Episode 4: Culture as jobs—can it drive economic growth?

Can creative industries drive economic growth in South Asia? With automation threatening traditional employment sectors, this episode investigates the untapped potential of culture as an economic driver. From film and music to fashion and crafts, we explore how cultural industries can generate sustainable jobs, foster entrepreneurship, and even serve as a tool for soft diplomacy in the region. Featuring voices from the creative economy and cultural leaders, this discussion makes the case for a stronger cultural investment strategy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Today in India, young people are learning Korean is the second most learned language in India at the moment. Why? Because people are watching Korean soaps. Korean beauty products are more in the market and more popular than most brands today because it is a direct result of what people are seeing there. I mean, today when we curate a festival, if we can get a Korean band in, it might just raise our ticket sales. So you have to understand, and I think the government needs to understand the soft power of culture.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Welcome to Rearion. I'm Garov Grupta.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

And I'm in Akshi Sokti. We just heard Roshan Nabas in that clip, and we spot on. Korean culture has traveled the world on the back of K dramas, K pop, and cinema. It's not just entertainment, it's become one of Korea's most powerful exports. It makes you look at India, a country with millennia of craft, color, and creativity, and ask, why hasn't our cultural richness translated into that kind of soft power? I mean, take handicrafts alone. We're the fifth largest exporter of craft products, and 90% of the world's handwoven textiles come from India. We are part of the supply chains of virtually every single luxury brand in the world with regard to embroidery. Now that's extraordinary. And yet we don't quite own the global imagination the way Korea does. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

It's a great question. And as you'll hear from our guests, it's a really complex answer, but I do think one thing underpins it, which is that this notion of do we as consumers, not just as producers, but we as consumers, do we value our own craft? I mean, the reality is I can buy a handmade basket or a clay pot for a lot less than a mass-produced item.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

And the idea of value isn't just about price tags, right, Koro? I mean it's about people. The craft sector employs nearly seven million artisans, most of them women, and based in rural India. There's enormous potential, but also real fragility, inconsistent incomes, limited market access, lack of insurance backstops in case of natural calamities, and the big question of whether the next generation will stay in these traditional professions at all. So, yes, we need to design interventions and we need buyers to value handmade work, but we also need to create real value for the craftsperson. How do we push for authorship and recognition and make it viable, dignified, and aspirational to stay in the craft ecosystems?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

I do have an idea around this, and I got really excited about it, and I ended up pitching it, in fact, to one of our guests.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Garov promises he has an idea, and apparently he's pitched it already. So let's hear it. But first, why don't you introduce our guests?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Well, we have Tasni Mehta, the director of Bao Daji Lad Museum, Roshan Abbas, a media professional and co-founder of the storytelling collective Commune, filmmaker Nandita Das, and Jasmina Zilang, who runs Elum Naga, which makes handcrafted furnishings that are just incredible. We discuss public and private patronage for the arts, the support that non-mainstream cinema needs, and how to create a successful crafts business. I think it's quite telling that in a conversation we're going to have about culture and jobs, one of the challenges has always been about defining the space. And, you know, Roshan, we have someone who defines himself as a storyteller, now a story seller, I think if I got your tagline right. You've been an RJ, you've been in the PR industry, you've been in around brands and selling brands. And Tasneem, you've been in helping create some of the most important institutions in the country and looking at the spaces of museums and curation. And yet we lump all of these things together. And we have this like big term called culture, which I think makes it such a difficult topic to speak about and to advocate for. And firstly, uh thank you for joining us from this sort of wide spectrum of experiences. What we're going to do today is take a perhaps an angle that is less discussed often when we talk about culture, but is actually essential to the lifeblood of it, which is culture as jobs, culture as part of the economy, culture as something that delivers for the common person both an experience, but also perhaps as livelihood. And we'll discuss that in the notion of how we can be thinking about our cultural assets and the creation of jobs and the importance of the economy. But I thought we would kick start with the input side first, right? How do you even fund culture? Just because I think it really draws upon the experiences of both Roshan and Thasnim. And let me give my version of the challenge as a layman, as someone who's an outside observer of this industry, you know, I see historically culture as something that when we think about it, when we look back, and we think about those historical artifacts, whether it's poetry or buildings, right, they seem to come from a patronage model. They come from this idea of, you know, we had Rajas, and this is across the world, right? Monarchies, some very rich people, and they showed patronage, and their version of what they wanted to uplift became the cultural artifacts that sustained. And, you know, the 20th century sort of brought in this notion of many democracies, social or thriving democracies, and this idea of uh socialist or socialism and democracy coming together if you look at Europe and India in 1947 onwards is a socialist democracy. And so suddenly you have this notion of not only is it rich people and uh monarchs, but then in a socialist democracy, it's really the role of the state to help fund culture and make sure the culture is representing people. And I think up to this day, we have both models operating. We have the patronage model of the rich and the state. But India stands somewhere in a very challenging position because for most of that time as a socialist democracy, it has been a poor country. And at least to me, it felt like the idea of funding culture is a luxury. That these are the things you do after you've saved lives, after you have funded core education, after you have funded basic healthcare. And that still is a journey. So, how can we still be, you know, thinking about art galleries and thinking about cultural institutions and artists seems like a luxury. Is that a fair way of depicting what has happened so far and the challenges of it being funded? And does that mean we are still reliant on a sort of more rich oligarchical patronage model? Or do you see that India is a country that is being able to fund culture meaningfully through public institutions, through public money? Who would you like to start? For whoever the spirit strikes first, I think.

SPEAKER_05 6:44

All right. Okay, so I'll take a shot at it because I'm very familiar, having been very involved with the Ministry of Culture for several years. I sat on several museum boards and also with the Ministry of Textiles that oversees the whole craft sector, which is really an essential part of the whole creative industries. If you were to call culture in terms of jobs and economics, if you were to give it a term, and that's what UNESCO has done, they have given the economic aspect of culture, which is what we're talking about today, the title of creative industries. So it covers a vast gamut of cultural practitioners, cultural inputs, et cetera. But just to go back to your question, it was very much patronage, as you rightly said, patronage of Maharajas, of rich merchant princes, et cetera. And this was across the world. And then it devolved on the state. Now, in the early years when we first got independence, the state was very active in promoting culture. And we know that they built the institutions. Molana Azad was, you know, in charge of the Ministry of Education, HRD, under whom culture uh first came. And I think my no, now it has been separated, but for many years culture was under the HRD ministry, and it set up the National Gallery of Wobnot, the museums, most of the important museums on the country are on the Ministry of Culture. And then you had the handicrafts and hand looms board, which came under the Ministry of Textiles. Because textiles is the largest craft sector in the country and an extremely important one for eons, for ages. The earliest, earliest trade documents and records that we have, say with Egypt, with Arabia, is of textiles and textiles to the Far East as well. So that was actually the core part. It was spices and textiles on which when you hear of India being the richest country in the Middle Ages, what was that wealth based on? It was based on spices and textiles. And that's what they came for, all the European powers. So coming back to the funding today, the funding today is, you are right, from the state, from the Ministry of Culture for the Institutions, and the Ministry of Textiles for the Handlum and Handicraft sector. However, if you examine their records, if you look at their annual reports, you will see that the amounts are actually decreasing instead of increasing. Rosalia 2% of the budget. Now it is approximately 1%. Ministry of Culture gets approximately 1% of the budget. And that has to fulfill the objectives of a very large, you know, intention that they have, that it funds grants, it funds awards, it funds the archaeological survey, it's funding the museums. But the point is that one of the reasons it's decreasing also is because the capacity doesn't exist to spend. So what happens is the money lapses. When the money lapses, the Ministry of Finance doesn't go into the nuances or the finer points of why the money is lapsing. It just says, oh, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Textiles are not spending the money. TK, give it to some other ministry who can spend the money. So the amount goes down.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

But why is that? I mean, they've traditionally been spending half their budgets, right? And you've already made a strong case that look, even those budgets were not really enough for the wide ranging, and yet they're only spending half the budget. What was driving that?

SPEAKER_05 10:22

The lack of capacity to spend. So, you know, they have to write projects, they have to find viable institutions, projects, etc., to fund on. And this happens with the archaeological survey, also. They're always, you know, come November, the budgets are being reassessed, everybody's scrambling to see how they can spend all the leftover monies. This is how government permissions.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

I look on culture with a slightly wider lens because I believe that in the age of the mobile, culture is being now also consumed in two forms. One is in its digital avatar, and the other is in its physical form. Now we've always, governments, etc., have always known this to be in its physical form, which is oh, there will be a craft mela, there will be, I remember there was Dilli Heart and places like that. You would possibly have something around music which is all live, right? Whether it would be around music or there'd be a little bit around theater or dance, but that's where it used to be clubbed. But culture actually in India very often comes out in every festival that we do. I mean, look at when when a festival happens, what you see around it, the build around it is culture at one level. Then what happens is that with younger audiences, this whole shift towards the digital economy. I believe that whether they're consuming music or whether they're consuming what we are doing right now, even if it's a podcast or it's a traditional interview, or whether it is a design or art, I mean, the creative industry is as large, as what Tasneen said, is a very, very large sector. And that sector has, because it has the ability to be directly linked with commerce, is something that younger people have obviously gravitated towards. And the private economy, private money chases that as venture. Today, that entire industry is large enough. I remember that uh just around the pandemic, I was leading the event and entertainment management association. And we actually made a case to the Ministry of Finance as well as to the INB ministry saying that do you realize that just the wedding industry, and I know that it's a little bit of an extremity that I'm talking of, but is a hundred billion dollar industry. Now, when somebody, someone hears that number, they jump up. When we say that an event at its most basic, the most basic event employs 50 people, larger events employ over a thousand people in a part-time capacity. And when you tell them that the number of these events that happen, I mean there's a particular day when there would be three lakh plus weddings happening in a single city, now that's one form because there you will find music, you will find handicraft, you will find design, you will find people using all aspects of culture but slightly with a commercial mindset. And so because there is enough private money chasing this space, I think the government doesn't look on it because they believe that, hey, this is an economy which is circular by itself. But what happens to the traditional arts? And my dear friend Sanjay Roy often talks about this, saying that, you know, when you look at the people who did not know what to do with a device or didn't were not digital, what happened to them during the pandemic? There was a shrinkage that happened to about 1.5%. I think they say that the cultural sector went down. And see, it's a very small percentage of our GDP, but it is still important. The other point that I want to make is the fact of saying that government patronage today is important for multiple other reasons. The way Korea and Japan use culture as a soft power globally. Today in India, young people are learning Korean as the second most learned language in India at the moment. Why? Because people are watching Korean soaps. Korean beauty products are more in the market and more popular than most brands today because it is a direct result of what people are seeing there. Today, when we curate a festival, if we can get a Korean band in, it might just raise our uh ticket sales. So you have to understand, and I think the government needs to understand the soft power of culture.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

I fully agree. Let's talk about the Kumela. I went earlier this year. This is the largest gathering of human beings on the planet. In fact, I was visiting schools that they had set up simply for the children of the workers at the festival because this was essentially a massive city that had been created. And what's really interesting is beyond the fact that people want to go and visit and engage with what is a religious event, a cultural event, there's a really interesting digital aspect to this. I think a lot of people were present, not because they just physically wanted to be there, but they wanted to digitally show that they were there. There was a lot of crowd that it felt like they wanted to broadcast from there. And that was actually a principal driver of wanting to show up. And that must have had enormous economic engagement. Now, I'll ask both of you a broader question. Both of you talked about governments and private funding. What is your view of the ideal way in which funding for the arts should be coming in?

SPEAKER_05 15:01

Okay, I would say that it needs to be both government and the private sector. And now with CSR, actually, they could have said that CSR is one of the key sectors, culture and education is one of the key areas. Health culture and education could have been the key areas that they focused on for CSR. And I think that is the reason that government absolutely needs to increase its expenditure, but also the capacity to be able to fruitfully utilize this expenditure, which is the big problem. The big problem is how is the money being spent? Is it being spent with and creating the required impact? I mean, you can spend money in the most frivolous ways and it will have no meaning. So we need to be able to have peer reviews.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

I completely echo what Justin said that 75% of the money can come from there. But when the 25% comes only from big corporates, I have a little bit of a problem because they sort of put on a filter which is their own. It becomes a little bit of things that they like. And if corporates were to put in the money and move aside and let programming, et cetera, be independent, it's fine. But I often see that it has a little bit of a filter that passes, which is why I would love 10% of the money to come in from people. The Patreon model that exists internationally, where people support the artists they truly want to. Digital is breaking down all the barriers which used to exist earlier of saying I'll apply for a grant, somebody will respond to it. It happens in real time. I have personally been a part of these kind of fundraisers, you know, and done that. Today, I mean, 10 years ago, when we started the spoken word movement in India by launching commune, it was just because I had a personal interest in storytelling and poetry. And I was like, why can this not happen in non-traditional venues? We started uh Gaurav in gyms and dance studios, where after they used to finish, I would say, just give me one hour at the end, I'll put up a mic and I'll call people and they will self-shoot videos and put them up. But it was within a year that because that art form resonated with young audiences, that we ended up with 100,000 people. In two years, we had a festival. Today we have 15,000 people listening to Gulzar at GeoGarden. You know, and these are people in the age of 18 to 25. Today, I believe that what digital has done is that it has democratized culture, it has democratized entertainment. And people today, we have a thousand crore concert economy that has happened in the last six months on the back of Diljee Dosange, Brian Adams, etc. Yeah? Ed Sheeran's biggest market today is India. Biggest market. Honey Sing has sold 85,000 tickets across five shows. This is fictionless commerce where somebody wants an artist on an art form and says, I'll pay the money. Now, somebody needs to find this for traditional arts as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Of course, one of India's biggest forms of cultural export is cinema. And I was lucky enough to speak to the actor and director Nandita Das about the challenge of making movies. Now, mainstream cinema dominates the film industry and it leaves independent cinema to sometimes struggle. That wasn't always the case. In the 1970s and 80s, the National Film Development Corporation funded independent movies, but that kind of government support has really declined. What would Nandita's pitch to the government be today? Why should they increase precious funding in an area where there are a lot of competing needs?

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Yeah, but you know, I mean, I would say that India, considering India makes a thousand films a year and has been consistently making it for like hundred years or whatever, we are still not out there. We are not out there like the Iranian films or the Korean films, and you know, we are not a bigger player in sort of world cinema, and we totally could because we have great literature, we have so many different languages, we have stories in every part of the country, multiple and thousands and thousands of stories. We've got talent, we are technically really good because we've been making films for so long, and you know, so we have great cinematographers and sound we are also getting better at because earlier we used to do sync sound, so we never cared enough. I mean, sing sound I'm saying earlier we used to do dubbing, so we didn't care as much, but now increasingly people are getting it. Music, music is sort of culturally very much part of our ethos. So maybe Bollywood is one part of that what has become the big export. But India is not just that. India is not just Indian films, are not just, you know, fantasy films and escapist cinema and thingy good and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Is South Korea an interesting example? Only because I I see I'm of South Korea, you have a very strong and vibrant sort of mainstream, right? Like K-pop is and K-dramas, they're already like strong mainstream things. And at the same time, arthouse cinema actually dominating, including many of the, you know, right up to Academy Awards. So just incredible, you know. What I like about what you're saying, and even for the South Korea example, is that first and that sort of ability to do mainstream and independent cinema together, both build a brand because it's important to build a serious brand as well. And I think and how that is then translated into not just commercial success for the cinema, but actually commercial success for the country. There's a general brand uplift on South Korea, including all the way the tourism. And then also products and fashion and so forth. Which, you know, these things are sort of self-reinforcing. And again, coming back to how do you commercialize something? Well, I think one opportunity for commercial funding is to say there is strong economic outcomes. It's a public good in some ways, right? Cinema, there's aspects of cinema as a public good. But as a filmmaker, you looked outside of India, and I'm just curious that for funding, right? And it might be interesting to hear from you what is best practice, right? Where are you seeing where you as a filmmaker go, oh gee, I wish we had this back at home, right? What are some of those examples?

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Right. Well, the European model is great because they not only fund their independent films, they are funding stories from all around the world, especially the global south, because they realize that those stories aren't coming out, that they do not get enough support in their own country. Why are they doing that? They could have just been funding their own independent films. You know, there are grants like the Netherlands called Hubert Ball. It's a foundation and it just supports films from different parts of the world that are telling human stories. You know, there is something called CNC, the Cinéma du Monde in France. You know, they have uh Arte, which is in Germany and France. So there are so many, a lot of the Scandinavian countries, you know, Denmark, Finland, uh, Sweden. So it's almost like, okay, we've got the infrastructure, we have funds for it, because I'm sure they could have also not given this a priority. But they're choosing to do that. And we can't do that for our own country, considering we have so many languages, so many stories, so and we are copying you know stories from outside, we are copying each other's things. I mean, there's no dirt of over. Original stories? Why aren't we adapting more books? Why aren't we bringing out those hidden gems?

SPEAKER_01 22:06

I'm sure there are writers, you know, that we could tap into form of cultural production that India is famous for is of course handicrafts and textiles in particular. Many of the biggest global fashion houses have actually used Indian artisans for their very fine-tuned work on embroidery, something that doesn't actually get acknowledged, although recently you started to see fashion houses like Dior actually acknowledge some of the artisans that have been sitting behind that work. They had a show in 2023, for instance, at the Gateway of India where they talked a bit about this. But there's a claim our craft traditions are dying. And I spoke to Jasmina Zelang, who runs Elum Naga, a very successful enterprise that works with weavers to make handcrafted home furnishings. About what will it take to make the textile industry successful in a way that will give artisans a sustainable income?

SPEAKER_04 23:02

Yes. First of all, I would ask the government to ensure that the government policies that are in place, the government welfare schemes that are in place, do not follow the dictum that one size fits all. At this, I'm talking in the backdrop of Northeast India, where our population is not so dense like in the Metro cities. So typically there is a handlum project that targets like the let's say 3,000 uh weavers, and we may not be able to comply with that figure, and hence we are left out of those projects and welfare schemes. Secondly, I think the government must collaborate also with all the right organizations or councils when it comes to giving access to markets. Most times you will, with all the right intent, the government also spends a lot of money on marketing, but most times they are not the right markets. So there's a lot of consultancy that the government also needs to look into. And thirdly, I feel that the government must spend money on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship, at least in my state, is what is keeping the state ticking. Because we are a consumer state in Nagaland. And for the longest time, I mean we didn't have much development because of the political climate. But it's interesting to see how you know vibrant the youth of Nagaland are today. So I feel that if with the right mentorship, right incubation centers, if the government can look into mentoring the youth of today, we will definitely become a very robust economy.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

How do we make this an exciting career for young folks?

SPEAKER_04 24:44

So I met this Weaver entrepreneur who goes by the name Shamji Vankar from Pooh, I think a lot of people know him. So you know what he said was he has four children, one daughter is doing IIT, another one and something. Out of all the four children, he makes sure that all these educated, well-health children spend at least two hours on the loom daily. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Two hours a day.

SPEAKER_04 25:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

Two hours a day on the loom daily so that their family tradition of weaving continues. On hindsight, I feel that in this, as I speak to you now, there's I'm encouraged because I see a lot of young people appreciating craft like never before. That I hope is just not a fad though. But there is a turnaround and a lot of young people are exploring how to use their traditional identity and traditional customs and weaves, etc., and transfer it into commercial takeaways.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

I wonder if that leads to a slightly different problem, like or or opportunity, I shouldn't call it a problem, which is traditional crafts have been handed down in an apprenticeship mode within families, you know. And as you see, you know, especially with success, I mean I think it's a success story that this weaver's kid is now, you know, an heir hostess at Emirates or what an aspirational job that is. And but there may be other children or young people who want to explore weaving, but may not have come from that as a family background, maybe even a cultural background. Do you think there is already those platforms in place, or there needs to be those platforms in place that also allow this to be more formalized, you know, the skilling of it and allow others to come in, not necessarily just the same families?

SPEAKER_04 26:20

Oh, definitely. I established the Erlung Naga Center about two years back. And let me tell you, it has been the most fulfilling work of mine till date. So we partner with a lot of schools, and a lot of school children come to us to learn how to weave, to learn how to make bamboo basketry, to learn how to make zero waste craft. So, apart from that, we've also set up a gallery in our center, which sort of gives people a sense of being, a sense of pride and dignity in their artifacts, in their heritage. And I feel that this kind of exposure to the young minds, to young people, uh, is needed in this country. So that, you know, we don't treat craft only as heritage. We also need to treat craft as a continuity. I feel that it's a bridge from where we come from and where we would like to go instead of always treating craft as uh nostalgia or as heritage.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Right. It should be also constantly evolving in its own right.

SPEAKER_04 27:18

Yes, you know, very interestingly, in our craft workshops, you know, in a state like Nagaland, weaving is relegated only to women. It's considered a social taboo for men to even go near the loom. But let me tell you, in this day and age, amongst the millennials who come to us, they see nothing wrong in wanting to learn how to weave. That in the first two instances, I actually called up their parents, the mothers, and I asked them, like, is it all right? Your son wants to learn how to weave. And then typically the mother said, No problem, please let him go ahead. So, you know, there's a slow, slowly we're trying to uh shift that gender stereotyping as well through the center and the workshops that we conduct.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

You know, I think sometimes we see weavers and traditional craftsmen as themselves just production units, not necessarily design units. And I'm curious, is that something that you think we there's a lot to unlock, that it's not just the traditional craftsmanship, but also the design aesthetic that we can actually bring out? Or often people think that design aesthetic comes from outside?

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Not necessarily, because I feel that the greatest designers are the artisans themselves. Look, I don't have a background in design. I'm just verbally translating it to them. Like if you ask me the truth, I cannot even sketch. So for me, the actual real designer is the weaver or the craftsman. I just verbally express myself to them. And maybe nowadays I show them pictures. I could be showing them like a painting. And do you know that they are so good that they can actually translate their painting into their weaving? So I believe that if you give the reins and if we believe in the artisans, they are capable of uh giving you so much more instead of us from the outside dictating to them.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

And I want to keep exploring this because I think again, one of the things you see, at least in mainstream markets, is designers themselves become brands, right? But I feel like sometimes the idea of traditional artisans who are maybe creative and doing their own ideas, often their brand is still associated at a communal level, right? Like they represent the region or the particular art form and not themselves individually. But even as on one side, we need to build the brand of artisans, on the demand side, we actually need to raise the aspirations of buyers to really value uh handmade arts. I mean, I think this thing has come full circle. For example, when I was growing up, initially ready-made clothes were actually seen as aspirational, were seen as higher quality factory-made clothes, and your local tailor was actually cheaper. And now, you know, tailored clothes have the cash in. Certainly globally, tailoring is actually seen as much more unaffordable. But we have not been able to realize that sort of price potential of handmade, that aspirational aspect in the way, for example, Japan has, which has done much more to make handmade products aspirational. The people that produce them are revered, and people pay therefore substantial sums handmade products. Tasneem had some ideas on how we can inculcate a value of culture in people's purchasing behavior.

SPEAKER_05 30:23

Yes, you're you're absolutely right. That is so critical. And that still hasn't happened. It will happen, it's beginning to happen. There are a lot of exhibitions that happen, but it needs to happen and get talked about and get promoted by bringing in influencers, by bringing in people who like important film stars, etc., who will project it and value it. So that has to be done. And there, both corporates and also the government should find ways of sending out that message. And then it also creates, as you said, about South Korea, it creates that global uh imaginary about India and India Shining, Incredible India. So the Incredible India program did have a huge impact. And I think based on that, they need to look at perhaps taking up the craft sector, taking up the cultural sector, and seeing how they can promote it. Because it is very important to understand that people are not coming to India, even business people, just to find malls, to look at malls, or to experience what they can experience in a much better way in the West. They're coming to experience what is uniquely ours. And that effort needs to be definitely strengthened.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yeah, I think uh what you're pointing out, and this is where I've done a little bit of work, you know, the challenge with the private sector is it looks for things where it can appropriate value. And so an event, you can appropriate value. But if I need to deal with a hundred thousand people in my supply chain, each making a thing, that's a lot of hard work for me to try and, you know, it's easier for me to put on one event. It's easier for me to create a movie and sell it to the masses, right? Um, but if you want to work with the handicraft sector, if you want to look at creative manufacturing, that is a completely decentralized structure on which you need to find some level of common centralization. And maybe digital is the only maybe this is the Instagram space, right? Where you see all of these very small companies, designer companies, come in with, you know, someone looking at a very specific, even village-level craft, right? And creating a brand around it and so forth. But it's very early in its infancy. I think this has been the huge ignored opportunity. Like you've said, this comes together when the government does something, the private sector does something complementary. I have just not seen enough of that in creative manufacturing. And that's where eight million people are employed. You know, you've talked about India's rich history. Yeah, we're actually fifth in the world of exporting handicrafts. The world's most populous nation that talks about its rich history. This is the one thing we shouldn't be fifth in, right? This is that should be something that we should be able to think about actually taking leadership. But I think this is where the confluence hasn't happened between the private sector and the public sector.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

I mean, if you look at places, I mean, Dubai of all places has, I remember 20 years ago, it used to be a genuine mela where countries were given little areas as stalls. Today it is a permanent venue with a 10-diram entry, which on a good day gets 50,000 people coming in, which has just got country pavilions. It is no different from what Pragiti Vedan could have been. But nobody went out and thought of it in that manner. But that because they look on it as a commercial enterprise, they are constantly figuring what is the programming to bring 50,000 to 100,000 people in each day. They will spend on that because they know the effect and impact of that is on everybody else around in terms of the stalls, the food, and everything else that is done. But that's because they have an economic agenda which is so clear. We will put together one mahoudsav and forget about it.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

So I wanted to bring that conversation back to Nandita, who's also passionate about the crafts, not just about cinema. We talked about the challenge of making people see value in the arts and also discussed a bit of a radical idea.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

My father has been a great collector of tribal and folk arts. I've grown up with it. In fact, he decided to set up an art center in Orissa when our home became a museum. Like there were so many things we could barely walk, you know, like everywhere you would find because he would just find these amazing pieces of tribal and folk craft and all of that, and you know, and he felt an art center should be built. But we are finding it so difficult to get takers for it. And what I really find interesting is that his vision was that contemporary art, you know the name of the artist, you know, it's become a signature, uh Hussein, uh Tayyabmetta, uh Suza, right? So people don't even want to see the work of art. It's like, oh, I have uh this, you know, it's I'm buying a brand, not a visual. Yeah, you're you're buying a product, you're buying a brand, it's an investment. It's not really art. Because if you're it's not speaking to you, you don't even know whether it speaks to you or not. But so my father's idea, and just for those who don't know, his name is Jatin Das, he's a contemporary artist, but his passion really lies in that. And in the art center, what he's trying to do is to have folk, tribal, classical, and contemporary art all under one roof. So you're kind of giving that same respect and valuing the folk and tribal art as you're valuing the contemporary art.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Well, let me pitch something to you, which is certainly not the idea of this podcast, but I'm now listening to you. Since you're a filmmaker, maybe you're even closer, you're somewhat close to uh TV making, right? Which is one of my observations as someone who used to live outside of India and came there 16, 17 years ago, is that I remember visiting my relatives, we'd go out to restaurants, and there was no such thing as a chef. There was just a cook, right? I mean, the idea that no one cared about the chef, really. Right. And then I've observed now, people will even marry their kids to chefs, right? Yeah. And it's a thing. It's a real thing. And I think it's a thing because of Master Chef. I think Master Chef, not even India, I think MasterChef Australia was, you know, sort of suddenly correct. And we when we observed the artisan at work, we put identity to those artisans and we built brands around them. And suddenly society changed its valuation. I mean, of course, it's not as simple as one show, but it's a good example of I think art leading society, right? My pitch to you is how about we make a show or make shows? I mean, you know, I think your dad cares so much about pottery, for example. I mean, their dad is uh such a visual art form, like the ability to show master potters at work and create a competition and think about like creating a game show around it.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

For instance, many years ago, probably more than 10 years ago, he did a very interesting workshop on the site, you know, where the art center is in Huvneshwar. There were two workshops that he did, one with potters, where he got studio potters who are known, right? Because they do it with ceramic and it's stoneware. We all use it, and it's like a it's a piece of art, one piece, and you know, it sort of has different shapes, etc. And he got the regular potter who makes these little colours, you know, little bowls and what you drink tea and then throw it or little pots and stuff like that. And they were paired together. And I remember that experience because I was learning pottery at the time, and I remember that experience. The studio potters were overwhelmed to see those potters and said, Oh my god, I feel like I know nothing. So he got professional contemporary sculptors, and he got the temple sculptors. You know, again, nameless faceless artisans work to create temples and do other traditional sculptures of deities and stuff like that. And again, when they were paired together, it was the contemporary sculptor, you know, who had three, four workers who would do all of that, and you say, Yeah, just can you chisel this part? Or sometimes they would do the fine-tuning. Here was this person, he just you know, like in an hour, he would just create this magic. But we don't value that person at all.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

I mean, just what you described itself would have made great TV, right? I mean, that's riveting stuff. Everyone wants to see that sort of local cooler maker wipe the floor, right? And to some extent also maybe learn something too. I mean, there's it's it is a two-way exchange.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

I mean, no, no, of course, it's a two-way exchange, but I think it's going to be a comedy show. Because when the, you know, like a Patachitra painter who's used to doing these very minute things, and you have this artist, and uh, you know, maybe the Padachitra painter can still do what the artist is. I doubt if the contemporary artist is able to do what the Padachitra painter is doing, right? So, I mean it's it it could be a very interesting exchange, and just to be able to watch that show and have interesting conversations through it.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

And you know, go deeper into their lives would be, I think, uh, I'm up for it. If you're up for it, would love to do something through that.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Yeah, let's talk after this. Yes, thanks. So let's say we are successful, that we were able to change mindsets and increase demand through our wonderful idea of a TV show. You still, on the other side, need to continue working on the supply. How do we get businesses that are selling the arts to scale? Jasmina is one of the few people in the country to overcome the various challenges we've spoken about to run successful crafts business. She started with one weaver in her backyard and now works with a thousand. What does it take to reach this scale?

SPEAKER_04 39:39

It's very challenging, A, because you know, we have to be completely rooted in the market. So for the longest time, I was the perennial sales guy. And it's only now and I would invest all my resources in marketing. So when I say marketing, again, I was not looking for like mom and pop stores. I will constantly look over my shoulder for well-established chain of stores and high street brands globally. And by participating in this B2B fairs, export fairs, I think I sort of uh gained the confidence of the importers. Many well-held and many well-entranced brands would see me back to back in all these fairs. And that's how like I was able to scale up. And at the back of my mind, there was only one thing that drove me that I have to give uninterrupted work to my growing band of artisans. Without that, you cannot, you know, hold them.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Yeah, and I think this is a good segue to that question. I think that's you know, to some extent sits at the center of all this, which is why does this all matter? Because I think we're in this moment of like, how can culture be a big driver of the economy? And you know, many of the stories you've shared, one of the things I like about them is, you know, they they're kind of AI proof, right? And we're staring down the barrel of artificial intelligence, changing the whole job landscape. Well, many of the things you're describing are in fact running in the opposite direction, which is, you know, handmade human intervention as opposed to artificial. And so, you know, creates potentially the jobs of tomorrow, right? And so I think one thing that listeners would find very interesting is to understand the economics. And I what if you're open to it, I wonder if you would be willing to share what that looks like. Like, you know, typically, if you think about how much a single weaver is producing, what is that potential revenue for that's created as a result? How much can the weaver then acquire of that overall revenue? I think that would just be really helpful to be able to say, you know, how does this mean as a career?

SPEAKER_04 41:32

At least 40% of the revenue the weaver must get for herself. So for me, like if we really want the craft sector to be seen as a growth industry, we need to change our vocabulary. We must talk about jobs, we must talk about entrepreneurship, data, innovation, and not just heritage. And we also, I think, need to invest in design very carefully because when we want to increase our footprint in this industry, we also have to take care of the first-timers who are entering this industry, the sector.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

I hope that any policymakers listening to this podcast will heed your advice. Thanks, Jasmina, for a great conversation.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

So, Gorov, I have to say a reality show for artisan is a genuinely quirky idea. I'd absolutely watch it though. But let me push back for a moment. Craft is slow, it's deliberate, it's deeply skilled, and reality TV just feels like the opposite. So if we turn craft into a competition format, are we at risk of trivializing the very traditions we're trying to elevate?

SPEAKER_01 42:41

You know, I think what we heard from our guests is that craft needs to be valued, popularized, and modernized. And of course, doing that, the role of what TV could be, whether it's reality TV or some other formats, is really to make that message as wide as possible. And so you do give up something. But you know, you take MasterChef, for example. It's not that they are making Maggie, right? They make high-end food, but in a very compressed time frame and format. And people get inspired then about food, but they don't expect the restaurant experience to be the MasterChef experience. And so how do we use formats like this to create a sense of value and even just a sense of greater appreciation? But then when people are actually then engaging with a particular artisan or are trying to buy something, I think then they may want to look for something that you know is built over time, you know, is a portfolio of work. But really, what I'm thinking about in this idea is how do we even get to that first level of awakening where this becomes popular? But you've been doing much stronger thinking on this for much longer than I have. Uh what's your sense?

SPEAKER_02 43:45

I think you've caught on to this quite correctly. And I think basically a mix of design, a mix of the visibility that initiatives like this could bring in, and more importantly, just the encouragement that an artisan on a show with, you know, sort of suddenly an Being watched by millions of viewers across the region could be a game changer. And so it's an interesting idea, Gaurav. But on that note, a quick review of our next episode. We'll be exploring the future of healthcare with Dr. Balakrishnakor Gankar of Leapfrog to Value, Devakar Mittal from Nova Nordisk, and Harvard Medical School's Dr. Vikram Patel. It's a conversation about systems, about equity and innovation, and one you won't want to miss.