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“People say that MBA students are arrogant, that they don’t want to dirty their hands, and only want to give their advice.”
- Abbasali Gabula, deputy director at SP Jain, a leading school in Mumbai.
Accused of being part of financial problems and a decline in morals, one Indian MBA program is taking action, requiring its students to spend significant time in India’s slums, working with children.
“There’s always this narrative of failure and tragedy when one discusses Indian urbanism,” -Kanu Agrawal, Curator, Jugaad Urbanism: Resourceful Strategies for Indian Cities,
The exhibition is “design by the people, for the people, of Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Pune,” says Agrawal, and showcases everyday innovations of slum-dwelling residents and the designers and architects who work around them.
Agrawal, a Delhi native, studied at New Delhi’s School of Planning and Architecture and worked with the acclaimed Achyut P. Kanvinde, and later completed his Master’s in Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture. Kanvinde was one of the first to bring modern design to India. But the jugaad exhibit presents a different take on modern urbanism in India—that of the everyman.
Jugaad Urbanism opens at New York’s Center for Architecture next week.
More on Design Lessons from India’s Poorest Neighborhoods
Related: Designing the Future of Housing for India’s Poorest
