Editorial

Abstract

I was invited by Prof. Kurt Seemann in June 2019 to guest edit this Special Issue: ‘India & Jugaad - the impact of innovation by the resilient Indian mind on habitat’. Little did I realise that this topic would become so relevant in the Indian context and more broadly, when globally we have seen systemic solutions fail and people challenged with increasing scarcity. But armed with ingenuity, the resources within their grasp, and the capacity to make a change within their networks, we have witnessed much agency, innovation, and resilence. In India, our lives are intertwined with our history, geography, culture and architecture. India is almost as large as Europe, not including Russia. It has a multiplicity of civilizations within it, being many countries in one. So the solutions and answers will be complex and multiple. We will need new and relevant long-term strategies based on what we can learn from the situation today, and we will then be able to plan the way forward. In this process, the importance of the built environment should never be underestimated, thus the significance and power of good design is ever more crucial in the Global South. Until one lives in India and experiences the country fully immersed in its wonder, culture, poverty and generosity, it is difficult to understand the complexity of the Indian mind and how it enables over a billion people live to together in this democratic nation.