Transcript for:
Sustainable Textile Traditions Lecture Notes

I think we should start now and then people will join yeah but John here to start first okay um so shall we start yes yes okay so good morning everyone and welcome to uh this today's event uh it's a online today's event which is an online uh virtual dialogue that we are looking at to discuss the sustainable textile traditions and how do we uh take the Indian Indian handling tradition learning into the sustainable textile aspect so welcome to this dialogue today uh we have just a brief introduction uh to the event and the uh program um Center for environment education in collaboration with United Nations environment program is organizing today's event CE Central environment education was established in 1984 by Ministry of environment forest and climate change as a center of excellence in environment education and we have been working across several several thematic areas such as biodiversity in water rural livelihoods urban transports and several others we have been as part of several projects we have always been partnering with United Nations environment program in the office and across and several have we have done several programs together this one as a part of you know India is Rich textile Heritage in fact the country was known oh so um this whole project uh begin with documenting the Indian textile Traditions some of this are um you know very very um being worked today also some of this my Mayhem may not have been that prevalent in today's time but they do they do provide excellent kind of opportunities to understand and look into the um textile uh in today's context how they are connected with the social cultural and environmental aspects so the whole project is about documenting these such textile Traditions especially the Traditions which are like specifically talking of hand known traditions of India pan India starting from um you know which captures the diversity starting from Northwest up to the all the way to the down and starting from northern Himalayas to the Western Gujarat and Rajasthan so trying to and and capture its Vivid diversity but looking at this diversity not only from the class perspective but looking at from the perspective of sustainability environmental sustainability uh cultural and social sustainability so that is the whole project as part of this project um well this documentation is being prepared uh thus today's dialogue is basically trying to connect and explore this link with leading uh experts and designers from the uh sustainable fashion sector I would briefly introduce uh uh today's uh today's speakers and then hand it over to them for the for the deliberations and taking you further so we have it as SRI Atul bhagai he is the country head for United Nations environment program unit India office must be knowing it's a leading Global Environmental body which has sets the amount comment agenda and supports through its various programs and projects implementation of such programs so Mr bagai has been actively leading this uh you're not country office and he has worked on various uh aspects like uh climate change chemicals waste and quality environmental governance resource efficiency so all most of programs on which unap works and previously to joining billionaire Mr guy has been as a civil carrier as a civil servant he rose to the director ozone in demo efcc government of India before joining unap in 2000 and he has worked on very senior positions in the state of uttar Pradesh and the central government and as a U.N veteran he has spent over two decades uh spearheading the challenging assignments in the regions across South and Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands so welcome to this event uh he is the founding director of central environment education he is a leading and environment educator and he has been working across the sector since many many years now uh in 2000 as he was a census establishment in 201984 PC has seen this is your very short introductions otherwise there are people here who have such long histories that will take up all the steps I think just a very short thing and then let us all start otherwise perfect so and he has been associated with several other International bodies such as UNESCO and working in this sector um what I was suggesting is now we have with us uh Miss Ritu seti Professor Ashok Chatterjee um uh Miss payal Jane they are Jane they all are the leading uh and Miss juhi Pandey but I was suggesting is as we begin with the today's uh in overall today's program we are looking forward to hear to uh you know start the context and start with Mr ratul bhagai and from your uh your addresses and then we'll move towards the panel discussion as we move towards the panel discussion I'll take little longer to introduce each panelist as they begin their uh session so uh at that point may I request to kindly kind of initiate or so if you want to say something um yes please so can I request to please um deliberate upon basically focusing on the thank you sir over to you thank you thank you John kiji and uh I would like to on behalf of unep Welcome this very esteemed panel which has been brought together and uh in in front of such stalwarts which we have I I wonder what is that valuation I can bring in uh where I am not a textile specialist uh but certainly a big textile fan and a big textile lover uh so I I just thought what is it that I can bring on the table also especially from the fact that as we are organizing this today there are also very intense negotiations going on on climate change and certainly textiles is a very critical and important part of those negotiations I also understand some uh very focused Global side events are also being organized by various International organizations connected with sustainable clothing these side events are being organized at Sherman Sheikh which also brings in the focus on how we need to move towards a sustainable fashion or a sustainable textiles and bring in sustainability in this sector on the whole uh I will not go into the details of um what is the carbon footprint of the sector because this is something that is is pretty well known but uh it is certain that while we have a very long way to go for fashion being sustainable uh the global community and specially in India we are certainly taking some very important steps that would facilitate this transition of course educating consumers and engaging with them to shift mindsets towards a more sustainable Lifestyles is is a critical need and I I would specifically like to mention here the Life program that the Prime Minister launched on 20th October at kevadia along with the Secretary General and this Live program life for environment which is a global program that India has launched to show its leadership is uh based on six verticals and I would like to say and inform that textiles is certainly one of the six verticals which is being looked at uh you know in terms of including in in this campaign in fact yesterday only we had a event at the India Pavilion in uh Sharma Sheikh which was presided over by The Honorable Union Minister for environment forest and climate change our executive director and the assistant administrator of undp were there and so was the deputy executive secretary of the unfccc Secretariat and I think uh while they were talking of what individual action can be taken to mitigate climate change there was certainly references to what an individual can do when it comes to textiles or fashion in terms of taking positive for mitigating the the carbon footprint of this very very important sector uh it is it is also very clear that while life campaign and making people aware of sustainability is a very good effort but this in itself is not sufficient uh a wider enabling environment is so very critical uh to ensure that sustainability is a viable and easily accessible option for consumers and this there's a lot of discussion going on a lot of debate going on whether the government should just focus on individual consumer Behavior or is there no need for uh kind of a environment around or an atmosphere around such individual Behavior which is backed by industry effort and backed by policy support and certainly these two are very very important element which also showcases that action by all stakeholders whether they're government or industry or consumers is a very very critical part of work that we all need to do in fact unep released a study last year on sustainability and circularity in the textile value chain Global stock taking that talks a lot about circularity we're also working in angul District in odisha where we are developing a circular economy strategy for a district a first of its kind and we certainly are looking at textile also as one of the sectors uh to to look at uh the panel which is so esteemed has been closely involved with the work that we are all doing in the area of textiles I will not dwell too much on that because you all know about the work but I will certainly like to mention that the work that we are doing with all of you on documenting the environmental and social sustainability aspects or Rich handloom tradition is is a very unique work that needs to be highlighted over the next few years to draw from that the unique and important parts of the textile value chain in the country that are implementing this whole sustainability element despite the kind of modernization that has taken place in this sector over the last 50 years and you all are analyzing about 100 Traditions including micro case studies and I think this will be a very important work that needs to be really looked at and outreached and we are really looking forward to a very robust kind of a work that should come out in fact I was at the Norwegian Embassy uh day before yesterday where they were showcasing a very unique uh Arc digitizing The Archives of India a plan that has been taken up by a very big company in Norway where they are with the archaeological survey they have digitized on a pilot basis three world heritage sites and and they will preserve that for the next 1000 years in in the snow mountains in in architects a very very exciting project that they were doing and I I had discussions with the managing director and then subsequently with UNESCO day before yesterday and this is where we will come back to all of you where I suggested that we should also look at not only the archaeological Heritage but also our intangible Heritage and also our nature or natural heritage to document and there is a lot of interest uh where they are very keen to digitize and preserve the sustainable textile traditions in India uh for posterity and I I think this book that CE is doing under karthikey by his leadership is something that can form a basis of archiving this this tradition which is being transferred orally from generations to Generations I am really excited uh with this conversation today I'm looking forward to the very esteemed panel we have and for some very good discussions thanks a lot thank you I am like you also looking forward to listening more than saying something because of the the quality of the panel we have and everyone else uh let me just say I am I am at Sharma Sheikh uh Atul GM part of this whole uh concern which is going but just before that on on the Sunday I got to go to see some of the museums and and the pyramids here and uh I was just thinking how that traditions of Egypt and so many other civilizations had come to an end and now you can you see them in history you see them uh as as documents while is the Indian tradition has has survived and and so many things you see are probably not not changed whether it's in agriculture or textiles or something and we have these as Living Traditions and I think that is something we must realize is something quite unique uh to India that these Traditions are living they might they are there they modify themselves and change themselves but they are they are there uh as you rightly said I think that the Prime Minister has stressed traditions and learnings from that and in 2015 we did this book called parampara at at his behest to to share with others and that's when India saw that in the climate change for the first time the word Lifestyles got into the into the document in the Preamble of the Paris agreement which was something which was resisted all these years by by several countries that you cannot mix it lifestyle but it is a issue of lifestyle and textiles as you rightly said is such a key part of of that whole whole whole tradition of sustainability and what you do further uh so when we looked at how our Traditions had are placed we'll learn more about it today they were very much part of an ecosystem which exists you know none of these Traditions or Lifestyles exist in in isolation they they were all very much connected uh for instance connection with with the biodiversity which was around and we have worked GUI has also been with us in that working in Kutch for instance in kameeb and realized that suddenly a plant from which they made a particular dye disappears in the wild and and you then replace it with a chemical or something else because you don't have that now unless the unless whoever works in those plants also gets that done it it does not uh wait another minute you change a particular die you find that your water which was otherwise not polluting starts becoming starts looking as pollution and and in that case people will argue that look is this really a sustainable tradition so I think we need to understand each of the Traditions as part of an ecosystem the ecosystem also involves several groups or several communities working with each other because this is so unique and so wonderful about the weave of Indian culture if you like that we were working on on the eastern coast looking at the tsunami and afterwards everyone realizes how you cannot just work with a fisherman because the fishermen are so intricately connected with with a whole lot of other communities which are all affected and it just shows how wonderful the the quality of India India really is as Jackie mentioned earlier we were looking at different aspects of this we were looking at at certainly waste and when we work with school children we often just ask them that what is the one thing in nature you don't find and the very few can come up with the fact that there is no waste in a forest um the whole ecosystem this it's nice that we come up with words like circularity and all that but nature has really done it for forever and uh it's it's a learning which we which we need we are talking about biodiversity we are talking about water we are talking about energy and how that is that is used but very importantly how the sector itself which which embodies a certain decentralization a certain control of people can can be um I mean we using words like working from home uh now for for uh post govid but I mean a lot of this work was done from home and as a result women could work very easily because they could do it along with along with other duties which which they might have had there are so many aspects of that sustainability and we really look forward to to listening to this panel uh discuss that we are particularly interested in unep in taking this whole discussion to all the students who are joining uh in in various institutions connected with with textiles and I hope that this not only are the people who are seeing it today or through the to the tube but also people will use this as a resource uh for for several discussions I've I've known and many of you have participated in uh in these in these discussions uh with with students and there is increasing interest that the word environment is not something to do with environmental science or or some other discipline in science but it is really to do with all of them and textiles is a is a very key component component of that uh so without much more I am welcoming you on behalf of us and thanking unep and akuji for this wonderful opportunity to work on this I hope that our work in terms of the publication and what we are doing with the craft Museum uh we'll we'll take this whole discussion a little further thank you very much thank you bye thank you so much for uh your kind words and as uh this initial introduction of the work that we are doing Andy uh and the document that we are working on and how does the whole ecosystem approach is uh what we are looking at the uh when we are looking at the Indian textile Traditions so uh moving forward to the to our panelists uh so now we have with us uh Miss juhi Pandey juhiji has been uh in this design sector for more than two decades but initially working with after working with you know the mainstream fashion uh she actually then focused more uh on how the uh Art and Design can be human-centric and it can be used as uh as a way to you know uh uplifty and uh involve the various social economical sectors and Artisans across the country she has worked with various ngos and has been part of facilitating uh organization itself in Goa which is called Tara trust and they work for children and women from migrant communities she has been actively involved with as a director of kamir in touch and where they have worked on basically using the systems and process based approaches and currently shares um shares shares with in meghalayas along working towards setting up a center of excellence for khadi for the Northeast which is a collaborative project between the National Institute of fashion technology and Ministry of small and medium Enterprises so without taking much time um may I please welcome you and um hand it over to you to discuss about how you see hand looms as a way of socio-economic transformation for setting the tone about uh what I thought I would discuss today so to begin with we all started when we started discussion on hand Loom uh the visual that comes into everybody's mind are Fabrics are buried for formats of textiles and you think about sorry you think about a stall but to maintain that so-called living tradition it's very important for us to start looking at the back end and I think this was for me a journey that began uh with my life in touch and with kamir where uh the idea of the material which comes uh is a very very strong aspect of what our handloom Traditions are all about and without the material and where it comes from and its spaces uh there won't be this living tradition that we all are speaking about and it's through the Journey of the last seven or years that now what I look at and work with and want to bring to the you know to a forum of this sort is the aspect of look at the back end of the value chain and look at where the material resources come because that has not only a social impact but a huge ecological impact as well as we move forward to trying to build these circular economies sustainable uh Lifestyles whatever we want to move into further in terms of a way of work or a way of living um if I can share screen what uh is it possible shall I yes please click on this channel okay um so just maybe it's better to work with certain visuals so have a short short uh presentation in which can you see my screen yes okay so here uh what I've tried to do is basically explain uh one of the very basic value chains of how our entire craft or handloom tradition actually works and the number of players that are involved in this entire process and they are all interdependent not only for the practice that they are all involved in in this value chain but they're also interdependent in their in terms of their lifestyle because traditionally there was very there was exchange of knowledge there was exchange of Material Exchange of space that helped us create any of our crafts and any of our textiles that we are speaking about and it's this balanced interdependent value chain that also even today has helped us to keep these Living Traditions alive so so one of the key factors that work with us and will not allow for this chain to completely be full or continues is the farmer and the pastorous is where we get what we know as our natural resource or material which we take forever into making our textiles so there won't be a spinner around if you didn't have the fiber there won't be a beaver around if we didn't have the fiber there won't be a printing or dyeing or a darzi or a tailoring or stitching tradition live if we didn't have the farmer and the fiber and so it's very key that if we want to keep this aspect of continuing a sustainable or a robust handloom traditional life today the need for us to go back and and evaluate what where are our materials coming from where is the fiber coming from where's the dye coming from that's a separate topic all together which I haven't tried to touch here um is important to come into all our dialogues when we are speaking about textiles textile Traditions handling Traditions printing spinning traditions and it's it is all inbred and all of us know it and this is just a slide I've added that there is a whole aspect of uh and and history that exists with us that tells us that all our textile Traditions were inbred in our natural resources it was inbred in our organic fibers and some of them have now just remain as Museum pieces but it does give us that much of a linkage to tell us where we are coming from and where we could continue to be in in a certain format and you know there are are farmers and our tribals and when we were talking about nature and how we need to really work with nature in any of our practices moving forward we also need to you know give equal importance to the people who live off their land one of course are our Farmers but the other also our tribals like now when I've moved towards to the Northeast from the western part of India I see that if the forests if the jungles if the water of these regions are still intact is because the tribal communities of the Northeast are still very very inbred and live very close to their land all their practices cultural practices religious practices have a huge huge relationship with their land with nature and hence for them to protect and preserve it is far more important than just use it and that's the aspect that we need to start also working towards and thinking towards when we have dialogues in in the textile space or in the handloom space and the the other third key component of player for nature are a pastoralists you know it and they there's a huge like it's almost for me it was learning being on the ground with these communities where it was a fiber well as a primary fiber across many regions of our country which has completely been taken off uh in maybe because of mass production the Advent of popular fashion which also start creeping into their own communities who have lived with these particular traditional practices that we forgotten how vast the contribution of our pastoral Community was not only as bull as a fiber for textiles but even with their livestock moving from from space to space nurturing our soil and our land for our farmers and hence this cycle went broken because of boundaries being created most of land getting converted into industrial land or or living land or you know infrastructure development Etc are reducing the interaction that we our pastoralists have had with the land and across taking even knowledge across because of the movement that they used to cause so as much as if we want to celebrate nature we need to also celebrate the people who live off this land to be able to see how it is because of their key contribution to the value chain is why we still have a living traditional uh with us and and carry carries on with us um and these Traditions were not only in terms of a utilitarian value but there was an aesthetic value there was an identity value that also was created because of these specific materials coming from a area coming from a region being utilized by them for their own needs as well as to create a certain level of identity and space in the larger section of society so here again we speak I'm speaking specifically about certain fibers that I think there's no dialogue happening of them at all and they're very very important fibers for us us to look at and I've specifically mentioned kadhi here because it now it's become a term that all of us have to be very careful about using but our entire uh value chain and our entire textile traditional processes was completely banned and there was a huge amount of contribution of our Spinners in it which somewhere in the uh Advent of industrialization was lost because you wanted easy material to reach and we started thinking of the final product which is the textile being the most important in the whole value chain and hence how do you bring the product out into the market which was our next important space is where we excite creating shortcuts in our traditional value chains and saying okay here let's just give us give industri Leon to the Weaver and he'll leave it on on his handle machine weave it on her hand Loom and we have the product for the market but breaking these linkages also created those ecological imbalances at the back end where once the wool the Desi bull started having no value the the sheep herders and and the pastors stopped breeding those kind of breeds and they've moved towards breeding breeds which were more so-called for the meat market which meant eventually you were even decreasing the genealogy of of the entire breed of sheep and a lot of them are going to be lost today because we just almost played with nature and hence these are aspects that if we continue to work towards just looking at mass production industrialization of um these so-called like not so far but these hand traditions we may just somewhere lose out on a lot of our ecological value that we've had which have also helped in all creating a certain level of balance in our climate in our water in our land uh moving forward so another very important fiber that we don't talk about that much is silk this is again um uh very very important protein fiber that's available and was was nurtured you know in abundance at one point of time in certain regions of our country uh the last 10 months I have spent in understanding the Edison fiber which is actually the primary fiber of the northeast of India and coming to realization again that so some of these fibers either they've been just given a very high pedestal of being luxury and not reachable or just not being spoken about every silk being one of them Edison almost grew everywhere across the Northeast and the beauty of the entire story is which again many of you may know many of you may not I got to know it only once I started living there was that actually the Airy silk worm was reared for the worm which is a high part of the high protein diet of the tribals and the fiber was a byproduct which was eventually spun into yarn and woven into textiles and this is across most of the states of the Northeast but coming of the industrial uh aspect of bringing in cotton and just spreading cotton across every part of our country this particular fiber has almost become again something which we've put into the luxury category whereas it was an everyday fabric it was almost like the poor man's silk as much as if you want to call it which was important for us to know and these have been woven uh in India for centuries and we don't talk about it we don't talk about this fiber and we need to look at you know how do we bring these dialogues into uh the larger aspect of our textile working system of our handloom working system because these remain one in terms of an identity but they have very strong ecological connect to our entire value chain of textiles which needs to be addressed in a very serious manner um there are other fibers like nettle in the Northeast eastern states as well which was um which doesn't even come into the foray of uh the larger market or even say the niche market anymore there are designers today who are trying to work with the with these processes there's a huge number of traditional Artisans who knew about the processing who knew about the spinning and weaving of these kind of fibers which needs to also be looked at more intently and these all create a almost a unique identity which all of us from a marketing term say what's the USP what's the USB these are these traditional natural fibers easily available in our environment in our ecosystem actually don't need to be done worked much with and will give you that USB that you're requiring it may be the scales may be less but that's fine the material variety is very large so we can if we can't Mass produce something it's okay because instead of mass producing everything with one particular type of fiber here we are trying to create our textiles with all the variety of varied fibers that are available within our individual ecosystems and create that uniqueness and identity and USB so it's about trying to really work in a space where we can actually leverage our natural resources these natural fibers natural dyes to create a certain space for our textile traditions and we know it's possible and the best working model has been kamir where the coming of color cotton completely changed the entire uh scenario of the textile uh tradition and the weaving Community as well as the farming Community out there who actually weren't very proud of growing color cotton till it wasn't brought into the mainstream and into textile production but once it did they they also realized how much of it was of value we've worked with the Desi uh moon or the local indigenous wool value chain where we very consciously said that we will first work with our Spinners because that was a huge gap that had been created where we were losing our hand spinning tradition completely but we needed a fiber that would support would be supported only with hand spinning and that's the the local indigenous wool was what we found and and hence now that particular value came across the last four to five years has sorry I think foreign I think pavitra needs to mute her speaker okay sorry so I'll I'll stop here anyway and just end with the fact that in our entire textile traditional value chain um and Uber the time and the last two two and a half Decades of me also being a design student and then moving at to become a design practitioner and now working specifically in the community space we need to start very uh intently and consciously having these conversations on the fiber on the die uh more consciously because these particular practices can only be sustained forward if the back end also has is created in that uniqueness else once we lose out on our natural resources that create some of our beautiful textiles in our country or create some of the beautiful dyes that we have for our textiles we'll almost be creating a very homogeneous environment moving forward and everyone will only be able to discuss it as historical textiles over a period of time and there's a possibility some of it may reach that stage but we still have the capacity and we still have the farmers the tribals and the pastoralists who've got this knowledge still with them and we can leverage it to create a new uh Dimension and a new space almost for our textile Traditions moving forward which will in in that process also keep our handloom sustained and our hand looms rich and alive uh for the future um I think I will stop here janky and maybe we can continue the conversation I think you're on mute thank you thank you so much for this uh very interesting uh perspective on the handling Traditions looking at the materials starting from that base and how does that impact the entire community and the socioecological aspects of the um of the entire value chain in order that can serve as a way of looking at Reviving The handling traditions uh may I know there will be there are some opportunities this is especially for the participants please put your question and answers in the in the check box at Q a box and we have a dedicated space uh after we listen to all the uh all the panelists to discuss the question and answers so please uh putting your questions there and we are now invite our next panelist uh has been working with handloom um sector for more than 48 years and she is working with me more it's a it's a it's a home store that was started on the handloom with her mother and it has impacted hundreds of viewers where she directly involves them uh design development documentation of oral history traditional designs and techniques of Heritage handloom is her primary passion she was managing custody of remote and low foundation and she's also started the Wilmore Museum of living textiles and the foundation works on stealing and supporting rivers and they are effectively involved in various ways in engaging The Artisans and killing them for your your discussions on how how you look at operations to create sustainable passion what do you want thank you thank you janaki yeah uh Jewish spoken so well and both the speakers both Atul and karthika spoken everything I don't know what else I am going to say but of course for me I have a slightly different take on it because I believe apart from what ruhi has said I think livelihood is very important because unless you put food on the table anything else fails in comparison because they don't live with the standards we live in spite of so much of diverse craft and skills everything the bottom line is my work is saying how can I use a design to put food on the table and when we start with that as a basic thing we want to also uh protect a cultural textile Heritage so along with that these are the two things that sort of really push me to do things and it has worked in a lot of ways because I don't have ownership of anybody's Loom I don't have a shed I don't have anybody under me so my model has been okay take a textile look at it Be Inspired you don't need to create a exact replica because your brain is different from the person who's created it 100 years ago but give that opportunity to use it as an inspiration and then develop your own ways of making a commercially viable marketable product and I think simple Aesthetics and simple design interventions without too much of investment is my my main success I can say today everyone does elaborate designs with a lot of jacquards do an introductions of all that but while studying the old textiles and studying the processes as she says about the material and about the loom it's so inclusive that it's unbelievable because every time asari is woven at least there are directly 12 people who get impacted whether it's the family foreign okay now even in the loom itself they use Java stems okay after the plant Java stem is used to make the reeds uh Street sizing they use a brush with old roots or with vetiver roots so again it has a whole thing and it's tied with all Stone Rags literally so nothing is wasted all old fabric is made into cowdi that is a quilt so at every level you will find there is nothing wasted and even the Looms they use local trees like the honge and the Jackfruit and rafters from old houses that have been going you know they use those Rafters to build to make the Looms so at every part of it they have sort of looked at how we will sustain and these leads will never be harsh on silk so that's why we have a longevity of almost 100 years or so sorry lasts because it goes through these Javas reads today we have everything by Steel and everything is so semi-automatic mechanized it takes away a lot of livelihoods you know that is one aspect I'd like to discuss and so when we start training a weaver we start with simple things all I need to know is that he wants to do well and that Thief he's got the fire definitely we will support him and build it up so it starts with just basically two lines slowly from the time he starts with just two lines it should be salable till he slowly develops his skill with our mentorship is there and we give an advance and we give a buy back so there's there is he's working in a no risk environment see all these terms I'm putting it in now all these years I didn't realize it but he doesn't he's learning at my cost if it's a community I give the last three designs to for them to design and if it is a first piece gets is a defective piece again we absorb it because then how else will he grow I mean he doesn't need to invest for him to develop and to grow so the onus comes to us and I mean it's a small price to pay and that's how I think we've built up a relationship with the Weavers that today I can say proudly eighty percent of them can buy me out and without having any ownership on them and they bring their sons to me all computer little boys and I don't know what I really teach but it is something to do with design and color in very simple ways and I think they have technology with them so they can build their business and scale it up to huge successful levels uh the other aspect I'd like to talk is even I've been working with the company people the Pastoral community and what was amazing is they worked with the Daphne will here and everyone comes to me saying support me so I'm a small organization but then I use design thinking to be able to do that so with the pastoralists we've been I've been using recycled silk in a big way with them and the products have come out beautifully uh that's another reason I've been using a lot of waste Bangalore had a waste market so whenever I did training in the rural areas I used to go to the waste market and pick up things when that time there was no understanding of sustainability years ago but it was how do I keep the cost down for the Weaver because he has to support himself without me I don't want to be holding him for many years so either my design I give it away free after a year because we sell it at bimore and then he I give it to him and then the support uh support these kind of issues so uh sorry just one minute yeah in waste we have used a lot of work and it is amazing the kind of texture structures that we are able to do so and it's easy because you don't need much uh input in it and it's not that they have to do it only traditionally so by working with all these new material it gives you a lot of chance to contemporize things to see what the market wants and to see how sustainable recycled waste is silk waste is something I worked with a lot and even cotton waste and different kinds of permutations and it excites the beaver because he's not doing the same thing that was done 100 years ago I think it's very necessary for us to allow change and to allow that growth because it has to have a reinterpretation we cannot always go on by what was there I mean the technique is this everything is this but I think we have to allow that kind of creative growth so so as I say I always allow them saying I have done this reinterpret what I have done according to how you think it is and it is always produced results and in a way you also feel part of a larger picture because you're preserving your cultural heritage and in my museum I'd like to just say something that we don't have any Royal textiles because I was never a collector but it's everybody's grandmother sorry that is there so it becomes a thing to study and then show it to the viewers we have a couple of looms they come and try it out and then they tell me their little stories to it so it is my museum I say celebrate our commonality instead of artificial and textiles all across the world you would find something common like a Ganda bear and uh that's the Karnataka emblem is also a Russian emblem I mean it's unbelievable when we look at common things that we have across the world and then there was no transportation and no communication so I think this is the way I have been working and the biggest thing is they have the Weavers are an amazing Community because I think anybody who works with the hand part and head creates magic they are in there are people who are so honest Integrity they have all the beautiful human emotions that we've talked about which is very rare to find in an urban area but you will never find them outright cheat you in all these years we've just had one bounce check one Weaver who's tried to teach me in 49 years that is something to say about Weavers they have that innate integrity I think thank you yeah hello hello yeah I think I'm done thank you so much I think this was something uh very uh interesting aspect how the how the entire weaving process uh is embedded in the local resources which are available there whether it's in form of a grass whether it's a form of from this material that is lying there and how the skills helps them in converting uh the available material into beautiful products also the aspect that uh you know how the Innovations and creativity with sustainability aspect um you know it can help in creating some you know because of fresh perspective and give them inspired to do uh things so thank you so much for uh these words now may I move towards uh once again before I go to the next speaker to there are uh to the participants if there are any questions that you want to ask to any of the panelists please put them in Q a box and once we have the deliberations we would be taking a question answers question thank you so much just just sorry for Interruption just two things I think if everyone can mute uh only the speaker should put it on because I think there's a lot of disturbances going on in on some of the mics and also I think Ashok GS put up a very pertinent point that we should all keep an eye on the watch in the clock uh so that we are able to also have some healthy discussions sure yes thank you so much um so [Music] um leading fashion designer associated with fashion design Council of India for more than 12 years and she has been actively involved in Revival of handicrafts and working on traditional designs and how to mainstream them and uh so so without taking much time I would invite uh Christmas to share her uh her views especially on the entire life cycle approach uh and how to how does the sustainability aspect is uh taken into consideration starting from the very early stages of design uh Mr Chang over to you thank you um thank you Dr child this has been um a very very uh educational session for me personally so I want to say thank you to everybody um thank you Mr mugai thank you um I mean you have sort of created this whole landscape um that India is um you know the vast textile and craft Heritage that we come from so I'm not going to really talk about textile because they're great experts here it's not my space um I I will connect fashion and sustainability because that's what I do um I do believe and I think we have a lot of students here which is what I'm directing this presentation more uh words um you know I think design is very important when you start with the design you have to think sustainability so it is not something which comes later in the uh in the process that when your product is ready then you think oh how can I pitch it as being sustainable it's also a word which I think is greatly misused today uh people are selling anything and everything by saying it is organic it is sustainable it's good for the environment it's good for the planet how much of it is really um true and I I don't know how much of it our audience our customers really understand do they just see that tags do they see that line which says sustainable and buy it or do they want to educate themselves further on this I do have a small presentation the first part of it will link passion with sustainability and the second part of it is I wanted to actually take the students through how a collection from inspiration to completion starts keeping sustainability as the primary uh thought in your mind of course design is part of it but it has to start from the beginning so may I share my screen please okay so I'll start with how um you know what most of us think of fashion um we know that passion is one of the largest um offenders of the climate uh most people buy their clothes and throw them away three four five times is an average of when people throw away their clothes we have so much wastage of energy water uh in producing the garments in producing after the fabric is done producing garments and then in maintaining them and none of us think about it it's very uh it's sort of part of our uh process to just you know use where use and throw and discard and you know as Indians I think they're just very lucky um to be born in India and I'd like to specially say this to the students because the kind of culture and Heritage we have the kind of textile tradition which we have which you have already heard uh from all these amazing speakers I don't think any other country in the world has this and if we are not going to use these uh traditions and not use these crafts to our advantage to make us different from the rest of the world how will we be you know what is the difference between a designer coming from India and a designer coming from anywhere else in the world it is your textile Heritage it is something uh to be extremely proud of it is something to experiment with it is something to promote and in the process you are also promoting and helping the Clusters The Artisans uh these Traditions which are thousands of years old as Julie also mentioned and which are at risk of becoming extinct very soon if we don't all jump into it and start taking it as a personal um agenda I think sustainability also has to be something which you intrinsically believe in it has to be something which um you know has to really hurt you personally it has to hurt that this planet is being eroded and it is being ruined and we all need to take this as part of our agenda um some of this is just basic facts uh average consumer by 60 more clothes than they did a decade ago one-third of the women wear clothes five times before throwing them out um here I would like to say that we as Indians uh are sustainable that's who are uh forefathers were that who are past 20 Generations but they did not throw away anything it was reused it was either passed down uh to the next sibling or then made into uh cleaning um uh Fabrics or made into Rags it was never thrown away today in what I call uh disposable fashion um which is largely really bad for the environment you just wear um you know wear twice at the most Thrice and then you discard it and it sits somewhere you don't even think where it's going to go it is probably going to live beyond your and your children's lifespan um and that is something you need to think about when as designers if you are going to create Collections and you're going to add to this footprint on the planet oh sorry I'm not able to move yeah so circularity uh to me is is about where is something which starts from the design stage so when you are creating a fashion line is when you not need to start thinking are these natural Fabrics um how has the how has the fabric been produced so where was it fun where did the yarn come where was it woven and then how did you end up with it so of course you will need to go back a little bit I'm not saying each one of you will be able to uh you know map out that process but at least be mindful of the fabric that you're going to buy and that you are going to promote as a collection in your businesses going forward um what I think we need to do is design for recycling so when we estab when we create a collection we need to know what is going to happen after this collection is ready and what is going to happen after that and you know two years five years seven years down the line when somebody can somebody come back to you with these garments and can something else be made out of it so does it have that longevity and if it is a natural yarn if it is woven by your Weaver if it has um that is the uh hand block print or vegetable dyes chances are it will last long enough and you can reuse it repurpose it also uh you can recycle in design so you can transform old Fabrics or garments into something else to extend their lifespan I think some of the opportunities we have in design and is to make design circular is we need to design for the future so we have to think beyond that particular garment that's beyond particular season that Trend and that collection we need to create designs which have a longer lifespan we need to create with the intention that this can be repurposed and reinvented once its life cycle is over and of course today there is a lot of technology which has made it possible for us to be able to reuse and recycle and repurpose so please explore that technology um sustain and preserve what we have of course that is our crafts that's our textiles that's our heritage that we as Indians are blessed with to rethink and reinvent garments and also the waste which comes out why you are making a collection while you're making a garment there's a lot of waste which comes out are you just going to throw that away and not think about what happens to it or can you uh reuse it can you make accessories out of it can you make Home Products out of it can you reuse that in the next election what are you doing with your waste this is just some screenshots of um yarn of dies how it's being woven just to set context of you know who we are as Indians and what we are celebrating some aspects of sustainability which I think which comes out uh which which a designer creates uh is the production Factor how much water and energy are you wasting and consuming uh consuming is one aspect of it wasting is another when students or when young designers start their businesses I don't think this is something they have the luxury to worry about but as they get further into the process as they understand who they are and what their their labels and what their brands stand for I think it is definitely something you have to be concerned about is there uh you know unmindful usage of water can you not re-re recycle it can you not reuse it can you stop wasting that um plastic is another thing I feel we um in in the fashion as an industry every garment you know at least 10 years ago was packaged in plastic every garment that you shipped out was packaged in plastic so if you start counting the number of plastic bags that you use every single month even a small business was mind-boggling you didn't even think about it the minute you change the usage of plastic so today in in my office in my factory there is no usage of plastic hasn't been for the last seven or eight ten years it was a difficult transition but we have been able to manage it nobody plans for not willing to accept things which we shipped in uh biodegradable bags over a period of time I think everybody has understood and so you know it is it is something you have to almost enforce and then the rest will follow to be able to store sustainable raw materials as um juhi took us through a lot of the sources which were even used to me um you know we are not using a lot of these um Treasures that we have in India I mean every state every state in the country offers something unique some unique textiles some unique crafts some unique Heritage or Traditions which I mean I may have worked with maybe 10 states but I can spend the rest of my life exploring this and and still there will be more to to explore and there will be more to you I think to me uh sustainability is very cool um I think what we need to also understand is uh following a trend mindlessly uh so you look at you know Trend um uh predictives you look at online you look at um social media you look at Bollywood you look at Hollywood you get look at influencers and you follow that part um and you know it is not because you're following them that you are going to be cool it is when you create your own language a fashion that you're going to be cool um let minimum impact to the environment drive your process social responsibility again use of chemical dyes washes finishes if you can stick with vegetable dyes if you can stick with natural processes that is ideal and yes believe me they are as cool um there is a health risk for workers even in your factories India is very fragmented uh as far as the fashion and textile landscape is concerned so not all uh production units are friendly for the the people who are actually sitting and producing it is not best for their health uh the basic systems are not in place for so when you start a small business you don't think about all this because you have other fires to fight you have bills to pay you have people to pay um but these are things which are very very important and I am that's the reason I'm mentioning it because all of these desired students will go out there and will either go for job or will start their own businesses and I think these are all concerns which need to remain in their Forefront Animal Welfare I mean as a um as a ethical uh policy I do not use leather have not used leather for years offer um I'm not saying all of you need to do that but I think there's so many alternates now that you really do not need to use leather and they are as beautiful or better alternate through technology health and safety of your Workforce recycling whatever waste is coming out of your factories your organizations and then upcycling some of the old garments so we all have old garments left we have so much talk can we not recycle the repo system uh you know why do we need to put it on a sale and get rid of it we can repurpose and give it a completely new dimension um again some screenshots to give you an idea of the kind of crafts that we work with um you know there's some hand block print uh the center image is uh something is product which we create out of our scrap uh so it can be coasters can be home can be accessories um you know there's there's multiple things you can do with your crap um some more ideas of what you can work with and the extent of our textile heritage embroidery every state has something special to offer every state I mean I'm just amazed when I travel from one state to another I mean and many of these are really at risk of becoming things because they are not being passed down Generations because it does not make sense for these families for example I work with chicken curry and I remember when I started about 30 years ago 29 years ago there were lots of clusters there were lots of women who would do the craft and it's a women's Centric craft through the years they have not passed it to the next Generation there are very few young women who actually practice chicken curry only because um you know they're call centers there's there's plenty of other options to earn money and this does not pay enough uh it is the most requisite um an embroidery tradition and it is just Vanishing we are left with a few captive clusters which we work with but there are no young people in them they are all um they are 50 plus segments of women who still are passionate about the craft and that's why they continue it not necessarily because it uh makes sense from a monetary point of view we do try to support these clusters through the year and more but it is still a very fast Vanishing craft uh these are some of the ideas which I think you can use for your scrap so we use all our scrap which comes out a different collection into and into um Home Products or hair products or Christmas decorations um so many things you can do with it uh also we work with clusters which are then trained uh to create so it's it's a double uh uh you know double uh Advantage so to say because these clusters get the livelihood they're trained to you to make to stitch to produce products plus uh they're able to earn an income from it these are some uh examples of past collections where you'll see on the left uh this chicken curry um traditional chicken curry but just in a modern interpretation the center one um is also a hand embroidery um the right is again chicken curry it's how you know fashion and sustainability and Indian crafts can be cool being sustainable it and this is all natural fabric it's all um it's all natural silk yeah silk Georgia this is some more examples you will not recognize that on the right top corner is abandoning um which we have converted into a jacket uh the middle one is again chicken curry but done in a more modern way uh as pravitraji mentioned it's about taking the craft and just twisting it a little bit to make it more contemporary and then make you know fashionable cool gown and sound of it the bottom is the dosy on the left is a lot of applique work with work which you're not seeing on the right is again with a lot of uh so come uh are of circularity we think reduce we use repair refurbish recover and recycle I think this has to be part of your ether part of uh what your brand stands for part of and your brand is who you are so it's an extension of your personality so if you believe in uh doing your little bit for the planet for the environment which is going to be still there and only there for you and your children and their children so I think we all have to jump in and say you know this is what I believe in and that's why I'm doing this is not because uh it's another tag on social media it's not because I can talk about um how my product was made how sustainable it was but because I believe in it I don't know if I have the time uh Dr Shah for the second part of it which was really the life cycle and I can end here if you like yes I think uh because we let's let's have you know some of that maybe in the question answers question if we can deal so that uh it would be easier for me to uh be on time okay so if that's okay yeah thank you so much thank you it was really interesting to know how sustainability aspects you are looking at and the entire you know that our concept and certain other aspect how do you use the natural thing so may I now request uh next panelist Miss Riku seti has been Associated uh with the graph sector since along and shares an editor of the global life which is an online International Journal of intangible cultural heritage she has been on the advisory committee of several institutions who work on the uh handicraft and handlooms she is the founder Trustee of craft Revival trust and has authored several uh she is also a part of this whole documentation that we are doing currently and she has been clearly part of curating team that works towards uh editing the entire compilation and uh but that let's see is working with you now so I uh may I welcome and hand it over to you man to discuss about your views on how um Reviving uh to work on Reviving The handloom Traditions what do you readership thank you thank you Dr janki and thank you CE and uh unep for including me in this panel as I've got exactly 10 minutes so in this time I'm going to talk about the topic of sustainable textiles and leveraging the learning from slightly different perspective Aztecs sorry Deli pollution uh as textile making is a living tradition to ensure its sustainable future it is imperative that we be alert to its health and towards this I have put together a gauge by which the viability of the practice and its transmission can be determined while allowing for timely assessment for vulnerability I'm going to read out my paper it's brief and I hope to finish in 10 minutes but before I start I want to add a rider that given the wide diversity of textile crafts and the varied circumstances and the nature of its practice and the host of mitigating factors that can threaten viability this evaluation criteria that has been put together is by necessity very generalized in nature so as to be applied across the board therefore a supplementary benchmarking metric tailored to individual crafts and craft genres may need to be added on in a phase 2 evaluation that supplements this General criteria this would then take into consideration the nuances of practice to deepen the investigation before the initiation of any safeguarding to consolidate and strengthen transmission and practice as a starting point I looked at existing definitions in India in the office of the development commissioner handicrafts in the ministry of textiles under whose jurisdiction several textile crafts fall issued an official definition of languishing or endangered textiles in 2009-10 which I quote definition of Endangered earlier called languishing crafts 0.1 the total number of craftspersons are less than 25 .2 craftspersons have replaced craft activity with any other activity because the craft practice is unviable and or if reduction in time spent on the particular craft is more than 50 percent in the last 10 three years 0.3 Next Generation in the family is not learning the craft and there is no recruitment of new persons outside the family and or percentage of new recruits is less than 40 percent uh for the hand looms while there is no set definition of Endangered there is the handloom reservation Act of 1985. this actually the hanum reservation Act is right from 1950 but it has gone through many permutations and combinations and the Act was changed again in 1985 and this lays out the perceived threat to production and lists the various varieties of bees and products that come under its purview while this is a good starting point given the vast nature of the segment and the degrees of vulnerable vulnerabilities further research led me to the handicraft Association craft Association of the UK that in 2017 developed a red list that identified and classified all crafts including textile crafts according to the endangered status here the risk assessment was in four categories that determined the threat to viability of a craft in descending order the craft categories extended from extinct crafts critically endangered crafts through endangered crops with an additional category described as data deficient that is defined as those crafts for which there is insufficient data to make a status classification and a craft is considered viable when there were sufficient craftspeople who could transmit their skill to the next generation of practitioners of course unlike in our country the practitioners should come from any Class cast strata of society based on these definitions and based on field research and learnings we at craft Revival trust developed a Continuum of or a gauge of six plus one which in phase one could be used to decide what the viability of textile crafts and other crafts can be engaged on so this six plus one categories are as follows the first is defined as viable Dynamic robust where there are sufficient number of Masters who can transmit craft skills to the increasing number of new entrants there is a robust nature of Engagement with existing and new patrons and an increasing demand for products the second category is maintenance where the number of props people has not grown new entrants have replaced the old but the total number remains static the nature of Engagement with new and existing patrons is stable and the market share is static and here there is a definite risk of the crafts in this category falling into the unsafe oblique vulnerable category which is the third category unsafe oblique vulnerable here intergenerational transmission is low with a trickle of new entrance market share is on the decline as is the nature of Engagement with patrons there is a definite risk of The Craft falling into the next category which is endangered uh the fourth category is definitely endangered where intergenerational transmission is barely existent engagement with patrons is on a steady decline and there's a definite risk of The Craft being no longer practiced uh fifth is the critically endangered where the shrinking base of practitioners is limited to aged makers there is no intergenerational transmission or any new entrance there is barely any engagement with patrons and there is a definite risk of this craft becoming extinct which is the sixth category extinct the craft is no longer practiced and the six plus one on the gauge is data deficient this category has been borrowed from the and we have learned from the Heritage craft Association of the UK and though it's not on the Continuum which is why it is labeled as six plus one this is a valuable addition for us in the Indian context as there is a lack of data both census diagnostic reports and others both in numbers in practice and on specific graphs change and this is defined as and can include crafts that for which information is not provided where we have no data on numbers there is no knowledge base existence or crafts which are very local and the information is hard to come by after establishing the degree of viability through this phase one process we would recommend that a second level of phase two be gone into which will entail an in-depth process of researching the evident and tacit causes for endangerment for each individual craft that has been so labeled which will allow for tailored safeguarding measures that are in entirely suitable for the particular craft in focus in both phase one and phase two it is strongly recommended that participation and involvement of the community or practitioners and transmitters be fundamental to the process that it's not a top-down approach but involves all stakeholders in the ecosystem in addition I would add that the question of whether safeguarding is warranted for certain endangered crafts needs to be deliberated on with the community especially as crafts as lived practices are constantly evolving and have often been a response to cultural economic or social needs so in this case of some practices they may be considered to be obsolescent or archaic or not in keeping with current legislation or human rights or that they may have fulfilled their functionality so there is need to uh assess the necessity for revitalization and safeguarding so in conclusion uh safeguarding in times of change needs top priority and as we emerge from covid-19 we are no longer sure of the many certainties we took for granted as more crafts and Crafts People emerge into a vulnerable future and there is urgent need to assess the current viability of a wide swath of traditional crafts including the textile crafts and identify those that are most endangered and indeed at risk of becoming extinct the office of the DC handicrafts formulated in 2000 when they formulated their definition of languishing now called endangered textiles they formulated a list of 35 crafts on this endangered list of which includes eight textile crafts and while DC handlooms does not have a formal definition they have a list of 26 textile crafts that are on the endangered list this is an important benchmarking list as it determines which crafts benefit from Priority government support however these lists were formulated some time ago and it is important to list to review them by annually to assess whether the measures or the effectiveness of safeguarding procedures that have been initiated have a working and to course correct perhaps to remove them from the list because they have been on it for some time and add on new crafts moving on from these two lists plus those made from by Civil Society by design institutes Etc a fresh mapping of textile crafts is NOW essential especially like I said as we emerge from covet 19. and to gauge their vulnerability is of utmost priority as this Focus could bring a heightened awareness to threatened crafts and perhaps lead to Creative Solutions Partnerships and attention to sustainability by instituting a long-term viability monitoring plan while assessing the effectiveness of sustainability measures the cultural laws that is born each time a craft a textile craft or any other dies can be alleviated and the craft bees toward it into the future thank you thank you rituji thank you for this different perspective and uh definitions and understanding of the entire Anglo how it is looked into and when you look into the uh formal and legal terms so now uh can we open this session for the question answers we already have a couple of questions uh in DQ a box um I think all the benefits also have the uh access to that but just to begin with there's a question from uh sanskriti Menon shares I think this is the early presentation of uh Miss juhi Pandi but others can also uh answer uh you know respond wherever we want but basically asking about uh is the Reviving local breeds uh can be a way of building climate resilience and uh does that connects uh with Lively livestock and livelihood connected with them so please if you want to do you want me to answer the respond to the question uh yes okay so definitely any what we have seen in and and also learned from the practitioners and and say specifically here where you're talking about Loki beats the pastor list is that they there is a very strong correlation between uh the local indigenous breeds to the the aspect of climate resilience uh We've I have personally when we have worked with the past list there have been uh data there have been conversations and stories been told that when we used to go into these fields at one point of time our our sheep could get this particular grass to uh to eat which help them with their with their stomach issues but now the grass is not available and hence even the the number of diseases in in our in our sheep are increasing so there is there are all these correlations that are there which are completely quickly in tandem with all the impact that we are that's loss of local breeds indigenous plants indigenous seeds is happening uh towards the climate aspect so uh there is uh a very very big correlation and there is uh you do need our indigenous uh plants are indigenous seeds and our indigenous uh animals to be around in that particular ecosystem to maintain and keep a balance of ecology I'm not an ecological expert in it so I can't add data but what we have seen is that the livelihoods are connected uh they till local bull was a primary fiber or a or a fiber that was being utilized by uh the beavers and the Spinners in in the region uh specifically when I'm talking I'm talking about cuts um there was the need for them to keep those breeds alive when those fibers were of no use or or the Beavers started getting uh industrially made easily made Merino yarn or when it comes to Gold Etc the demand reduced on for the Breeders to keep uh breeds of sheep which were uh for wool and they shifted to to raising sheep which were for meat and they themselves now because the demand was so less and this is way back in 2017 when we were on the field uh we've heard uh Shepherds tell us that now we wish because they were just they had to share the Sheep because you need to do it for the health of the of the sheep so they would share the wool but they would just Chuck it and they were like we'd hope that we can actually find a breed of sheep where we just rub our hands on the body and the bull just goes off because they were not even finding shearers so there are all these aspects that are very much interconnected to their life and livelihoods and the keeping of livestock so it there is a huge there is a relationship and there is a need for us to maintain our local breeds to keep even the climate aspects in balance thank you can I come in a minute for this release yes yes they do have the same problem that there's no land left for grazing so what happens is the pastoralists had exercised because they'd raised them in different lands and the Sheep also ate different kind of grasses so they were healthier and the hair was longer today because the breeds are getting mixed they have hair that is very short so while it becomes very difficult to weave hair with this shot okay so then that means they have to put more glue their glue that they use is The Tamarind seed paste so in the community they don't use any chemical this glue is made out of some Tamarind seed based and so they have to coat it as a thicker port to keep sheep hair together to spill it and since they all do Thai reeling it takes a lot of effort so we're trying to look if we can do some other permutations and combinations and the issue about this bleed is they are saying they ask me a very pertinent question a pastoralist he says God did God make them to stay in one place in the fence they went to work so we have interfered with God's ways and that's why we are suffering for all these kind of things he says you keep a man in one place this is output good similarly with the Sheep it's a cheeky question they asked me thank you another quick question uh let us from um [Music] Russia uh asking about uh What uh when we talk of sustainability of textiles how to ensure that the tribal groups who are moving away from this uh this this traditional livelihoods what kind of sustenance can be given to our uh to them to ensure the sustainability of their craft and continuing the traditional livelihood any panelist uh in a quick minute or so if we can respond to this question if I can come in I think the idea is you have to keep the core of their craft but you have to innovate it and use design thinking to move forward you know that's the only way if it is if you can get a commercial value from the craft and their tradition and their skill without losing that sense and creating something that will create economic success I think that's the way forward for it you know you cannot demean what they have or you cannot put them down it's very important to keep them at the center of all your interventions and that that I think is very important to value and respect their skill and commercialize it with minimal interventions you know you cannot change the whole look of it it should be minimal so that it retains its originality also thank you for that oh two questions I'll just sum up uh putting together one guess about the Quantum of production whether it matches the need of the consumption so the question is that the current the Quantum of production of sustainable textile matches can it match the tremendous consumption or if they're not the now does that affect the browsing pricing and also a question which says are there any joint forums between synthetic textile sector and the natural and sustainable textile sector uh anyone and it's an open question if any panelist or any speaker want to respond to that you know on all these questions but uh I don't think uh see the first thing is coming into this point of it is with the natural fiber and a synthetic fiber they'll always go into land pins whereas natural fibers whether it's cotton silk jute banana any kind of plant fiber can be woven so the potential is immense the volume will never match what comes out of a machine but I think isn't that what slow fashion is about so it fits the bill and uh hand textiles has most of the STG goals I mean there's no reverse migration you can all these kind of things you can work from your home and be creative colors are very soothing and therapeutic and the whole process of weaving itself is very therapeutic you know so I don't think we could even look the problem as we compare it with Mill made things that's the problem and it also comes down to the policy the government has given so much a focus for machine made that now we are struggling to keep the handmade again there and uh if we had stuck to what the original policy was about reservation for the hand the handloom reservation act we wouldn't be in such states where most of the Weavers children are my living leaving but unless you show them its economically viable they don't need to be Weaver so Weaver sun doesn't need to be a weaver but he knows he can be a businessman and so I think that is also so acceptable every Viva sun doesn't need to be a weaver our children don't need to be I mean just like their aspirational everybody's kids are aspirational as long as they have an idea about the craft they will preserve it and go ahead yeah but synthetics is a major problem I mean when we have fibers from every possible plant I don't know why we need synthetics I may add here also I think the comparison between the synthetic and the natural is um it's sort of unfair I mean how can you compare you cannot compare the two and if you are going to buy the fast fashion the synthetic then you're really not somebody who's thinking it through or wanting the naturals but if you're going to go the natural way you will never buy synthetic so I don't in my head there is no comparison between the two and a lot of people a lot of times students ask me that is the life of something natural longer than something which is synthetic and I I think absolutely so because it can be reinvented repurposed whereas a synthetic it is what it is and it is going to sit in a landfill thank you so much for your remarks and responses uh now my request uh Professor Chatterjee um already here to see his uh remarks and his points basically taking the overall discussion and he is concluding remark uh Professor strategy if I can briefly I mean he needs no introduction but if I can briefly introduce he has been in the textile sector in this handicraft and handling sector for for uh for for for a very long time he has been working with National Institute of Design as uh executive director and as a senior faculty at industry fellow his honored president of craft Council of India and his author several Publications and he is also working very closely mentoring this entire publication process Etsy is working with you now so uh over to you sir Chatterjee over to you thank you can you hear me yes yes okay because my zoom has collapsed and I'm trying to connect on the phone uh and there are all kinds of problems here anyway I just like to say that this discussion has been extremely useful it indicates in many ways the importance of the project which we are now doing on the documentation of India's handling traditions in the context of a sustainable future I think it's important to point out that what we are doing in this publication on hand loans really stands for the whole handmade sector we are concentrating on hand looms that in itself is a universe of its own but the lessons that come out of this exercise apply it to a much larger sector of our national economy as well as our our hopes and aspirations for a sustainable future in this connection I think it's important in the context of what we've just heard in the last few questions that we go back to what Mr bagai brought up this morning about individual consumer behaviors ultimately it's the consumer who will decide whether this effort works or does not work and we have to address the kind of aspirations that today's consumers have particularly the younger generation of today and tomorrow so basically we need to perhaps also remember that from the time of the Freedom Movement in India the handmade including the hand Loom was part of the way India understood the process of transition from a traditional Society to a modern society it was not rejecting the handmade culture it was bringing that handmade culture into the center of under our understanding of modernity and that I think is important to keep in mind when we are talking about how to create the kind of awareness on which all our efforts depend and here the observation that karthika made is so important that this subcontinent not just India but all the countries on the subcontinent uh the only example in this globe on this globe of an unbroken tradition of handmade cultures going back over five to six thousand years nowhere else is this tradition has this tradition remained unbroken but we are in great risk of breaking that for all the reasons that we have heard today and uh one of those I think came up very clearly in the presentation that Julie made about how the links with the Pastoral and tribal communities is so essential to our understanding of both sustainability as well as the lifestyles to which we all aspire uh I think here the vimor intervention by veritra is extremely important because as she mentioned at the heart of all of this is putting food on the table and that process we want to do keeping the Integrity of tradition intact there are no simple answers about how that Integrity can be guaranteed but it certainly means that at the heart of all this effort is the need to understand the marketing context of the sustainability challenge marketing not understood as selling but marketing is understanding a user's need and satisfying that need at a profit to both the artisan and to all the others in the distribution chain and I think there the observation that was made by Biogen on the misunderstandings that surround this world word sustainability need to be addressed for example she brought up the importance of Packaging now in the entire consumer goods industry this is an issue so when we are talking about the handmade we also need to understand this ecosystem of which the handmade is a part and of all the partners that we need in order that our message of sustainability in our practices of sustainability are also sustained in the future the point that uh Ritu seti is brought to our attention is extremely uh critical she talks about the need for a fresh mapping which will take into account the lessons we have learned from the covet Pandemic those lessons have been huge and there's not time just now to discuss them but they are a warning that disaster management must be one of the capacities we develop within the sector because human made is non-natural disasters seem to be around the corner and the pandemic was a mixture of bulk so how do we develop these red lists which indicate where the need for attention should be focused I think this is an extremely important contribution which CRT is making I hope we can keep that in mind when we are doing this particular document I'm not sure if we have this aspect in the document now Ritu but we should make sure that it is in there we actually do because when we discuss the crafts that that was putting the compiling the whole list together she is putting in all these details also so it is there under sustainability or what is impacting each textile client and I think that's a better way to come to notice yeah there's a backdrop to this we should keep in mind what came up just now in the question and answer I think it was pavitra who mentioned it the sustainable development goals when we started our struggle to try and get attention to the hand industry we did not have the sustainable development goals as a backdrop as a platform and in fact as a ground on which to stand now we have that if you look at the 17 sustainable development goals the handmade sector addresses at least 12 of those goals directly directly and that is an advantage we have in our struggle for advocacy that struggle is absolutely huge because with all the rhetoric and all the talk and all the lectures about our ancient culture when Bush comes to shove there is very little serious attention to the sector and very little serious investment in this sector our efforts just now are towards some kind of change in that business scenario there should be no excuse for a country like India which has this unbroken tradition which has this Heritage not just of thousands of years but of what happened during the Freedom Movement and how crafts moved into the development scenario immediately after the Freedom Movement thanks to The Visionaries like Jawal nehru karna Devi Chaturbate jayakar and others we have that huge advantage and that learning which we can share with the rest of the world and those learnings integrate wonderfully with the sustainable development goals but the tragedy is that today when India reports to the United Nations on its progress towards the sustainable development goals it does not look at the craft sector it does not look to the craft sector it does not report what the craft sector is doing because the data does not exist and as some of you know a group of us have been struggling now for more than one decade to try and get the government of India to establish a reliable database for the for handmade in India unless we have that reliable database these suggestions are to be made today on sustainability are going to be very difficult to implement because every one of those recommendations requires an awareness of the sector and it requires data for the sector so these are other debates that we need to discuss and we need to continue but I think it's extremely useful that we've had this discussion I do hope this discussion can be recorded or summarized and shared particularly with all the young people who today are seeking careers in the handmade sector including handles but not restricted to handles because this would be a learning that would be extremely valuable for all of them thank you thanks so much uh right now we have we are we are ending uh approaching towards uh the encoding part of the webinar uh may I now request if any any of the panelists wants to make uh you know any final comments or a lineup before we get note do you want to commit and share some of your feedback and opinions about the boat just to share what Ashok said just now that this will be a very good resource and I hope this will be available online for people uh to to to look at and see I think a number of very good points have come I thought also if she wants to make a comment or anyone else uh I think we've talked about two related things one is of course other the tradition itself whether the tradition will stay alive and we are also talking about the ecosystem which supports that tradition and the tradition supports that ecosystem and how do you keep that alive because uh as as civil speaker spoke you cannot have a certain tradition if the if the fiber is not available or the die is not available how do you how do you keep this whole thing going in an unbroken tradition which is currently Thrift but archana maybe you could just say a word because you haven't said anything no thank you Karthik by and I don't think uh I am experienced enough to talk uh in front of such star Lords who have been uh taking this initiative forward uh I think um in in terms of taking the work forward uh from unip side uh this is something that we are trying to align with our Global strategy and the work that we are doing uh uh at in a global teams or based in Paris so uh rest assured that we will take this work forward and we will talk about it at all the relevant forums uh going forward but uh yeah this is it from my side I don't think I can add any other thing to the discussion uh given my expertise in my experience at this stage thank you but it was wonderful listening to all of all of uh the experts here would all the families like to have a final just a quick comment before we end up Kyle would you like to say something I just hope this will create more synergies between designers and textiles you know fashion designers are kind of like an outcast because we just you know that's how everybody treats them because we're just the social page three people and we don't have the depth but that is not necessarily true so you know if a fashion designers would work with textile designers I think some of this could change because eventually we do understand what the market wants and we do uh you know we understand the Dynamics of it and the costs of it and how to work backwards so I hope this will create synergies between our passion design Council which I couldn't mention which is about a few thousand young designers now um and with unep and CE if there were some uh future endeavors we could do we have lots of students interested lots of young designers who have just started their businesses it would be tremendous to listen to other people and understand the background because we just think that the government we don't think of the back end and I think that's you know it's about you're not bringing yeah thank you uh I know you're catching a flight but if you are funny yeah I think uh if you could do things something to do with the policy I think it would be great because then the Beavers not at the receiving end you know pandemic he was just given two thousand rupees a whole year so per day it comes to 5 rupees 47 Paisa and it was so painful for me to answer these questions what is sustainance at five rupees 47 530 that is the tragedy I mean I think policy really needs to be worked on you know to see I mean we can pay everyone more why does a weaver get so little that's the question I hope you'll address it yeah thank you uh but I've heard everyone and there is so much food for thought and like everyone is said if we have Synergy our voices get heard wider rather than individual voices speaking I like what Pyle said also at the end tradition is modern and what is modern now and what appeals to the young is fashion so it's so important to work with fashion designers too make statements in different forums so while we work in our silos this is a very important Silo to address also so you know I think the pattern has been put together so thoughtfully that we've got information from all these different levels so let's see what we do next right last word for me there are two points I think what rituji has mentioned we really need to work towards the documentation and I know AC has also been through the crafts Council doing this for the last 10 years it's a very very important aspect even before policy for us to have the data to to let the world know this is where we are and with the FBC and what Pyle mentioned I think we also need to go one step lower into the education system and start having these conversations and dialogues come into the curriculum of uh fashion design students Excel design students and hence start inculcating that the thought process or the thinking process from the Inception of the design feed or the conservation field so thank you so much it was brilliant everything that has been spoken today I add to what juhi juhi payal just mentioned uh Jeanette is also working with nift on developing curriculum on sustainable fashion so in fact we started last year where we offered a gender elective course on sustainable and circular textiles to the students who are taking up degree courses in nift this year we have tied up again we offered two mdps management development program for professionals and we are now finalizing curriculum for a one-year diploma on sustainable fashion so that is something that we've already started the work on and we'll be happy to share more details with whosoever wants to seek a collaboration with nift or with your nap on this initiative thank you absolutely yeah foreign [Music] a lot of those recommendations we can interview and look into when we are working on the documentation that we are creating thank you so much to this whole entire process and guidance from supervisor thank you so much thank you Namaste thank you that I think we should include a summary of today's discussion in the documentation we are doing for you it would be a good way to bring this together because a lot of insights have come up today but have I have this as a brief part of our documentation thank you sure okay Namaste namaste thank you bye thank you thank you thank you thank you