Parimala Inamdar

Director, Aquarians Management Consultancy Pvt. Ltd., India.

email: parimalainamdar@yahoo.co.in

I have worked for over 36 years in design innovation for human learning and strategies for organisation development. This includes extensive work with the corporate sector as well as with international development agencies, in India and abroad, urban and rural.

My work is founded on innovation for capacity building, education and organisation growth, in rapidly evolving socio-cultural and technological contexts. This demands novel approaches that factor in complex and inter-disciplinary areas – pedagogical design, psychology, neuroscience, social context, technological innovation and personal or organisational growth strategy. 

Presently, I am Director and Principal Consultant at Aquarians Management Consultancy Pvt Ltd., India (AMCPL).

I have deep and active interest in Indian heritage and crafts. Almārī, a special project supported by AMCPL, explores design innovation in heritage textiles. My love for languages extends to formal studies in Sanskrit and French in addition to proficiency in English, Marathi and Hindi. My personal practices include Vipassana, Ayurveda and Iyengar Yoga and I consider these fundamental to my evolution and invaluable to the world.

My research is internationally published and cited. I am a Certified MBTI Practitioner. 

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The Journey

Research, Design & Development:

I was in the United States in the 1980s for a postgraduate degree in Mass Communication after a BA from Mumbai University. That decade saw the development of the world’s first products in multimedia for education in the USA. My research looked at the emerging revolution at the convergence of computing with communications.

Around this time in 1989, USAID funded the development of the first interactive videodisc based multimedia in India, executed for the Ministry of Water Resources. I joined the project, to design and develop India’s first multimedia for water and land management training, leading diverse teams on pedagogy and content.  I returned to small town and rural India to apply my newly learned skills, inspired to create the new world.

There were many joys and challenges of working in rural India in the 1990s. Long days of field work were coupled with extreme heat and no communication media – not cell nor land. Even sending a fax* meant waiting patiently for days at the only fax machine at the local post office in Udaipur, dialing continuously, hoping for an instant connect! A normal day straddled diverse worlds, ranging from work with Indian farmers, professors, cinematographers and artists to American project managers.

In those early years of the 1990s, we developed visualisation techniques and self-paced learning to enhance classroom training for water and land management. Unique simulations helped learners experience complex natural phenomena. Adult learners were enabled to visualise, explore, observe, analyse and solve, at their own pace. Our final multimedia products were technology enabled, exploratory approaches to real world problem solving – a tech and pedagogical innovation of the time.  

Later at NIIT Ltd I started the ‘Centre of Competence in Multimedia’ and ‘The Design Lab’ within R&D. We developed some of the first concepts, content, products and platforms for educational technology. They were aimed at diverse audiences – adults, children, rural, urban, social & industry. These included interactive cd roms for children, learning management systems, corporate virtual universities and virtual classrooms.

The work on the globally acclaimed Hole-In-The-Wall project was launched in 1999. I led the research, design and development of its first large scale rural implementation in the coastal Sindhudurg District of Maharashtra (stories from ‘Hole In The Wall’).  An evaluation paradigm (GUI Icon Association Inventory) I developed became the core of its pan-India empirical research proofs. The research was internationally peer reviewed,  published and cited.** 

During these years, a project I conceived concerning digital art for rural Indian children***, was supported by The French Embassy in India, under the auspices of their Artist In Residence program. Our artist-in-residence was Pascal Monteil.  While working in rural classrooms and the field, we integrated pedagogical methods like scaffolded observation, peer learning, reflection and practice, enhanced by various aspects of tech. For me, our enduring collaboration has given me fundamental insights into sustainable pedagogy.

Consulting & Advisory Practice: 

Presently, I am Director and Principal Consultant at Aquarians Management Consultancy Pvt Ltd., India (AMCPL). AMCPL is a consulting firm founded by Senior Advisor and Strategic Management Consultant, Anil Inamdar. Under his visionary and astute stewardship, over many decades, our experience footprint covered top ranking large and mid sized organisations in the private sector as well as cutting edge technology start-ups.

Later, through the Technology & Learning Practice, our clients expanded to include international agencies, bi-lateral agencies, governments, NGOs and policy think tanks.

Our focus today emphasises convergent and integrative approaches for sustainable solutions in organisational growth and learning. It is imperative for organisational cultures in educational or other domains to be highly integrative, across subject areas, physical and digital spaces, action and reflection, self and the organisation, teaching and learning. 

At AMCPL, we hold that for change to be meaningful, it must come from within. We contribute well-honed judgments. We fully participate. We would always walk the last mile with the client.

Flikr photo stream

INTERNATIONAL DESIGN EXHIBITION – Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005 – The Digital Art Project exhibited for 3 months at the prestigious design exhibition – ‘D Day Design Aujourd’hui’ – The Centre Pompidou , Paris, France.

WORKSHOPS, CONFERENCES, LECTURES

• World Bank and the Government of Karnataka
• United Nations Development Programme, India & Asia-Pacific.
• United Nations Development Programme, Timor Leste
• Center for Policy Research, India
• Swiss Agency for International Development, India
• Kudumbashree Mission, Kerala, India
• Sri Aurobindo Society, India
• International Kaleidoscope Symposium, Europe
• Intel “Innovation in Education”, South Africa
• Institution of Engineers India
• University Joseph Fourier, France
• IT for Change, India
• Kutch Abhiyaan, India
• T4E (Technology for Education) IIT-Powai, India
• International Usability Professionals Association, India
• The French Embassy in India
• Rotary International, India
• Seagull Publishers, India
• ACM SIGCHI, India
• Comet Media Foundation, India
• Education Development Center, USA
• Industrial Design Center IIT, India
• Underscore Records (Shubha Mudgal, Aneesh Pradhan), India
• NIIT University, India
• Symbiosis Center of Information Technology, India
• PUKAR Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research, India
• ……and others.

PROJECT REFERENCES

•  ‘Towards Holistic Panchayat Raj’, Twentieth Anniversary Report of the Expert Committee on Leveraging Panchayats For Efficient Delivery of Public Goods and Services. Government of India Report 2014.
• ‘Imagining India’ by Nandan Nilekani
• ‘The Beautiful Tree’ by James Tooley
• Annual Report of the French Embassy in India (2004-2005)
• ‘Impressions’ Journal of the Alliance Francaise de Mumbai
• ….and academic citations

International press:

BBC, Discovery Channel, Catalogue of the Centre Pompidou, France, The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, DNA, The Indian Express, The Statesman, The Telegraph, Sakaal… and others.