Can India Leverage its Strength in Art, Craft, Architecture and Culture?

Bikash Choudhury

For thousands of years India was able to attract Global attention to its rich traditions of Art, Craft, Architecture, its diverse culture and epiphany of festivals. Its mythology, tradition of medical science, spiritualism, philosophy on life, yoga, religion drawn people from far and wide across the World to the seat of learning at ancient universities like Nalanda and Taxyasila. Apparently, World is just ready for buying Indian Traditional Knowledge to make a difference to the quality of lives of their respective people. No wonder, with just one speech of our Prime Minister, United Nations agreed to celebrate 21 June as International Yoga Day to highlight the importance of Yogic Science for a healthy body and active mind. In spite of sophisticated technology and management science the developed economies going through deep turmoil. The problem of such economies lies in the gross disparity in income and wealth, culture of ostentatious consumption and wastage of public resources on unproductive investment in weapons of mass destruction. The ever growing disparity of income making the capitalist system of free enterprise fail due to lack of demand for goods and services as those who can consume do not have the cash to buy or skill to earn a good living. If developed economies do not make correction sooner or later; then, there are chances the whole system would collapse. If 10% of people earn and own 90% of income and wealth and vice-versa; then, the highly skewed income and wealth shall clog the cycle of demand and consumption making the whole economy very unproductive.  The solution lies in voluntary philanthropy and progressive government policies to assist weaker people as and when needed. This requires an enabling mindset of renunciation; which can be created through Indian traditional knowledge of art, craft, architecture and culture by simply making people happy and joyful with very little resources. Therefore, Government at the Center and States, Public & Private Sector organizations and NGO should get together to promote our traditional Art, Craft, Architecture and Culture in a big way so as to capture the attention of Developed Economies. First of all, we need to develop a new culture of buying art for our home and work places, Second, institutional mechanisms to promote Artist with moral and material help, Third, need for identification and documentation of dying art forms and necessary Governmental efforts for its revival, Fourth, need to convince mutual funds to consider Art as an asset category for investment with lucrative returns, Fifth, Governmental efforts for export of Art, Craft & Architecture in collaboration with Indian Diaspora & Indian Business having overseas operations. There would be a need for training and retraining of our Artisans and Sculptures to once again design and export master pieces like Konark and Khajuraho to advanced countries reinventing a $100 billion USD Industry of Arts & Architecture. Shall we?   

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