Vadodara: Most cities chase a “City of Design” label with a palace, a poet, or a glossy skyline. Vadodara is leading with a crocodile. The city’s new design identity, unveiled by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation with the Heritage Trust, makes the mugger of the Vishwamitri its public face — and calls it “both local and iconic.” It isn’t wrong.

The branding has a bigger goal behind it. A campaign poster spells it out: Vadodara is aspiring to join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, a 408-city global club that puts creativity at the heart of urban development. In the Design category, that means standing beside Berlin, Seoul and Nagoya. So far, no Indian city holds the Design tag, making this a genuine first-mover race, with Pune in the running too.

A mascot that actually lives here in Vadodara

This isn’t a logo dreamed up in a studio. A February 2025 census counted 442 wild crocodiles in the river’s city stretch — up from 275 in 2020. Vadodara is the only major Indian city with a thriving wild crocodile population.

Washer persons wash clothes on one ghat; a mugger basks downstream; joggers nod at the river. Scientists call it passive coexistence, one of the few places on Earth where a large predator and a major city share space without fences.

The choice runs deeper than design. In Gujarati tradition, the crocodile is the vahana of goddess Khodiyar Maa, and carved makara faces guard temple doorways across the state. “Mugger” itself comes from the Sanskrit makara. The city isn’t inventing a symbol; it’s naming what already defines it.

The real design brief is the river

But a logo is the easy part, and UNESCO is blunt that the tag is a commitment to the future, not a prize for the past. The mugger is IUCN Vulnerable and legally protected. After the brutal August 2024 floods, citizens fought off a Sabarmati-style riverfront project, and during the dredging that followed, 410 crocodile, turtle and bird eggs were moved to Sayaji Baug Zoo for safe incubation. Only last week, the VMC proposed a fresh plan that, for once, puts crocodile and turtle habitat ahead of beautification.

That’s the brief that matters. A clean, living Vishwamitri is far harder to draw than a logo, but it’s the one a Creative City of Design has to deliver. Vadodara has named its mascot. Now it has to earn it.