Beyond Grassroots: CD ROM on Institution Building at BCDI

Bamboo & Cane Development Institute, Agartala (BCDI): CD ROM as a live documentation of intentions and actions of the design team from NID, Ahmedabad in partnership with the team from BCDI, Agartala. – “Beyond Grassroots: Bamboo as Seedlings of Wealth”.

This CD ROM was produced in 2003 - 2004 using reports, movies and pictures that were part of the very detailed visual documentation that was maintained by the NID and BCDI teams using digital tools that were constantly available as a project policy. The intention was to build an Institute that could address the very complex needs of the “Grassroots sector” in rural India through the creation of human resources, knowledge resources as well as market linkages with the use of a potential local material such as bamboo which could be used to support a whole spectrum of development activities that could lead to positive change in the lives of the people. This CD ROM is available for download from this link here as a 560 mb zip file that unpacks into hyper linked folders and files all connected through a series of navigation screens shown below. We believe that India needs many institutes like this one if we are to transform our rural economy with the use of local resources in a sustainable manner and in a politically stable eco-system that can survive well into the future with the use of design, decentralized local governance and local entrepreneurship.
Prof M P Ranjan

Image 00: Feasibility Report for the setting up of the Bamboo & Cane Development Institute on the left and the two stages of BCDI Curriculum Development are on the right.

This institute was proposed in 2001 and experimentally managed by the NID team till mid June 2004 during which the curriculum development and many product design projects were carried out at Agartala. The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts commissioned this project as part of the UNDP funded National Bamboo Mission project and the project was handled by a team from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad as well as a team of faculty and staff at the BCDI, Agartala. These three reports show the articulated intentions and the process of curriculum development and these three reports can be downloaded as pdf files from these links below:
1. BCDI Feasibility Report: December 2001 – pdf file 366 kb size
2. BCDI Curriculum Structure – pdf file 4.7 mb size
3. BCDI Curriculum Review – pdf file 3 mb size
4. Achievements of BCDI: Summary - 2001 to 2004 – pdf file 789 kb size
5. Complete interactive CD ROM: “Beyond Grassroots!: Bamboo as Seedlings of Wealth – zip file 560 MB size

Image 01: This CD ROM opens with an introduction, which provides an overview of the resources as well as the intentions of the design team at NID.

The reader is guided to an index page shown besides the CD face image above which directs the reader to seven sub-indexes that go to access the full content of the CD ROM, mostly pdf files and reports, movies in QuickTime and brochures and publications prepared by the BCDI project between 2000 to 2003. The Seedlings of Wealth model was first articulated in 1995 as part of a paper by the author for the World Bamboo Congress at Bali, Indonesia that called for concerted action to study the fast depleting resource of traditional wisdom in the bamboo culture of the Asian region. This living resource is rooted in the local culture of the populations of Asia, Latin America and Africa and it is a major asset that can be used by development initiatives as a resource for sustainable development. Previous work done at NID on bamboo is introduced here through pointers to the book on the Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India (which can now be downloaded from here as a 36 mb pdf file) and the Bamboo Boards & Beyond CD ROM (which can be downloaded from here as a 550 mb zip file)

Image 02: The Introduction screen, the Main Index screen, and two of the seven sub-index screens are shown here.

The seven sub-index sections lead to a variety of resources that were either created as part of this project or were used as background resources to inform the thoughts and actions on this very interesting design initiative in institution building for the growth of the bamboo sector with the specific objective of addressing poverty and development needs of the rural sector with the use of design and local crafts skills. The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts Government of India supported this project through the funds available from UNDP as part of the National Bamboo Mission initiatives at the turn of the century. The support for the project continued till mid 2004 and the work done during the project phase is documented in the CD ROM mentioned above.

Image 03: Four sub-index screens dealing with Craft and Product development reports, Design and Bamboo shows, Systems Thinking project reports and the index for movies that documented 12 days at BCDI in May 2002.

The Craft and Product development reports were created as part of the ongoing product design explorations in bamboo and craftsmanship that involved NID faculty, students as well as BCDI faculty, students and craftsmen. Each project had individual goals and focused on one type of product be it furniture or domestic and office accessories that could be crafted in bamboo. Besides these reports we have also included Systems Thinking course outcomes for the NID Furniture Design programme where several batches of students were assigned individual projects in the area of bamboo and rural development initiatives with the use of this local resource. These explorations and the prototypes created are discussed in these reports included in this section. All these visits to BCDI were extensively documented using digital images. On one such visit to the BCDI the author made 12 mini movies using these digital still pictures and these movies are included in this section of the CD ROM.

Image 04: View of the Bamboo Boards & Beyond exhibit on the UNDP lawn in 2001 and a note about the CD ROM about that project shown alongside the crafts and bamboo shows available in the Beyond Grassroots CD ROM.

The Bamboo Boards and Beyond was a major project that preceded the BCDI initiative and has been discussed on this blog earlier. This image of the final exhibit at the UNDP lawns in New Delhi was not included in the previous CD ROM but it is included in this offering as shown above. This project helped open minds in Delhi and several National initiatives sprang from this particular event, which makes it significant for design for India.

Image 05: CD ROM face graphics and view of CD Jacket for the Beyond Grassroots, a joint CD publication from NID and BCDI.

While the CD ROM is available from the links on this page the CD Jacket can be downloaded as an A4 size printable artwork from this link here as a pdf file of 1 mb size. The BCDI Feasibility report was redesigned for print in a compact A5 format and the artwork can be downloaded from this link as a pdf file 368 kb size.

Prof M P Ranjan

CFBI-NID: Bamboo for Grassroots Development:

CFBI-NID: Bamboo for Grassroots Development:

CFBI-NID (Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID), Tripura Bamboo Mission initiatives: NID IPRITI IL&FS TBM – bamboo craftsman training initiative at Bangalore.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Image 01: Workshop commences at IPRITI, Bangalore with bamboo craftsmen from Tripura and NID designers with technical inputs from IPRITI scientists.

The National Institute of Design (NID) through its Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) and the Infrastructure Leasing and Finance Services (IL&FS) entered into an agreement to develop and deliver a bamboo based small craft industry initiative as part of the overall mission objective of the Tripura Bamboo Mission (TBM) that is spearheaded by the Government of Tripura. The IL&FS has extended their technical, financial planning and manpower expertise in furthering the mission objectives of the TBM and they in turn have cooperated with the CFBI-NID to move the bamboo furniture and product design initiative through a project format that includes product design, craftsman training as well as field training that would help seed and incubate the new micro-enterprises in the State of Tripura.

Image 02: Stackable Café tables and benches, a local to local strategy offered by NID to kick-start local entrepreneurship in the Agartala region.

The NID had entered into a MOU with IPRITI, Bangalore earlier this year to cooperate in new initiatives in bamboo product development with a special focus on laminated bamboo and bamboo mat board applications in a number of fields. In mutual agreement with all the partners we decided to bring the project with the IL&FS to Bangalore since the NID Bangalore campus is located just opposite the IPRITi campus in Penea, just next to the large CMTI campus on the very busy Tumkur road. This proximity and an already agreed platform of cooperation opened a new window for bringing the IL&FS – TBM project to Bangalore campus where the faculty and students of the Design for Retail Experiences (DRE) discipline were keen to explore bamboo as a future material for eco-friendly retail environments.

Image 03: Rubber wood gussets and planks used to upgrade bamboo furniture form another leg of the NID design strategy to leverage the availability of this new material from local production facilities in Agartala.

IL&FS has identified nine master craftsmen from the Agartala region to partake in the CFBI-NID design development and training programme and along with these craftsmen an IL&FS supervisor was deputed to manage the day to day programmes with the NID Bangalore coordinator Divya Darshan and Joint Project Head and NID Faculty, C S Susanth from the NID Bangalore Centre. Prof M P Ranjan as Head of the Project stationed himself at Bangalore from 17th September to 30th September 2008 for the design development and training components of the project that is being handled under the management of the NID Outreach Department located in Ahmedabad while NID Bangalore handled all the local logistics and project support systems through Shashikala Satyamurthy and Centre Head S Goshal.

Image 04: The ubiquitous “Alna”, a local clothes rack, offered in new design configurations using rubber wood gussets to support the “Local to Local” design strategy advocated by NID.

Dr C N Pandey and his team were very supportive and provided the space in their well equipped Bamboo Development Centre for the conduct of the workshop as well as provided some key training inputs in bamboo treatment and finishes that was organized as associated demonstrations and lectures. The NID design team of Prof M P Ranjan and C S Susanth was joined by other members from NID Bangalore including Divya Darshan and Niju Dubey who participated in the design and training activities on a regular basis. Further, three NID students from Furniture design discipline joined the team as experimenters and occasional trainers and they too developed their own understanding of the new material through their association with the workshop, the results of which will be seen in the future, I am sure. Of these students, Garima Agrawal has chosen to take the bamboo project as her major diploma project and she will be taking this initiation and travel to the field to commence her research and study at Agartala in the near future.

Image 05: Exhibit of all new bamboo products developed at the design cum training workshop at IPRITI as shown at the NID Bangalore lawns for the closing function on 30 September 2008.

The design strategy outlined by the team this time looked at the building of products and systems that had a “Local to Local” character since the craftsmen while being very skilled at bamboo work were still to learn about being entrepreneurs and learn to manage a business enterprise on their own. The IL&FS and the NID design team are providing handholding and mentoring supports as part of the next stages of this project and in this the making of local products would bring a degree of self confidence to the crafts entrepreneurs since they could learn from direct experience and use their local knowledge to build their business experience. The major product category chosen for this strategy was the local “Alna” an ubiquitous clothes rack usually made in wood and found in every home in the Eastern Region of India as well as all over the Northeast of India. We therefore designed a wide range of “Alna” type products to demonstrate product diversification and the possibility of customization of a basic idea to generate variety. The other products included benches and tables that could be used in domestic situations as well as in local café’s across Agartala region, which by the way is a huge local market that is attracting many furniture makers from New Delhi and Mumbai. These are local opportunities that the Tripura craftsmen can learn to address in their process of learning a trade which they could then sharpen and refine to address more sophisticated markets in other cities in India as well as in the export sector, once their level of confidence has grown to manage these with comfort and quality.

Image 06: The closing function attended by Director IPRITI, Il&FS Managers, Coordinator Tripura Bamboo Mission, Centre Head NID Bangalore and Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID and the design and craftsmen teams.

Another major design decision was the use of rubber wood in combination with bamboo for several of the products. In an earlier collection we had designed all bamboo furniture as part of our “Katlamara Chalo” strategy where the joints were made using round holes drilled with a flat-bottomed drill bit and secured with bamboo dowels and bamboo counter pins. This joint was used once again for all the bamboo pole joints and all bamboo components were kept straight without the use of any bending that is commonly associated with bamboo furniture. The rubber wood components were of two types, plates for surfaces and shaped gusset members for particular joints between bamboo frames. This way the bamboo craftsmen could obtain the rubber wood components from the new and growing rubber wood industry in Tripura and offer value to their customers with the added functionality of smooth surfaces and precise gusset joints that are also visually modern. This strategy had us seeking the help of Sandeep Mukherjee for the precise manufacture of the gusset components, drawings for which were prepared on cad software by Niju Dubey. Several ranges of “Alna” were developed using these special gussets and as we go forward we anticipate an enlargement of the range with the addition of new components as dictated by the design scheme and the functionality required. The Tripura craft scene is now sufficiently sophisticated to accommodate this shift to outsourced components as they develop their marketing strategy in the days ahead and this would also help them fetch a better price in the market and provide value to the customer who is being exposed to many imported products of high quality.

Image 07: The new “Alna” and other products at the lawn exhibit at NID Bangalore for the closing function.

The training programme culminated in the production of several new designs that aligned to the product strategy proposed by the NID team and at a concluding function at NID Bangalore on 30 September 2008 we conducted an exhibition of all the products at NID Bangalore which was visited by George Jenner, Chief Coordinator of the Tripura Bamboo Mission, Sharmishta Mohapatra, Senior Manager and Advisor – Trade Facilitation, IL&FS, New Delhi, Dr C N Pande, Director IPRITI, Dr S Goshal, Centre Head, NID, Bangalore and all the crtafts trainees and the NID design team with the students of the NID Bangalore and they were hosted by Prof M P Ranjan, Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID. At the concluding function the dignitaries spoke to the audience about bamboo and its role in the future as well as the strategies of the Tripura Bamboo Mission and the plans and activities in the coming years. These provided new opportunities for all partners to use their skills and knowledge for the development of the bamboo sector in Tripura and in the process bring overall development to Tripura State, particularly in the rural areas that have been deprived of industrial development over the years. Plans and now afoot to send our teams to Tripura for the next phase of the project that includes the setting up of micro production units with the use of an appropriate set of hand held power tools and the hand-holding supports from the IL&FS teams in finance and marketing support in the field. NID designers will work closely with these craftsmen to realize the objective of getting these new products to market and in the process establish the confidence levels of the crafts entrepreneur as well as help maintain quality of production with the use of simple manufacturing strategies that are embedded in the design programme.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID): News in 2008

Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)

A brief report for Academic Year 2007 to 2008

1. Bamboo & Cane Development Institute:

Governing Council meets at Agartala in June 2007 and March 2008. Prof. M P Ranjan attended the Governing Council meet of the BCDI at Agartala in June 2007. The Institute that was set on a new curriculum and infrastructure plan is now being managed by the Office of the DC (Handicrafts) Government of India. :more about the design intentions:

Download BCDI Reports listed below:
1. Achievement Report 2004: NID-BCDI – pdf file 21 kb
2: BCDI Feasibility Report December 2001 – pdf file 371 kb
3. BCDI Curriculum 2002 - 2004 – pdf file 3.9 mb
4. BCDI Curriculum Review 2004 – pdf file 3.0 mb

2 Bamboo Products Exhibition in Germany:

The Ifa-Gallerie in Stuttgart, Germany hosted an exhibition of selected Interior Designers from India as part of their “In Site –Indian” exhibition where five bamboo prototypes representing five collections of designs developed by the NID teams were on display for two months. The exhibit moved to the Ifa-Gallerie in Berlin before being returned to India in October 2007. :more about the Exhibit:

3 Tripura Bamboo Mission:

Prof M P Ranjan continued as advisor to the Tripura Bamboo Mission (TBM) through the year and visited Tripura in June and December to attend the meetings of the Tripura Bamboo Mission that is being managed by the State Government with the aim of reaching bamboo based development strategies to remote districts of Tripura. :more about TBM:

See the Katlamara Chalo website links here and download "Katlamara Chalo Documantation: Rural Development Strategy Report" as three part file below:
1. Katlamara Chalo: Background and Macro-Micro Design Strategy – 12.3 mb pdf file
2. Katlamara Chalo: Product and Technology Strategy – 15.6 mb pdf file
3. Katlamara Chalo: People and Application Strategy – 18.8 mb pdf file

4 IL&FS collaboration under the Tripura Bamboo Mission

In December 2007 CFBI-NID signed a “Statement of Intent” to assist the IL&FS and the Tripura Bamboo Mission by providing design supports and expertise in a collaborative mode. This SOU was signed in the presence of the Chief Minister of Tripura and follow-up meetings have taken place in New Delhi and Ahmedabad based on which NID Outreach Department has submitted a detailed proposal for a training cum entrepreneurship development project that is based on the CFBI-NID collection of designs as well as new student diploma projects that would be taken up in the current academic year. The project will commence in May 2008.:more about IL&FS projects:

5 CBTC, Guwahati MOU operation:

Due to lack of funds the MOU with the CBTC, Guwahati is lying dormant during the academic year 2007 – 2008. In the previous year CFBI-NID had participated in a National Exhibition at the Pragati Maidan as well as contributed to the Bamtech Conference and Festival organized by the CBTC in Agartala in December 2006 as part of this ongoing MOU. Discussions have been initiated with the National Bamboo Mission to obtain funds to set up a design centre in Guwahati in partnership with the CBTC and wit the support of the NEC, Shillong.:more about the CBTC, Guwahati:

6 Collaborative projects with IPIRTI, Bangalore:

Prof M P Ranjan had meetings with scientists and the Director of IPIRTI, Bangalore to explore collaborative projects in areas of mutual interest in the bamboo sector. The IPIRTI is located next to the NID Bangalore Centre and the Bangalore Centre faculty too has shown interest in exploring the application of bamboo mat boards and laminates in the Retail Sector as an eco-friendly substitute to wood and wood based materials. Further the area of low-cost housing is another area of focus where the collaboration could provide synergy between NID design expertise and IPIRTI technology expertise. IPIRTI has excellent facilities for prototype making which would be an asset that NID students and faculty can use as part of the collaboration that is proposed. Project proposals have been discussed and are in the process of being finalized.:more about NID IPRITI initiatives:

7 Training programmes and resources for crafts entrepreneurs:

A number of training programmes for various groups of crafts entrepreneurs has been organized by the Outreach programmes at NID under the ICIC activity centre using the design collections that have been developed by the CFBI-NID activities. These can be given an impetus to reach further through publications and web based sharing, which is being explored during the current academic year.:more about NID Bamboo Intiatives:

8 Bamboo based co-creation initiatives in South Gujarat:

The State Government of Gujarat has shown interest in using expertise in a number of development projects in South Gujarat. Prof M P Ranjan attended a number of meetings of the Gujarat Bamboo Mission as well as held discussions with the State Tribal Development Department and an NGO called Eklavya Foundation to leverage NID design and bamboo expertise for development initiatives in South Gujarat. Proposals are being developed with the Outreach activity to get student involvement in these proposed projects. State Government is interested in setting up new Institute for rural development in South Gujarat, which would be part of the ongoing discussions with the partner agencies to initiate sustained development.:more about bamboo and rural development:

Download UNDP Vision Report 1999 from link below:
From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a Sustainable Human Development Resource – pdf file 1.5 mb

9 Collaboration with other States and with other agencies and future projects:

The CFBI-NID continued to receive requests for information and expert supports for a variety of initiatives being carried out by other States as well as Institutions at various times. We have shared digital resources and publications to seed the continued research activity across various regions of India and this collaboration although it does not bring in immediate financial gains it has generated a lot of goodwill and opened up opportunities for future collaboration. In this effort we are in touch with the activities in Uttaranchal (Uttarakhand), Karnataka, Kerala and Orissa. Several schools of architecture have shown interest in sending their students for field training and research which will further the larger goal of bamboo based development in India.:more about bamboo initiatives at NID:

10 Publications: Books, CD and Web based resources for development of bamboo sector in India:

The CFBI-NID has plans to create and produce a number of print as well as digital resources that will help disseminate the vast design resources that have been generated by the various teams of faculty and students as part of the broader development agenda of the bamboo sector which is a very critical rural development as well as employment potential activity for rural and urban crafts communities. The research effort that started in 1978-79 that resulted in the publication of the comprehensive book titled "Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India" has been followed up with numerous reports and design catalogues that were made available as CD-ROMs and digital files online. Download the book in pdf 34.7 mb here. These proposed publications will help fast track the flow of critical knowledge resources for the development of the bamboo sector as well as act as an example of how the use of design can facilitate sustained development in other sectors by example. We will be exploring the sourcing of funds to support this activity in the current academic year.:download bamboo and design papers from this site...more to come:

Bamboo Mat Boards from IPIRTI: A material waiting for innovation

Bamboo Mat Boards from IPIRTI: A material waiting for value added applications
Image: NID team at the IPIRTI’s 5 year old demonstration bamboo house.
The Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute (IPIRTI) is located just across that road from the NID R & D Centre in Bangalore. The IPIRTI was set up in 1962 as an autonomous society registered in Karnataka and its major stakeholders are the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the plywood and panel board industries that are its members. It offers education and training programmes in wood and plywood technology as well as conducts research in a wide range of technology and application areas dealing with a host of wood and wood derivatives including plywood, particle boards as well as fibreboards and a number of other composites aimed at particular applications. The Bamboo Mat Board was one such significant achievement of the IPIRTI.

Image: NID team at the two-story bamboo house at IPIRTI.
In 2001 the IPIRTI set up that Centre for Bamboo Development at its main campus in Penea to explore and conduct research into new and valuable applications using bamboo as a sustainable material for the future. Bamboo is a very commonly used raw material in India for local housing and for the production of a very large range of traditional products particularly in, but not restricted to, the Northeastern Region of India.

Image: The two-story bamboo house at IPIRTI
Our own book titled “Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India”, M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer & Ghanshyam Pandya that was published by NID and DC (Handicrafts) in 1986 was based on fieldwork conducted by the author and his team in 1979 to 1981. It documents hundreds of bamboo products and structures from bridges, houses, baskets and household appliances all made with bamboo as a primary material. This book was reprinted in 2004 as a resource for Traditional Wisdom from the communities of the Northeastern Region of India. Starting with this massive documentation that was done with a design intention of trying to understand the traditional material as a source for new and contemporary applications that could create employment and business opportunities for the people of the Northeast we went on to explore numerous product applications in our continuing journey of research and design explorations at the NID and the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID. A low-resolution pdf file of this book can be downloaded from this link (pdf file 34.7 MB) here.

Image: NID team examining the finger jointed board at the IPIRTI test lab
The Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID has over the past several years explored and published a very wide range of applications and a number of approaches for using the bamboo species available in India. These explorations can be seen at these web links here: Bamboo Initiatives, Bamboo Boards & Beyond, BCDI Agartala, and Katlamara Chalo – to name only a few. In all these explorations we have created several hundred new product designs and through the Bamboo and Cane Development Institute (BCDI) at Agartala we helped train hundreds of master craftsmen who could disseminate the design collections to other crafts communities. (download file “Achievements of BCDI” as a MS Word file 736 kb from here. The Bamboo Initiatives catalogue too captures this range in summary that can be visually appreciated and the reports on the BCDI, Agartala would give an idea of the objectives of the institute as well as the curriculum and training strategies that were explored there. These reports can be downloaded as pdf files from these links below.
BCDI Feasibility Report, 2001 (pdf file 372 kb)
BCDI Curriculum Structure, 2004 (pdf file 3 MB)
BCDI Curriculum Review, 2005 (pdf file 4.7 MB)

Images: The modular bamboo mat board house at IPIRTI
The IPIRTI on the other hand has been active in bamboo for many years particularly in the creation and popularization of the bamboo mat board that is made from hand woven bamboo slivers that are then pressed in a plywood press and several layers of mat are impregnated with resin to create a very strong and useful sheet material. While the technology for the bamboo mat board has been available on the market for several decades now it is still to gain wide acceptance as a major material in a number of product categories that it could be used for. This is what brought us to IPIRTI yesterday from the NID Bangalore R & D Centre. My colleagues Sushanth and Sashikala accompanied me on our visit to the IPIRTI and we met the Dr C N Pandey, Director IPIRTI and his colleagues Jagadish Vangala and K Shyamasunder who took us around the campus and gave us a preview of the bamboo based houses that they had built to prove the concept. While these are technically and structurally sound demonstrations they are far from perfect from an aesthetic and functional standpoint. It is here that we feel that collaboration between the scientists from IPIRTI and the design teams from NID could make a great deal of difference. Since the NID Bangalore Centre has commenced PG programmes in Design of Retail Experience we proposed that the first project could focus on exploring new and exciting applications for bamboo mat boards in the fast growing retail sector. The Indian Retail Sector too needs to desperately reduce its carbon footprint and the use of bamboo in a sustainable manner can contribute positively in this direction.

Image: NID team at the workshop in the IPIRTI, Centre for Bamboo Development

The CFBI-NID and the IPIRTI are therefore exploring areas of cooperation that could be mutually beneficial and set up a platform for sharing knowledge and expertise that could bring out exciting new results that can make the quality of the mat boards both visible as well as attractive to the retail sector and to the broader market in the days ahead. Housing and modular architecture would be another area of cooperation that will be explored in the days ahead.

Tripura Bamboo Mission: Design as a Partner in Grassroots Development Initiatives

Image: Meeting of the Tripura Bamboo Mission at Agartala on 8th December 2007 Chaired by Shri Manik Sarkar, Honorable Chief Minister of Tripura.

The State Government of Tripura has to deal with the onerous complexity of initiating and sustaining development actions in their land which is a locked territory located in the remote Northeastern Region of India lying on the east of Bangladesh and with road and rail connections to the rest of India and the outside world only through a long and difficult path through Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal. Besides this geographic complexity, they also have to cope with the absence of any industry that has taken root in the State over the past fifty years since Indian Independence. The State has also faced a long period of political unrest as well as being impacted by similar conditions in many of the nearby states in the region. Rural poverty is therefore a major problem and the economic condition of the large tribal population in the state is also an area of deep concern. The State of Tripura has a long common International border with Bangladesh and Myanmar but these are closed for all practical purposes due to the absence of trade and political agreements between the countries involved.

It is in this challenging geo-political situation that the State Government announced the Tripura State Bamboo Policy, the first such initiative by any state in the country and well ahead of the National Bamboo Policy which came up later. A number of progressive measures were initiated and over the past few years there have been many development initiatives that have been done by the State including a major conference on Bamboo to discuss the proposed Bamboo Policy, another last year to explore and showcase areas of application and the setting up of a University programme for educating bamboo experts who could help the rural people mobilize their local resources in a systematic manner. Last year the Government invited the IL&FS, New Delhi to take on the task of manning a mission mode development initiative that could move the local bamboo crafts and small scale industry from a gross turnover of about Rupees 25 crores per annum to about Rupees 75 crores per annum in the handicrafts, mats and agarbatti sectors which employ a huge number of people, all to be done in a time bound manner of three years.

The NID teams having worked in the Northeast and in Tripura on a sustained basis for over the past 30 years was identified as a natural partner for providing design supports for this new initiative in the State. Several NID graduates are also included in the list of design support providers while the IL&FS will use their own management and local infrastructure to manage the relationships on the ground and provide the integrated linkages with the Government and all the local stakeholders in the particular locations. The Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) has built a body of experience as well as a portfolio of bamboo based designs that are being offered to the Tripura Bamboo Mission along with a framework of locally delivered training and quality establishment processes that could be linked to the matrix of market needs and producer capabilities in the selected cluster in rural Tripura. These actions would be taken through the stages of sensing, exploring, making, evaluating and sharing. Through these stages we expect to grow the participation of our stakeholders in the rural locations and in some cases we would want these to be women’s’ groups who could manage their entrepreneurial ventures themselves. Our faculty and student teams who would be supported by skilled craftsmen who have been trained at the BCDI and capable of supporting the prototyping tasks that we anticipate as we go forward with our design support project in the state.

On the 7th December 2007 we were invited to a formal meeting that was organised by the IL&FS in Agartala where all the partners of the Tripura Bamboo Mission met to exchange a Memorandum of Association with these partners and a Statement of Intent with the CFBI-NID on bringing design skill sets to the activities on the ground. The meeting was chaired by the Honorable Chief Minister of Tripura, Shri Manik Sarkar with an active participation and addresses from Shri Sashi Prakash, Chief Secretary, Government of Tripura, and Shri Tapan Chakraborty, Honorable Minister of Industries and Commerce. The MoU’s were signed between the Tripura Bamboo Mission represented by the IL&FS on one side at the partners on the other and these included one with the ITC Ltd. For development of the agarbatti industry in the State, another with Cottage Industries also for this sector. The Industree Crafts of Bangalore were requested to support market access for rural producers. The CFBI-NID signed a “Statement of Intent” to provide design supports and know how across three broad product categories of fine bamboo loom woven mats, splits and split based furniture and Bambusa affinis based whole bamboo furniture from the Katlamara cluster which would be disseminated to a wider audience that has now taken up cultivation as part of the Tripura Bamboo Mission based on our design demonstrations.

We are looking forward to an active period of partnership with the IL&FS teams in Tripura and with the Tripura Bamboo Mission over the next three years to bring design capabilities to the producer groups in Tripura.