Rajya Sabha gets NID to design new memento depicting modern India

Breaking away from the tradition of presenting handicraft items as souvenirs, the Rajya Sabha has got an exclusive and modern memento designed from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, for foreign delegates visiting the country.

Instead of local handicrafts the upper house will now be handing out uniform mementos that depict India as a modern nation, which is technologically as well as economically evolving.

The approved memento is a three dimensional replica of the Indian parliament building made of transparent acrylic with the Ashok Chakra on top and mounted on a wooden stand.
It is designed by senior NID faculty members —Shashank Mehta from industrial design discipline and Anil Sinha, head of communication design discipline. The new memento depicts openness and transparency of the democratic political practices in India.

“The Rajya Sabha formed a committee to get the mementos designed which was headed by the vice president Hamid Ansari. They approached us last year with a brief that they needed a memento which depicts modern India and needed it to be contemporary, durable and strong,” Mehta said.

They wanted a design which could depict an evolving India with a transparent democratic system. The Indian parliament was  chosen because democracy forms the underlying principle of the Indian political system and the Indian parliament was an edifice that aptly symbolises this truth, he said.

The committee had specified that they need mementos to give to dignitaries of national and international stature, and also to retiring MPs as a gesture to recognise their selfless and dedicated services, he said.

The brief stated that the objective of this project was to create a unified image through standardisation of mementos, Mehta said.
“We have made a prototype of the memento and submitted it to the Rajya Sabha with all the blue prints required for production,” he said.