‘Govt to set up architectural design institutes’

Our Bureau Updated - January 09, 2013 at 09:52 PM.

The Union Government plans to set up institutes of architectural design across the country to improve productivity, Planning Commission member Arun Maira said.

Stating that the institutes will also help improve governance, Maira, said, there are flaws in the governance and this can be solved through public participation. He also called for much more local than centralised governance.

Addressing a ‘Global Strategic Design Summit’ organised by Confederation of Indian Industry, Maira said that the money that is being invested for public infrastructure is not giving desired results due to faulty design.

“Planning is no longer an elite activity to be done in ivory towers, but to be made in public space by designing elegant solutions which can be seamlessly altered and implemented to the requirements,” he added.

The right designing of governance will facilitate directing funds towards result-oriented schemes.

Terming the current governance model to silos, Maira said there is lack of coordination within ministries to support the overlapping schemes within the Government.

Citing a case, he said India has tackled the issue of malnutrition worse than Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa despite spending lot of money because of improper design of projects and improper implementation. “All these programs are with different ministries and hence the need to design governance architecture,” Maira said.

> Priyanka.pani@thehindu.co.in

Published on January 9, 2013 16:22