THE Indian entertainment industry has the potential of being a sunshine industry in the coming five years. The industry has variously been estimated as contributing INR 10000-15000 crore to the Indian economy. Reportedly growing at 20 to 25% annually, it is projected to touch INR 30000 crore by 2018. An intervention through the arts creates wealth in a sustained manner, allowing people and their communities to find new ways of overcoming odds and create unique solutions. Governments, who believe that supporting the arts is about handouts, need to reassess their policies and invest in the future of their people by providing for sustained arts education. Violence scarred regions should use the arts to anchor the young and old to their traditions, history and allow for a semblance of normalcy.

Entertainment districts traditionally contribute to a city’s economy. Broadway generates between $9-11 billion and London’s West End £3-5 billion through its restaurants, nightclubs, theatres, bars and concerts. The Edinburgh Festival contributes £225 m of additional spend during the seven weeks of the festival, attracting millions of tourists, artists and art lovers who congregate at this Mecca of the arts world.

At the annual DSC Jaipur Literature Festival – which brings together 250 speakers over five days and attracts over 100,000 visitors – the additional contribution to the city’s economy has been estimated at approximately Rs 15-20 crore ($3-4m). City hotels see capacity crowds, jewellers, retailers and craft outlets do brisk business, and airlines and transport companies cash in on the annual boom.

In India, where tourism and culture should contribute a greater share to the GDP, we are still stuck in the 5-6 million visitors syndrome. Culture and tourism are still not seen as primary drivers of the economy. Both these represent an opportunity to create jobs locally in a way that is sustainable. We need focused training, development funds for local heritage sites, marketing budgets and basic facilities of toilets, cafes and green transportation. India could have a million heritage sites, all waiting to be rediscovered and leveraged. Annual cultural festivals and daily shows against the backdrop of a heritage monument provide tourists an opportunity to stay the night, boost local taxes and grow the ancillary food and transport sector. Some of the income can be ploughed back to preserving the built heritage.

 

In their landmark initiative in Jaipur, Faith and John Singh showed that built heritage can be preserved with help from the city and local communities. Aman Nath and the late Francis Wacziarg pioneered the conservation and restoration of crumbling forts, palaces and havelis into boutique hotels, bringing alive little known villages like Neemrana, which have now grown into major industrial and tourism hubs. Gaj Singh (Bapji) of Jodhpur has demonstrated how investment in the arts builds bonds within communities and creates a platform for development and progress. Dastakar, Fab India, Anokhi, Bridgite Singh, The Crafts Council of India, Vidhi Singhania’s Kota Development Trust, and The Urmul Trust have brought about a revival in the textile, craft and handloom industry with innovations in design and marketing skills.

In today’s polarized world, it is imperative that we use the arts as a window into other cultures. The arts know no language and have a universality that allows the viewer to absorb the exotic within a given context. In the latest commission by the Globe Theatre as part of the Cultural Olympiad, an array of exciting productions played out from Afghanistan and India to Romania and Belarus. Each was distinct and brought to the fore cultural differences and yet was bound together by the universal language of theatre and performance. Audiences who attended may not have understood the nuances of the language, but this did not detract from their enjoyment of what they were witnessing. Pia Behrupiya by the Company Theatre was a brilliant piece of original theatre. Based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the ensemble cast sang, danced and created magic at the Globe Theatre against the backdrop of the Olympic games, much as the British Council production of The Dream, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, did some years ago, bringing together diverse actors from the subcontinent.

 

The arts were on show at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games in London and Winter Games in Sochi, which set a new goalpost for creating imagery and cultural specific references, delighting both national and international audiences. What a finale! Almost every newspaper across the world echoed a similar sentiment. The Summer Games had once again made London the centre of the world. If the opening ceremony was quirky and quintessential British, the closing was the ‘after party’ with a song list spanning four decades and boasting a slew of performers, including some thought to have been long dead, resurrected to rouse the crowds and stir memories of Band Aid! Kim Gavin, the artistic director of the closing ceremony, presented it as a tribute to the British pop industry, combined with a subtle message to the Americans: you may have the best athletes, but we have the best bands. It was British arts at its best!

India needs to learn from this. Our concept of jugaad, which often rescues us in the nick of time, is no match for years of diligent planning and preparation. Why can’t state governments use lottery money for the arts and sports, much as the UK government does to fund arts infrastructure projects? This is not about priorities but about vision and the will to break the mould, and provide the best opportunities for a billion Indians who have the talent, but few platforms to realize them.

 

Governments rarely credit the direct contribution that arts interventions make to marginalized communities. The arts provide young people an opportunity to express and develop their own views, ideas and confidence. At the Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT), an organization providing support services for street and working children in Delhi set up in 1988, great emphasis is laid on theatre, music, dance and the visual arts as therapeutic tools for homeless children, most often violated and abused. Salim, a four-year old boy, lost his family during a religious procession passing through the city. The police brought him to us and he was beside himself with grief wishing to return home. He had no address and his only action was to draw a house next to a railway line and what appeared to be a church. Our social workers sent out photographs to potential locations and following a six-year search, we were able to reunite Salim with his family. One of eleven children born to a poor family, he returned to SBT to complete his education. He was later cast in an Academy award-nominated short film and went on to become a full time contemporary dancer and actor.

Vicky Roy, an enthusiastic photographer, was inspired by Haran, one of the older kids who had a rare ability to capture incredible imagery and went on to win the All India Photography Award and a commission by the World Photography Association in Amsterdam. Vicky pursued his dream, apprenticing with Benjamin Dix, a volunteer at SBT. He joined leading photographer Anay Mann and thereon was mentored by Anubhav Nath, who provides a platform for artists through the Ramchander Nath Foundation. Nath helped Vicky win an award from the Stuttgart and San Francisco based Maybach Foundation and the New York based real estate company, Silverstein Properties, to be one of four young people selected internationally to document the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre in New York. Both Vicky and Haran have exhibited their work in galleries and museums across the world, leading to a comment by a famous Indian photographer that ‘a street kid in Salaam Baalak Trust has more opportunities to succeed than other artists!’

 

Other SBT alumni – Kapil, Pawan, Shamshul, Shameem, Viraj and Kumari, Raju, Aneel – trained as puppeteers with Dadi Pudumjee and went on to become independent artists. Shameem joined Miditech as a senior puppeteer, earning an annual salary of Rs 12 lakh ($22,000). Kapil directed and created productions for corporate advertising and stage shows. Pawan, Raju, Aneel, Shameem and Kumari continue to work at the trust creating entertaining productions that include social messages.

In India, we have 110 million children out of school. Even if the GDP spent on education were to double, it would take 20 years to build the brick and mortar structures to house this population and train teachers required to man these buildings. New ideas and out-of-the-box solutions need to be found, to deliver education to these children. Storytelling forms through the arts could be one way of delivering much needed literacy to those who live outside the system.

Recently we took the Kahani Festival, ‘Discover the magic of stories’, to Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, an area at the heart of the Maoist insurgency movement. Thousands of kids from a 100 km radius were bussed in for the three-day programme of workshops, music, dance, storytelling and art. While many were enrolled in local schools, mainly to access the mid-day meal, none had actually encountered a teacher, few spoke Hindi and most were unfamiliar with the epic texts of the Mahabharat or the Ramayan. Their day of discovery was to access the wonders that non-verbal forms like puppetry and dance brought to their lives. Transfixed and transformed, they left enriched, even if for a fleeting moment.

Violence-scarred regions should use the arts to anchor the young and old to their tradition and history and allow for a semblance of normalcy. When we cancelled Harud, a literature programme in Srinagar, a distressed author from Kashmir pleaded with us, stating how desperate he was to see a show or share their stories, and have a normal evening out. This was not to pass, as a group of civil society activists drove a campaign against the festival project, saying it would demonstrate that life in Kashmir was normal when it wasn’t. Another group called for action to stone the authors, the students as well as our team members, should we attempt to host the festival – all because of a misleading article published by one of India’s leading national dailies.

 

While a few first steps have been taken in creating an education policy, which includes the arts as formal coursework in schools, there has been little thought of how this might be delivered in the short-term. Theatre must be a part of education and music teachers need to be trained to deliver a syllabus. Organizations like Arts Link in Chennai, which have begun delivering a programme on Indian classical music through schools, need to be expanded to include other cities. Technology is one way of doing this. The MIT driven Indian Raga portal, which has tied in with ITC’s Sangeet Research Academy, is a possible way to expand the bandwidth. Rich archive-driven organizations like Sahapedia should be funded to make information on the arts democratically available and accessible to research scholars and artists. Traditional musicians, storytellers and puppeteers should be entrusted with the task of teaching their art form in state and private school education programmes. This will provide schools with a rich source of knowledge and cultural input, as well as give the artist and artisans a livelihood, whilst preserving their tradition and culture. It is not enough for us to carry on about India’s rich cultural heritage, and do precious little to nurture and preserve it. Barring the initiatives of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) and sporadic schemes brought about by the Ministry of Culture and its many institutions, there are few initiatives to realize the needs and aspirations of India’s creative class.

 

There is a crying need to invest in the arts. The government, through its urban development programmes, needs to build sustainable projects which include theatres, museums, rehearsal spaces, experimental studios, galleries, digital labs, amphitheatres, and do this in a spirit of public partnership. The capital city of Delhi has not one new public space, creating a sense of aesthetics or pride, or reflecting the national culture. Projects based on the lowest bid will never create excellence and can only lead to further corruption of the nation’s soul.

Look at how Brazil has created a multitude of neighbourhood cultural centres, funded from taxes and contributions by local traders and business people, co-funded by the city’s government. UK’s lottery fund is another example of creating a funding mechanism whilst regulating the lottery industry and freeing it from corruption.

The US uses a tax incentive policy to support the arts through private investment and endowments, and to ensure that all town planning incorporates the needs of its society through compulsory inclusion of spaces for theatres, museums, libraries, bars and eateries.

Technology has to be harnessed and seen as a platform to allow for democratic dissemination of information and knowledge. Traditional musicians, storytellers and puppeteers should be entrusted with the task of teaching their art form in state and private school education programmes, using technology to reach out to larger numbers.

Mapping of the arts – traditional, classical and contemporary – will create an incredible variety of wealth generated locally. The next big idea will be the coming together of the arts and technology. MIT media lab is a good example of this. Each tech group includes the best minds, artists and others to develop and explore new ideas.

The media loves to do stories about a dying art form or the revival of an arts discipline. In India nothing ever dies; artists like the societies they inhabit, adapt and move on. In a country like India that has the philosophical breadth and diversity, all one needs to do is create a ground that is fertile and enrich it with the nutrients of imagination, social and economic inclusion, vision and resources. What the arts need is not lip service to our ancient culture but more practical laws and policies that will generate employment, create platforms and allow for distinctive discussion and debate.

Some of this is at threat as we have seen in recent times with diverse groups using every opportunity to silence those who challenge the status quo. If we do not allow for free thought and debate we will only stifle our creative urge, invention and creation.