And now the culture dollar
SHANTA SERBJEET SINGH
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It is time to give the thousands of crafts, skills and cultural legacies the recognition of being an economic sector in their own right.
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"Countries like India, despite their vast wealth of cultural assets, ... still await the creation of the right conditions to be shoehorned out of abysmal poverty and to tackle the challenge of equitable growth."
"CHUNKS OF MEANING": Heritage and the scores of industries around it need to be promoted in a big way. PHOTO: K. GOPINATHAN
AGAINST the spectacular backdrop of the medieval fort of Nagaur, 120 kilometres from Jodhpur, Rajasthan, recently, a wide-ranging debate took place on what exactly are cultural industries, who they are for, who deals in them and why they are important. Organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), it resulted in a document that will henceforth be known as the "Jodhpur Consensus".
Culture and industry? While romantics have always lived by the notion that the two don't go together, that to be "industrious" is to be non-creative and that creative people need only fresh air and water for survival, the reality is different. Vibrant cultures are those that guarantee a full stomach, a roof, however leaky, and a reasonable future to the children of every cultural worker. This, besides of course, teaching them to be industrious. The most committed Chhau performer can be forgiven if he would rather watch his son pedal a cycle rickshaw on the streets of Ranchi than starve as an unemployed dancer. And were data to be compiled on the number of hereditary performers of music and dance who have had to take to blue collar and even menial jobs or become petty traders in post-Independent India in order to just survive, it would shock the chattering classes.
Debate in Nagaur
At Nagaur, the nearly 80 participants included David Throsby, author of several books on issues related to culture and economics, John Howkins, writer on creativity, intellectual property, media and entertainment, the culture ministers of Brazil and Bhutan, the consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation for two decades and now on the advisory boards of several bodies, such as Princeton and New York universities, Dr. Alberta Arthurs , representatives of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank, besides the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and a wide swathe of our own grassroots cultural entrepreneurs who included Martand Singh and Rajiv Sethi.
Future policy planners will no doubt refer to the "Jodhpur Consensus" as a road map for the 21st-Century in which a historic segueing of "culture" with "industries", economic development with poverty alleviation and traditional skills with modern packaging, happened.
And the land of the proud house of Marwar, home to one of the richest banks of crafts, the performance arts and human resource skills anywhere in the world, was an apt location for a meet based on the premise that culture is mankind's most widely and evenly distributed resource, and that it finds expression as unique cultural resources throughout the world.
Skill is what matters
If the first Industrial Revolution was based on the skill with which raw cotton from Baroda was manufactured into textiles in the mills of Birmingham, today what matters is the skill of those who manufacture raw information, cyber data and all the building blocks of the information economy, into what is valuable — knowledge. It takes great skill to make meaning, content, style, ideas, plans, stories, concepts, designs, fashions — chunks of meaning that people can understand, use, value or love. These "chunks of meaning" are what the cultural industries make. In a very literal sense, the cultural industries, and the artist-entrepreneurs at the heart of them, are the manufacturers of the information economy.
FUSION: Support for cultural industries should be redefined as an investment in development.
There are two aspects to cultural products. Physically, they are usually simple: a reel of film, a CD, a computer disk, a sheet of printed-paper. But their value lies in their content, in their meaning, or what they represent. The content could be a film, a story, a photograph, a game or a pop song, and it might be entertaining or persuasive or informative or attractive. It is this information that has value, not the physical object that carries it. Even with a designer T-shirt or a piece of jewellery, it's the style, the design that counts, not the cloth or the metal. It is this input which makes Culture in the 21st-Century truly Big Business. And because cultural products are information-based, the rapid advance of digital technologies and the globalisation of communications networks have made the cultural sector one of the fastest growing in the world. Many of today's most successful companies are broadcasters, publishers, entertainers and games designers, and they are growing fast. In the world's advanced economies, these sectors are showing annual growth rates between five per cent and 20 per cent. In 1950, the world's biggest companies were industrial manufacturers and raw materials suppliers. The big names today are completely new and in the list of top companies are Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, News Corporation — television broadcasters, publishers, entertainers of one kind or another.
Cultural Industries?
So, what are Cultural Industries? In a very literal sense, the cultural industries, and the artist-entrepreneurs at the heart of them, are the manufacturers of the information economy. As Simon Evans of Creative Clusters, a leading British non-government organisation working in this field puts it: they are based on individuals with creative arts skills, in alliance with managers and technologists, making marketable products, whose economic value lies in their cultural (or "intellectual") properties. The Creative Industries include:
Advertising; Architecture; Crafts and designer furniture; Fashion clothing; Film, video and other audiovisual production; Graphic design; Educational and leisure software; Live and recorded music; Performing arts and entertainments; Television, radio and internet broadcasting; Visual arts and antiques; Writing and publishing.
But even as cultural industries have become one of the fastest growing economic sectors in industrialised societies of the United States and the United Kingdom in recent years, the same advancement has not occurred in the less developed countries. The world map of cultural industries shows an alarming gap between industrialised and developing countries. While developed economies throughout the First World have prospered and attained global prominence through strategies that have promoted their creative cultural industries, it is no coincidence that the Third World lags way behind. In fact, to take just one example, the world's largest infotainment giant Walt Disney today rakes in over $2 billion annually, more than even aviation giant Boeing Inc. Countries like India, despite their vast wealth of cultural assets, both physical and intangible, and populations that are among the richest in cultural knowledge and traditional skills still await the creation of the right conditions to be shoehorned out of abysmal poverty and to tackle the challenge of equitable growth.
Of course we have our indigenous "success" stories to offer. In recent years, there have been several ubiquitous local enterprises based on crafts and design that have changed orbits to become global a la Shyam Ahuja and his designer durries. Today there are several Ritu Kumars who turn a homespun kantha spread, made from ready-to-junk bed coverings into designer brands of high value. They point to culture's potential to contribute as much to economic growth as to the conservation of cultural heritage. Had Indian culture not believed in this truth, structures like Chidambaram and the Taj Mahal would never have been built.
What the West thinks
The difference now is that it is the big players from the West like the World Bank and the ADB, the UNESCO and the WIPO which are saying: "Support for cultural industries should be redefined as an investment in development rather than as an expenditure." They are pointing to them as an increasingly important source of employment creation and sustainable income generation. And they are proposing that cultural industries be accorded the status of being "agents of dynamic economic growth and prosperity, and tools for innovation, wealth creation and poverty alleviation." ("Jodhpur Consensus", Guiding Principle No: 5)
Alongside, the "Jodhpur conclave" also acknowledged that cultural industries need to be seen as more than economic; "they are at root social and cultural". As such the conservation and promotion of culture and the arts and national and local identities are essential to individual, community and social development, and policy should reflect the multiple benefit nature of cultural industries.
In order to create an evidence-based strategy for policies and action plans, instruments for data collection and analysis such as satellite accounting systems and mapping of cultural industries have to be created. Knowledge-based elaboration of strategies, policies and action plans have to be put into place to ensure the participation of communities, non-government organisations, small and medium scale enterprises and the private sector in policy formulation and decision making. This is particularly necessary at the local level, to guarantee maximum benefits for sustainable economic and social development. To this end, the "Consensus" urges stakeholders to establish and strengthen broad networks that bring together different elements of society and create linkages with global and regional value chains.
Stories from home
In Jodhpur alone, as an example, every month nearly 2,000 export containers carry the products of its cultural industries overseas. These range from a vast variety of refurbished construction crafts such as antique doors and windows for modern dιcor, new doors and windows reinvented to look like old and an array of art objects in every conceivable material, from wood, iron, brass, silver, glass, marble, soapstone, papier mache to handlooms, tapestries and jewellery.
At his sprawling warehouse in Jodhpur, Mahavir Jain, a dapper businessman in his early forties, talks about how he transited with the proverbial lota from his native village 20 years ago. Today, when he speaks to a top-heavy group of foreign economists and analysts in a Hinglish patois there is no trace of embarrassment. Rather, of pride. And of self-worth — for his spanking showrooms and factories all over Jodhpur, his fleet of Mercs and a work force of 1,200 and the nearly 200 export containers per month sent to foreign buyers. He never went to school but he sure could teach a thing or two to many an MBA .... Time to give the thousands of crafts, skills and cultural legacies involved in such a transition the recognition of being an economic sector in their own right.
Shanta Serbjeet Singh is Chairperson, APPAN International, New Delhi.
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