Fashion for rural employment

RETAIL: NIFT now has its own label to market, and it will assure rural livelihoods too.

New Delhi recently saw a rather refreshing initiative unfold under the aegis of Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) of the Ministry of Rural Development. As part of this, National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) has launched its own fashion label i.m.

"The attempt is to get our budding fashion designers to understand and involve Indian craft and fabric, generate a perpetual employment mode for traditional craftspeople and, finally, of course, establish a sales point that will market the end-product," says Asha Baxi, senior professor and dean of academics, NIFT.

Under i.m., NIFT will retail all the products that emerge from this venture. It has taken retail space in the Rajiv Gandhi Hasta Kala Bhawan in New Delhi. This has immense backend support.

For starters, 10,000 craftspeople have been identified in five states under the SGSY. And the clusters include Dhar in Madhya Pradesh, Humpi in Karnataka, Surendra Nagar in Gujarat, Kozikode in Kerala and Birbhum in West Bengal. And spearheading the respective clusters are students from NIFT Delhi, Bangalore, Gandhinagar, Chennai and Kolkata.

Over 900 NIFT students have visited these clusters and interacted directly with over 3,000 craftspeople for creating around 2,500 new and innovative products.

NIFT has mobilised the artisans at the grassroots and formulated 280 self help groups. The idea is to bring these rural craftspeople above the poverty level through self-sustainable and self-reliant effort.

"This is, in a sense, an extension of our earlier effort where we made students work with rural craftspeople as part of their curriculum. And the feedback from most students was how these people wanted a sustained involvement which could, in turn, change their lives as well," says Baxi.

As part of the new cross-learning initiative, students take these artisans to educational trips or places such as Fab India, Anokhi and Dilli Haat, among others, where they are exposed to new interpretations of their craft.

"This makes them innovate jointly with our students who in turn get to learn and create change. The students are also asked to come up with marketing and retailing ideas as well, making it a holistic venture. And eventually, with sale the livelihood of artisans is established," says Baxi.

The gameplan is to invest Rs 3 crore for three years on each of the above mentioned clusters, which should help turn around the livelihoods of 2,000 craftspeople.

The spend is being planned in a way that it will be spread on training, sourcing material, skill upgradation, marketing and product development. Not only will such dying arts as Tangalia get resuscitated, but students and craftspeople will gain a perspective to a new way forward.