Dr. Darlie Koshy's pioneering contributions to fashion and design education over the last quarter of a century has been well acknowledged by academia, industry and policymakers alike. A Doctorate in Management from IIT Delhi and an MBA from CUSAT, Koshy has been also trained at FIT New York in Fashion Marketing & Merchandising. As Founding Chairperson of Fashion Management Studies at NIFT, New Delhi after the successful stint of a decade as a top manager in the textiles-handloom sector,Koshy built a strong industry interface and thought leadership for NIFT from1988 till 2000, when he was appointed Director of National Institute of Design(NID), Ahmadabad. As a researcher and academic leader, Koshy's pioneering books on international marketing of apparel are highly regarded by the textiles industry and academia. His 'Indian Design Edge' traces the evolution of Indian design while arguing for a design-enabled India. Here he builds a case for"design in India".
The 'apparel', 'clothing','garment', 'fashion' and 'lifestyle' industries have undergone two significant changes since the beginning of the new century. With the dismantling of quotas since 2005, exporters of apparel are free from restrictions of quotas and only competitiveness through 'scale', 'quality' and 'innovation' matter now. The other change that happened around the same time was the rapid growth of the domestic fashion retail industry with recent exponential expansion of e-tailing/m-commerce/omni-channels, etc. Building competitiveness of the apparel industry is the biggest challenge in the context of immense competition from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. The local domestic garment industry has a CAGR of 15-18 per cent per annum and the apparel exports around8-10 per cent. The fashion/design education curricula, therefore, need to be industry-led and capable of "leading industry" as well.
The education system and the loopholes therein
The All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)'s pre-conditions and norms for niche institutions in de novo and creativity focused areas like fashion and lifestyle, including for 'design' related programmes, are obsolete and need to be recast. The Ministry of Textiles in its 12th Five Year Plan Sub-Committee report had said that AICTE and the University Grant's Commission (UGC) have not paid any attention to envisage and nurture 'fashion' related education programmes bo that UG/ PG levels and, therefore, recommended the setting up of a 'Fashion &Textile Education Council' to take care of all fashion institutes and their programmes.Despite the 12th FYP already being in its last two years, there has been noprogress on the part of ministry in this regard.
The UGC has not cared to even
update their obsolete 2003 guidelines for private universities which are really
the new engines of growth for skilling and 'Make in India'. For example, as of
now according to the UGC, a private university cannot partner with a technical
or sectoral institution outside the jurisdiction of the state to offer students
better employability. Is it really a tenable guideline as universities have to
partner with sectoral institutions which are located in respective geographical
clusters wherever they are to increase employability in leather or apparel or
jewellery for their rural/mofussil students?
Certainly, the higher and
vocational (skill) education need to be given lot more attention to come out
with more realistic guidelines by statutory bodies who seem to be in deep
slumber in their comfort zones. They need to reinvent themselves in line with
the 'Skilling India' motto of our country in the completely changed context.
Context is everything for decisions and contemporary law-making. The entire
higher education and vocational education is crying for reforms. I do hope the
government pays attention. There is not enough effort to converge the
'mainstream' with 'vocational system' through contemporary regulations except
paying lip service, even now.
Foreign universities
also need to come into India at some point, but before that the widespread
usage of 'twinning' programmes, meaningful academic collaborations through
dynamic arrangements, need to be absorbed into the system in a more conducive
legal and statutory environment by contemporary regulations. The 'validity of
degrees', 'equivalence of credits' and course work/research work integration,
etc, need to be worked out for creating a more robust system. Just like FDI in
the retail sector, FDI through foreign universities need to have a phased entry
so that the Indian education system suddenly is not destabilised with core
limited faculty resources pulled out by better salaries or higher fees putting
upward pressure on fee structure.
It is also imperative that our
indigenous institutions' quality of education programmes and research are
brought up to a sufficient level to allow a level-playing field. Meanwhile, the
educational technology of overseas universities need to be certainly absorbed
through quality assurance arrangements as IAM has done with Wolverhampton
University and NID, Ahmadabad (where I was director from 2000 to 2009) earlier
with BIAD in UK.
Our country needs 'job providers'
instead of 'only job seekers'. There is a priority need for promoting
entrepreneurship through incubation. I am glad that the Prime Minister has set
up a Ministry for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, which is a highly
laudable step.
A
ten-fold path in this direction
The Apparel Training & Design
Centre (ATDC) plans to upgrade all its systems across the country, as in the
last five years the Integrated Skill Development Scheme (ISDS) of the Ministry
of Textiles and the SMART project of ATDC have created a solid platform and are
now launching afresh the long-term programmes of ATDC Vocational Institute
(AVI), under the Directorate General of Training, Ministry of Skill Development
and Entrepreneurship. Thus, at one end we will be providing technically sound
shop floor workforce and on the other, shaping technologically sound
supervisors and junior managerial cadre.
Creation of an ecosystem is of
utmost importance in 'Aspirational India'. The new B.Voc programmes will aim
even higher calibre junior managerial and supervisory personnel, thus creating
a step ladder ecosystem for vocational training dedicated to the apparel
sector. B.Voc plans to bring out 3,000 candidates through ATDC's select 30
centres by 2017. AVI will have the capacity to train 7,500-10,000 individuals
per annum through 65 centres. The ATDC-SMART centres (about 125+) will continue
to train 40,000 candidates per annum for next two years. All facilities and
faculty resources would be upgraded by providing digital content. In addition,
ATDC plans to move towards an ISO-9001 certified organisation by 2017. So, (1)
scale with quality (2) digitalisation/ digital support for trainers and
trainees (3) developing an ecosystem through step-ladder vocational training
approach for Aspirational India will be the top three priorities.
India's rapidly growing
economy is getting integrated into the global economy; new opportunities emerge
every day. However, the students' skills and competencies should match with
opportunities. You have to keep the worm warm to catch the fish in cold climes
as the story says. Earlier, companies were looking towards having people with
80 per cent knowledge and 20 per cent skills. Now, companies look to have 80
per cent skills and 20 per cent knowledge in the candidates they seek out.
Students have to make considerable attitudinal change and actually demonstrate
the skills, whether in information technology or in fashion. So the next folds
are matching skills and competencies for employability by the youth being the
fourth point, and matching opportunities with talent and focusing on
demonstrable skills being the fifth and sixth in the to-do list. The ability to
accept change as the new normal and embracing new technologies is the seventh,
so to say.
The education system is
continuously evolving, but the disproportionate emphasis on higher education at
the cost of vocational (skill) education from 1947 to 2009 has cost in terms of
numerous skills being lost and gaining only diminishing returns for even the
higher education, since our higher education institutes and universities do not
show up in global lists where Chinese universities dominate from Asia.
Therefore, in India there has been heavy dependence on white collar jobs. The
skill revolution which we want to usher in should have started long ago - we
are at least 20 years late. As soon as economic liberalisation began in 1991,
we should have at least started the journey, and 2009 is a little too late to
benefit from demographic dividends. The integration of higher and vocational
education should be done keeping in mind that we are dealing with aspirational
youth in India who are only victims of accidence of birth, and the skill
education system should provide ample opportunities for individual growth to
result in societal well being, which will be the eighth point.
The community college concept
which was introduced by IGNOU in 2009 was laudable. Unfortunately, mindless
action by the then Vice-Chancellor destroyed the well intentioned revolutionary
approach which could have put IGNOU on a higher plane and given our youth a
good deal. We need to go back to the community college system. The ATDC had
over 50 community colleges at that point. The spirit of an institution like
ATDC need to be based on the community college concept as it links education to
holistic local and individual and societal development through training and
employment seamlessly.
"India requires literacy, numeracy,
IT-eracy" as we move towards a Skilled India and Digital India. We require
strong primary education and higher enrolment ratio for education in
universities as the country moves towards a knowledge and innovation-driven
service economy. However, only spread of manufacturing can upgrade the rural
economy. Therefore, it is important that India moves forward in imparting
skills as in Korea or Germany instead of the current level of 2-3 per cent
formally trained workforce. Literacy with domain, life and soft skills will be
the new mantra for success as the ninth element. The tenth point will be a
community or cluster-driven approach to higher secondary/skill/UG education, to
make India succeed in the global market place.
The
hierarchy of design in a corporate structure
The words 'design' and 'fashion'
are magnetic, and they both bring magic to the products or services which they
choose to touch or transform. However, the power of design and fashion has not
been used sufficiently in our country which is high on creativity. I had
pioneered and formulated the National Design Policy which was approved by the
government of India in 2007. However, follow-up action to realise the action
plan, including the India Design Council, has not only been tardy but been without
passion and drive too. We had coined the slogans 'Design enabled India' and
'Designed in India, Made for the World'. Those have not been carried forward
either by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion or by the
institutes.
I had advocated in my book of 1994
that instead of becoming a factory to the world like China, India should become
a "creative manufacturer" or "creative supplier of fashion or
apparel" to the world. Nobody paid enough attention. The core of a successful
brand is design. However, innovation has encroached a lot from the territory of
design, being linked to technology and therefore more acceptable to the higher
echelons of management. Design is associated with skills and therefore clubbed
with lower functional categories. There is a need to change this hierarchy in
the corporate structure. The Chief Designer or Chief Emotion (Design) Officer
(CEO/CDO) are equally important as CEO or COO. As I had evangelised in my book
'Indian Design Edge' (Roli Books, 2008), India needs to make "Designed in
India, Made for the World" a priority along with the 'Make in India'
initiative of the Prime Minister to get a well-deserved place for India in the
global arena.
Of designers and brands
Administrators in the Ministry of
Textiles had a surprisingly wonderful idea in 1985-86 to visit the Fashion
Institute of Technology (FIT), New York, and to emulate the institute by
setting up a fashion school in India in 1986-87. The idea was really ahead of
its times. FIT which is a part of New York State University even now has only
one campus in one location. Of course, it has set up collaborative ventures in
Italy and also initiated the NIFT in New Delhi. The idea was to create world
class designers from a specialised high quality campus with high quality
faculty members to create Indian fashion brands and designers for the world.
As it happens only in India, the
idea was diluted by successive governments from 1994 for the setting up of
several NIFTs in the country. Every state wanted one NIFT as it is a feather in
their cap, irrespective of whether the state understood the concept or not, or
whether the right environment existed there or not.
The institutes have been run
mostly by bureaucrats, ensuring that the founding faculty members of NIFT are
made to feel uncomfortable and that they leave the Institute, which they did.
In a way, the setting up of 17 NIFTs has democratised fashion but as far as
creating world class designers is concerned, the effort has fallen way below
expectations. Moreover, the Indian domestic apparel industry and the exports
industry were not often willing to bet on creativity and design, and chose to
focus on manufacturing technology and costs to match customer expectations.
Building a brand is expensive in
the short run though it brings in enormous revenue and benefits in the long
run. The benefits are in fact disproportionate in the long run. Indian apparel
exporters know manufacturing very well, but never understood branding. However,
the domestic industry understands branding to some extent, but has never used
world class manufacturing for building domestic brands or spent enough on
advertising and promotion to build brand while ensuring consistency in quality
and delivery on a sustained basis.
When smaller countries create
Benetton, Zara, Mango, Uniqlo, etc, India is a long way behind from creation of
popular fashion brands known around the world. There has also not been any
fashion incubator in the country for fashion designers. I had set up a National
Design Business Incubator in NID which was inaugurated by the Prime Minister in
2005 when he was the chief minister of Gujarat. The Fashion Design Council of
India (FDCI) and Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) are doing good work for their
sponsors like Lakme, Wills or Amazon.
The government has not appreciated enough for the value of creativity, innovation and design towards developing a long-term strategy and therefore there is very little action on the ground. It will take many more years before we see a star brand from designers or otherwise. If India could take world by storm through International Yoga Day on June 21, 2015, the day is not far when an Indian fashion brand will also take the world by storm, if imagination is backed by resources and if mediocrity does not pull down institutions like NIFT and NID.
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