Events

What if India’s most advanced innovations are still waiting beneath our feet? This article explores how tribal epistemology can reshape ideas of innovation, sustainability, and prosperity. It is a provocation to design the future from the ground up, rooted in lived knowledge.

Decisions about communities are often made by institutions that do not represent them. This essay exposes how governance without custodianship weakens moral legitimacy in design and policy. It calls for redesigning institutions so lived consequences shape decision-making.

India measures outputs, audits funds, and tracks impact, yet often forgets to recognise people. This article argues that recognition—not reporting—will decide the future of tribal knowledge systems. Those who keep knowledge alive must finally be counted alongside what is counted.

Tribal knowledge is shared generously, but generosity should not lead to dispossession. This essay reframes sharing as a civilisational value rather than a charitable act. It asks how design can protect the ethics of giving without hollowing communities out.

Despite having the world’s largest Indigenous population, India remained absent from global Indigenous platforms for decades. This article examines what that absence reveals about representation, visibility, and institutional priorities. It also outlines what must change if India is to participate with integrity on global Indigenous stages.

Tribal knowledge underpins India’s creative, cultural, and policy economies, yet value rarely flows back to its custodians. This essay introduces the idea of a Custodianship Ledger grounded in reciprocity. It argues that every act of extraction must also become an act of return.

India invests heavily in preserving tribal heritage while avoiding economic responsibility toward its creators. This piece confronts the ethical gap between celebration and compensation. It asks how design might help convert heritage into living intellectual property that benefits its custodians.

Welfare and innovation evolved in parallel tracks in India’s development story, rarely intersecting through shared authorship. This article traces how custodianship was quietly erased from both domains. It proposes design as a possible language through which care and agency might finally be reconnected.

India built systems to protect communities and systems to produce economic value, but left custodianship out of the equation. This essay explores the missing bridge between protection and participation. It asks whether design can help restore the ethical link that policy frameworks failed to carry forward

India’s tribal communities have shaped the nation’s imagination, material culture, and wisdom, yet remain among its poorest citizens. This article examines the paradox at the heart of that reality, showing how cultural celebration has replaced economic inclusion. It asks what genuine repair would look like if justice—not charity—guided policy and design.