Arts should be promoted as a way of life and artists should be given due respect, credit and money for their craft. By Dr Alka Raghuvanshi
It is my very firm conviction that the arts are the life blood of any civilisation and the watermark of how it will be judged by subsequent generations. Imagine a world without the arts — I think it will swerve from disgustingly crude to scientifically robotic as two ends of the spectrum. I keep reminding everyone about the perils and consequences of an “art-less” life — think of a world without literature, poetry, music, dance, theatre, painting, sculpture, craft, handlooms, architecture, design and you are looking at a world brought down to its lowest rudimentary ebb. It is not merely about art and finer sensibilities, even mere functionality without aesthetics will be scraping the barrel. Forget the amazingly fine tuned Taj Mahal, even an engineering marvel like Eiffel Tower will look like a blob of nuts and bolts and steel sans art giving it its form.
We are poised at a decade and a half from the millennium with a lot of expectations from the new political order to bring about positive change. The new year is usually a good time to take stock of the year that whooshed past and to look with optimism towards the year to come and hopefully learn some lessons from our past. Visual arts specially have been going through tough times with fewer buyers/collectors and investors and since it is directly related to economy, all those in the arts sector are waiting for the new dawn — quite literally.
On the performing art front, there are fewer sponsorships coming the way for artistes. This is a pretty dismal situation. Despite giving their life for training and protecting their art, most artists need sponsorships to put on board their dance, theatre productions or music concerts. A number of bureaucrats divert the CSR initiative funds to dole out money for dance, music and then genuine community service suffers. It needs to be bifurcated properly. The policy for public-private partnerships needs to be more watertight and less open to silly interpretations like whitewashing being termed “painting.” Public buildings should follow the rule that two per cent of the total building is used for art. The abysmal budgets being offered to artists for art in public spaces need a rethink. Even if it is not market related, surely a per square foot of Rs 500 or some such figure can’t be it.
It is a pity that the community needs to be both educated and cajoled into supporting its art, artists and artisans or dictated by rules to do it. Why can’t it come from withinIJ It is heartening when Japan treats its artisans and mastercraftsmen with such reverence and respect and supports them like serious knowledge base and the community is an active participant in it.
Incidentally the handloom and craft sector alone employs nearly 49 million artisans, the largest chunk of people after agriculture. Many of them have lost their livelihood and will lose their art in case we don’t launch an ‘art for life’ programme in consonance with the ‘Make in India.’ What could be better than relating the Make in India slogan to art and make it meaningful for IndiaIJ
India is still one of the few countries where we have the skill to handcraft every piece of everyday use and before we lose the skill, we should bring about that revolution. Art is a way of life for us Indians and we have a natural propensity to make everything artistic from the lowliest of objects, be it a kitchen ladle or a spice container to a temple gopuram. And a lot of this is getting eroded. It is time we do something positive.
Much needs to be done at the policy level including making arts management a stream of education in management schools so that the hundreds of cultural bodies launched by the government and quasi government organisations can be better administered and perhaps even made self-reliant. Ensuring school level education in identifiable crafts pockets for families who are part of the handloom and craft sectors will be another welcome step.
(The writer is a Delhi-based art writer, curator and artist)