Engineering and medicine still remain popular choices for students in India, but a quiet initiative is underway to get recognition for a subject of study that’s increasingly gaining prominence in industry, but remains neglected in academics — design.

“Design is a creative course that looks at constant innovation and new ideas. It provides the student with a variety of skills,” says Ravi Poovaiah, co-ordinator of the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), IIT Powai, which is planning to send a proposal to the Ministry of Human Resources Development to allow introduction of design as a subject of study at the undergraduate level in art colleges across the country.

Currently, design as a subject of study is available at the undergraduate level at select colleges. Courses in design offer subjects like Animation, Architecture, Crafts, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Fashion-textile Design, Product Design, Interaction Design and Visual Communication among others. The students of the IDC recently held an exhibition that displayed different aspects of design and how they could be used to help fill in the gaps in society.

“While we are trying on many fronts, the proposal to the Human Resources Development ministry is one of our major moves,” said Poovaiah. The proposal includes requests to fund or upgrade art schools in order to have a larger variety of options and improve the quality of design courses being taught.

“While China has over 3000 design schools and has revamped all their art colleges and trained their teachers, India is still focused on engineering and medicine,” said Poovaiah, adding that other than some government funded institutes like National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and National Institute of Design (NID), there are only a few privately funded institutions that offer good design courses.

“Today the requirements for design and its potential are tremendous. Market forces demand designers and they are required in every sector,” says Ravi Mokashi, head of the design department at IIT Guwahati, adding that it is only a matter of time before the course grows in strength and establishes itself.

“Extensions for study subjects are available to all students who opt for engineering and medicine courses, but when they need to choose design, they have hardly any option,” said Sanjay Jain, Director of Academics, MIT Institute of Design, Pune.

Though IIT Guwahati offers undergraduate courses for students who want to pursue design, there is a severe lack of awareness about the course at the school level.

“Introducing the course at the undergraduate level is too late. It has to be introduced in schools, where it becomes a part of the learning process and encourages right-brain thinking and visual communication,” Jain said.