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Last week,the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) organised their first fashion industry interaction in Delhi. Garment and accessory designers,manufacturers,retailers and technology experts from domestic and foreign brands,members of the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) and the media spoke about the wows and woes of fashion as business. On the other side were Anand Sharma,the Union Minister of Commerce,Industry and Textiles; Rita Menon,former textiles secretary,and Monica Garg,director general,NIFT. The industry was invited to bare its heart; the government officials to lay bare their intentions. The NIFT faculty acted as the interpreter of maladies.

NIFT,which comes under the Ministry of Textiles,is now 25 years old. What started as a fashion college with two rooms in the shopping arcade of Delhis Samrat Hotel in 1986,so that trained hands and minds could handle the country’s increasing exports demand then,is now a premier fashion and design institution. It has 15 centres across India,including in Kangra,Kannur,Shillong,Bhubaneshwar and Raebareli. NIFT straddles global exposure for its students with work in rural craft clusters. Unknown to many,numerous products created through these associations stare back at us in retail markets,including in Fabindia. We may know that designers like Manish Arora,Sabyasachi,JJ Valaya,Kavita Bhartia,Ritu Beri and Rajesh Pratap are some of the many who studied here but we may not remember that NIFT graduates support every artery of manufacture,strategy,merchandising,management and fashion technology in India.

Even so,can it be argued that NIFT is among the country’s excellent institutes with India’s traditional and contemporary realities woven into the warp and weft of its syllabus and faculty? The answer is no. But before we put it on the couch for performance analysis,it may be worthwhile to remember that NIFT had a troubled childhood and a bumpy adolescence.

In 1986,it was treated as a parking space for girls of marriageable age whose parents indulged them in something more glamorous than home science degrees. Two decades later,in 2006,the NIFT Act was passed,giving it statutory status and empowering it to award degrees in fashion education. Consider another turnaround. In 1990,barely four years after its inception,Rathi Vinay Jha,a civil servant (now retired),the founder director of NIFT,was told the institute may have to shut down as the government was reluctant to divert its

Rs 3-crore annual fund from the handloom budget for this elitist institution. In a bid to democratise it,in 2010,Rajiv Takru,also a civil servant and the institute’s head then,was asked to accommodate 54 per cent additional seats (over three years) for OBCs and other quotas following the 2008 Supreme Court ruling.

Two big recessions that stumped industry placements for NIFT graduates and a see-saw attitude from the government notwithstanding,the biggest charge against NIFT has been expansion at the cost of quality education and the dearth of good faculty. NIFT centres have libraries,pattern- making rooms,photography and design studios but the overall approach doesn’t ingrain the rigours of contemporary research in students. Many NIFT-ians who went to study and work abroad find themselves only half prepared for fashion’s global demands. NIFT has also been attacked for not keeping pace with changing market realities and is often labelled bureaucratic and inadequate to match up to the aggressive industry’s people and politics.

In an article I wrote on fashion education in India,almost every interviewee questioned the training of its trainers. NIFT does invite experts from different fields to teach in its colleges as guest faculty but pays a pittance as fees,thus inhibiting the quality of its faculty.

The interaction highlighted the missing links between the government,the designers and the industry as a behemoth. Many in the audience were NIFT alumni. While designer Ritu Beri made a case for a fashion museum,others said that those sent out to dirty their hands in manufacturing must be invested with an emphasis on design. The next Zara could be from India and appropriate work needs to go into it. I argued for the need to introduce a full-time degree course in fashion journalism taught by mainstream and fashion journalists,popular culture experts,artists and musicians. Otherwise,we may continue to interpret Bollywood events as fashion.

Neither the minister nor the others present baulked at the challenges. While Menon defended NIFT’s expansion,saying that the model gave equal opportunities to students from small and big cities,Sharma agreed with the need to train teachers and to accelerate consistent dialogues between the government and the industry.

It was a charming evening with hope worn as a warm shawl. Will NIFT keep these promises? And,will the Ministry of Textiles find ways to realise the dreams it says it has for India’s fashion industry? The answers may give us another story sooner than later.

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