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Indian bureaucracy can be a huge, lumbering machine. Question is, can it churn its wheels in the service of design? The India Design Council (set up under the National Design Policy by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, but separate from the National Design Council and the National Institute of Design--here's our justification for that first sentence) hopes so.

The IDC is pushing forth the idea of an Indian Design Mark, a sort of quality assurance stamp that would be placed on manufactured goods in order to "certify the minimum design intervention for a product."

The mark will assure a certain process that the product's design would have gone through to ensure that not only the quality but also the ingredients and the way of production is design-sensitive," said the director of National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Pradyuman Vyas, who is also the member secretary of the National Design Council.

To introduce the I' mark, the design council is studying the different design standardisation marks that exist in other countries like Red Dot Award of Germany, The Good Design Award of Japan and Index Award of Denmark.

"This mark also signifies the social relevance of the product where levels of pollution and carbon emission are also taken into consideration," said Vyas, who had recently visited Japan for a function organised by Design Office, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan.

Next step in making it happen? An upcoming December meeting where "the matter will be discussed further."

via times of india