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Mumbai, June 08, 2015: BJP Maharashtra State Treasurer and leading fashion designer Shaina NC along with the top Indian fashion designers to meet with the Hon’ble Textiles Minister Shri Santosh Gangwar, the Ministry of Industry and concerned officials of the textiles department in a bid to save and revive the dying industry of Indian textiles & weaves of Benares.

 Taking Hon’ble India Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Make in India to the next level, Shaina NC has requested prominent Indian designers to manufacture in Benaras with weavers to create the best textiles and take it to the international market. This initiative will be a collaboration between the Government of India and the fashion fraternity.

 Artisans, craftsmen and weavers of India’s indigenous textile industry have sounded the clarion call for help, being on the verge of extinction. After conducting several brainstorming sessions, Shaina NC has brought together a team of India’s leading fashion & textile designers such as Ritu Kumar, Rina Dhaka, Anita Dongre, Shruti Sancheti, Reynu Taandon, Varun Bahl, Manish Malhotra, Rohit Bal, Sandeep Khosla, Abu Jani, and more than 50 other leading designers to come together to Make in India and design, manufacture and produce the best textiles in Benares, thereby generating employment to help not only save their industry but also revive it en masse.

Quite a few designers are already working with the Benares artisans and weavers and have started production. They will be creating exquisite pieces to be showcased in museums all over the country and the world over.

Many more of India’s leading designers are joining in.

Your participation in this movement is vital to its success. Shaina NC sincerely requests your presence at the Press Conference where the plans will be unveiled.

at Surya Hotel, The Mall, Cantonment, Varanasi

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE INITIATIVE:

1. To create employment for weavers so that their talent does not  die and they do not need to venture into other professions.

2.   To revive textiles and showcase to the international world the rich cultural heritage of India created by our artisans and our

     talented designers.

3.    To identify weavers so that each designer can start production early and create their product line for individual sale

4.    Decide on few garments which, under the Ministry of Textiles and Ministry of Industries, could be exhibited in the museums, at fashion shows, at the National Gallery of Modern

IN THE INDIAN FASHION--WHY ARE WE MYOPIC ABOUT OUR STRENGTHS

It is rare that someone from the fashion and textile world writes an article to draw attention to lapses of the government on the negligence of handlooms and other textile crafts. It is simply not fashionable and does not get the eyeballs that a diplomatic gaff, or a change of government, or a women’s issue gets in our media. It is as pertinent though , to look into an area which is in crying need of attention. As a designer of both textile crafts and fashion, I have had a 25 year association of what is perhaps the richest resource centre of textiles of the world. Indian textiles are not only unique, but represent with their diversity the last that the world will see of hand-made non mechanized production of silks, cottons, and wools. This unique combination of the hand with the inherited skills of India, is our USP, and gives us an edge in a world driven by industrialist power and thereby going the way of China. A country which, as many of us know, is doing its best to replicate what we make by hand, in their mechanized units and sell back both to India and the rest of the international fashion community . This plagiarism is done by China, because there is a market for the handcrafted goods, which we in India do not take advantage of either economically or to better the lot of weavers and crafts people sociologically.

 Deputations to the existing government  have not been given the sympathy that the issue deserves. Our vast resource of hand-made textiles are viewed more in the nature of sentimental fall outs of an era long gone and hence  non progressive. The skeptics feel that these should to be used as inspiration and no more, and India will go down the inevitable path of putting its handicrafted textiles into museums and we hence their demise is inevitable. There is a truism here if we speak of any other country.except for India.  If the last figures I got are to be taken for face value, India is home to 16 million practicing textile crafts people. A vast number of people, sometimes the entire population of some of the smaller countries.  The question arises --leave alone the romance that all of us have with our craft sector, --where are we going to rehabilitate these people if we consign their work to the mill made sector and facilitate its demise.

 It is ironic that in the rest of the world  HANDLOOMED FABRICS are considered chic, sophisticated, edgy and aspirational --they are treated with awe--rare to come by, and eminently fashionable. In a typical case of myopia, in India the very same fashion fabric is treated with arrogance , as a fabric which is a  basket case,  crying for subsidies, patronized by the ’behnji brigade ’ and hence to be delivered a death blow, which it will get ,through ignorant and insensitive policies. Handlooms and Khadi , which is one of Indias huge sartorial contribution to the world,  needs to be looked at with a fresh perspective.

 One, purely from a design point of view, we have a unique product which has a huge edge in our own market and an undefined potential in the international market. Second, it is a huge resource which could put the country on the Incredible Indian Textile Map of  the World, as a marketing and tourist tool. We need to look at Thailand which has created its identity in textiles from one simple dupion silk, which is sold as Thai silk around the world with much success. We have not one -- but an amazing richness of fabrics which have traditionally come off our looms which could produce hundreds of Thai silk stories, projecting India for what it has in its weaver’s hands, still robust and workable, in the highly competitive world of fashion fabrics.

 A walk around Indias USP fabrics--- Cotton is grown indigenously in our country and is the bedrock fibre of India. When this is hand spun, a technique which is lost to the world.  Mostly by rural women, it endows the yarns with a slubby irregular texture,which produce linen like looks , of great rarity, comfort and individuality ,in this hot and humid country. These yarns are then hand woven to produce a variety of fabrics, each differing according to the region where the cotton grows, with unique qualities which are imparted to it by the hand loom weaver , skills which he or she have inherited traditionally.

In a similar process the Ahinsa silks of India make a huge fashion statement. This incredible fabric is produced with yarns gathered from the Terai regions of the country, which eventually  produce the rarest of tussar and moga silk varieties. The fashion pundits of the northern part of the country know that the wools from the Himalayan mountains of India such as the pashmina, which  depend on the hand process for their manufacture are synonymous around the world with superb Indian fabrics and are our USP.

  The textiles sector is the second largest provider of employment in India after agriculture. It is a vertically integrated industry and produces the raw material to the finished product. The production of hand loom is uniquely environment friendly, being a source of generating employment of unskilled rural workers especially women who are traditionally employed in hand spinning. We as a country cannot be blind to the immense potential of one of the countries richest resources ?Are we unaware that the uniqueness of design is attracting manufactures in china to replicate as far as possible these designs and sell them back to India.? The Government is not unaware, as the matter has been brought up before it by various forums repeatedly. I personally have directed several letters to the National Advisory Council highlighting the distressing fact that due to several policies of the government the future of handlooms is bleak. Funds and allocations meant for the sector are being diverted to assist other sectors to their detriment. Despite the various schemes made by the government, little or no resources reach the weavers,.

 Ironically the country has a plethora of institutions, set up specifically to cater to the needs of the sector.The near- camtose Khadi Gramudhyogs with a network spread across the country, are not functioning, to promote production of khadi. Often they are carrying an inventory of spurious goods, and selling them through the enviable retail addresses, which the tax payer is subsidizing. The Weavers Service Centres set up in the 70s are in a state of a similar coma, the Hand loom Boards and other such organizations are not accountable to anyone but themselves, and are too in a somnambulistic mode. We have also managed to politicize our Master Weaver Award schemes. It is disheartening to belong to a country where the government cannot be held accountable for continuing the basic governance for which institutions have been set up, and a huge number of people are employed

  Varied interests eye the subsidies in place for the hand loom sector, and initiate changes which are detrimental to the weavers. The present situation was highlighted by the Governments decision to change the definition of Handlooms, and divert the funds and allocate them to other industries. How are these policies initiated and by whom? Some of these questions should be addressed.  As a new emerging economic power, we hope to bring in investments in fashion and textiles.  At the moment we are not encouraging the growth of one of the most unique textiles the world has known.  Neither are we preserving a cultural heritage of textiles which has a deep seated aesthetic through its knowledge of the dyeing, printing and weaving disciplines. India exported the most aspirational textiles to the world, for thousands of years. Surely the time has come to relook at our heritage and see if we are not squandering it, in a heady flight to modernization and insensitivity to a really important economic and cultural resource. Art, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai etc, with a set timeline.