The most pressing need is a nurturing and supportive growth ecosystem that will help people live meaningful lives.
One of the impediments to building a nurturing ecosystem is our penchant for boxing ourselves. We put ourselves in boxes and look at the world through spreadsheets and mindless rules and definitions that we make. Then we sit around conference tables and ask for out of the box thinking. Isn’t that an irony? This is because we are incapable of critical thinking; our educational system doesn’t foster it. Then there are the squelchers – people who divert and derail human creative energy, posing roadblocks, acting as gatekeepers and saying ‘No’ to new ideas, regardless of the merit.
Jeroen Kraaijenbrink rightly points out that ‘to flourish, we need the right balance between challenge and support, pressure and safety, and direction and kindness.’ A human centered strategy can create such conditions but requires organisational leaders to be deeply mindful. Manisha Vinod, co-founder of Bengaluru Creative Circus, adds that sustainability also involves well being and developing communities. The role of leadership in creating a nurturing ecosystem is crucial, and leaders need to wake up to this reality.
I feel dispirited whenever I visit an eminent organisation in a developed country because I rue the lack of such institutions in India rather than our inability to build such institutions.