Research

  • Whether we design a car or social policy, keeping our options open until we identify an effective solution is a core design principle. Several factors, including a lack of experience, design tools, culture, economics, and politics, cause us to discard alternatives prematurely and select ineffective solutions. We study politics, culture, economics, and other social variables from the design process perspective to understand how to make social systems and products more inclusive.

Design thinking

This infographic summarizes a series of studies exploring the influence of design tools on early design thinking. We observed that specific features of a design tool, such as the availability of colors, emphasize the distinctiveness of the individual parts of a design concept, which causes designers to overlook how the parts come together to form a cohesive whole.

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Culture of inequality

This book focuses on how the realization of cultural distinctiveness, politics of identity, and the struggle for dominance shape the Hindu–Muslim relations in rural Maharashtra. It examines the notions of tolerance and inequality, providing insights into the reasons for the growing distinctiveness in cultural and religious identities in Maharashtra since the 1990s.

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Soft hindutva

This book traces the rise of two contrasting variants of Hindu nationalism—the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) divisive cultural nationalism and the softer, less threatening variant of Hindutva espoused by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress (TMC). Furthermore, it examines how culture preserves inequality in the guise of solidarity and national cohesion.

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