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Support the creative self-empowered

Rajeev Sethi

Helping the talented poor cope with the new global markets will bring more meaning to our education, and help us pay back the debt for our hugely privileged and subsidised training. Citizens must support and express solidarity with what is increasingly being referred to as `Creative & Cultural Industries.'

MOST OF us feel empowered when foreigners see India scaling economic indices. The Kasturi Mrig, the musk deer, is driven wild searching frantically in a forest for a fragrance that is emanating from its own body. As a country, we are oblivious to the potential of our vulnerable but creative individuals and communities struggling tenaciously to keep the time-honoured cultural expressions from disappearing. Yet India is positioned on the world map with the contribution of these brave foot soldiers of heritage. This marginalised sector constitutes the second largest workforce after agriculture and contributes much more to the GDP than all of corporate India put together, and there is no substantive appreciation of their profound role in keeping us together as a nation, emotionally and spiritually.

Self-empowerment will first mean self-pride. What can make India proud of itself? Doing what others can do is one way; but doing it our way, unique both in thought and deed, would be even better. Surely, India's originality lies beyond coolie tech and outsourcing. Indians must extend and occupy the special place we have in the evolution of human civilisation.

This task is best articulated and transmitted by what is increasingly being referred to in many countries as "Creative & Cultural Industries." Embodying a wide array of multi-disciplinary livelihoods, cross sectoral activities, this sector is bound together by the nature and size of their often self-organised enterprise (referred to rather derogatorily as the unorganised sector). This `sunset' sector has been made sick with sentimental subsidy and solicits a fraction of government resources, placed as it is at the bottom of the pyramid of priorities.

When I first heard the word industry being affixed to culture, I felt it lent a fine, provocative edge to what was considered a soft sector. This I believed would have the right resonance in the precincts of grand financial institutions where hard-nosed economists had moved from juggling cold statistics to sensing the potential of spirited, contextual growth. For countries with a huge traditional knowledge base that needed protection in this big bad world of copyright hijack and patent fortunes, this sounded like good news. It also suggested a revenue model with tangible commerce that could nurture belief and values that are difficult to measure.

The Government of India has so far paid lip service to artisans as a part of the `manufacturing' activity without quantifying their role in the production of `material culture'. This includes what a few Ministries have classified as handicrafts and handlooms, cottage produce (what we also refer to as khadi and village industries) and lately adding value to this sector, the more glamorous fields of fashion, accessories and product design.

We have not yet engaged with the critical realm of the intangible assets of our heritage and its incredibly diverse service providers, that is, those engaged in enterprises based on traditional or contemporary knowledge systems and its dissemination. For example, while we may conserve the stone inlays on a building in the walled city of Delhi, we are still unable to understand or tap the potential of Shahjanabad's living assets such as its oral history repositories, performers, culinary artists, and a host of unique professionals that more than support its tangible past.

Folk, classical, and modern forms of expression are critical drivers, articulating what our real wealth is and what we really want to be. Therefore apart from the indigenous technologies for production, our prolific service industries add a vital dimension to this sector if seen together. For example, the healing systems for humans, animal, and the environment, food processing and cuisines style, fine and applied arts, design and architecture, the literary arts, the performing arts including music and theatre, and syncretic media-based production such as publishing, cinema, and multi-media adding up to form a whole.

Scale is critical to our concern. In cinema for example, it is no longer just Bollywood and regional cinema that taps creative talent. For example, CD shops in small towns like Ghaziabad, Ranchi, or Rajkot popularly sell scores of local home features made by the aspiring self-employed eager to have their own say. Find out why these amateur videos are becoming more popular than Bollywood's NRI puddings!

All these homespun industries create content, using creativity, skill and (in some cases) intellectual property to produce goods and services with social and cultural meaning and with huge, booming market potential across the globe. They empower each other and explain India to Indians and to the rest of the world in a way no one else can.

Celebrating the deep connections between making, doing, and being that best articulates our civilisational ethos, we have to stretch the canvas of culture across inter-ministerial divides. We need a dynamic new construct between the acts of making and doing that can help lead us to the vigorous art of being... Being who we are, and being capable of going where we can — regionally and internationally.

Our Mehkama-bound colonial inheritance has produced a peculiar organism that has branched into many compartments that, more often than not, ignore the fruit of synergy. We need to jog jaded perceptions and invigorate our ability to do more with less. In developing such a strategy, one must be wary of the instinct to `throw money at the problem' through yet another omnibus Government Fund.

I have a conviction that with the simplest support systems, people welcome the ability to move forward. All it takes to turn the balance is the ability to perceive, identify, build confidence, and offer timely support. Problems lie thick on the ground and will not wait for official support.

The market place, which means you and me, provides a more balanced barometer to measure success. We must do what we are easily able to do. When buying our clothes, for example, let us at least wear handlooms every few days in a week. Every woman who can afford it should attempt to be a proud owner of at least one saree each from Chanderi, Pochampalli, Benaras, Kancheevaram, Bandhej, Kantha, and so on. The list is as long as one's interest and passion to collect. As a designer working on architectural interiors, I avidly inform myself about the nature of building material and form, seeing how they transform themselves with the sensibilities and skills of traditional builders like Sompuras from the East, Sthapathis from the South, Mahapatras, and Maharanas from the East, and Ramgadias from the North.

Never cringe at buying good utilitarian handicrafts and find creative ways to use hand-made materials to decorate our homes and spaces. Never let anyone, including official bodies, desecrate, damage any cultural property that is an asset to your environment. Empower yourself with beauty and heritage and you will become a vital stakeholder in tourism — Athithi Devo Bhava — `the guest is a god' ... and they will smile if you smile and present yourself with imagination.

Let's go out more often to see live performances and buy tickets to support them — invite performers to our home and neighbourhood and not just patronise multiplexes and D.J. nights. What a joy it is to discover more innovative street stalls! One needs to encourage creative retailers, consume inventive new snacks and healthier drinks made by small units, and create an appetite for neighbourhood eateries and respect for integrative medicine. Let us, for our own well being, keep eating organic food. Once the production gets set on regular demand, it will become cheaper, streamlining the delivery systems and influencing the dynamics of price as more and more farmers are able to reach out to more and more new markets. Likewise, we must help increase the sales of local handmade produce like soaps, paper, perfumes ... the "alternatives" produce is great! So what if one does not have the budgets as yet for mega ads with Bollywood stars?

Who are the entrepreneurs who will make this happen? When the young can learn to speak English with foreign accents working at odd hours for great pay packets, why would they go handholding the less privileged? In this age of professionals and experts looking at their watches and portfolios, a new equation is required to manage the traditionally skilled sector. Committed social action amongst skilled communities means giving them the time to `grow' into what they are not familiar with... "basti basna khel nahin, baste baste basti heh" (it is not easy... ..this settlement; while settling and settling, it settles). Today if a whole generation is not prepared to learn to work with those marginalised by the forces of change, there is no hope for a better India.

Helping the talented poor cope with the new global markets will bring more meaning to our education and will help us pay back the debt for our hugely privileged and subsidised training. Service will enhance our entrepreneurial zeal and infuse passion in our sense of work. It will give us the power of diverse pehchan and add diversity to our homogenised lives.

This is what we as citizens can do. How does the government pitch in?

(The author, a well-known designer, is Vice-Chairperson of the Taskforce on Culture and Creative Industries in the Planning Commission, Government of India, and Honorary Advisor on Legacy Industries, Ministry of Panchayati Raj.)

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