Darlie O Koshy
DG & CEO Apparel Training & Design Centre (ATDC)
The Skill Route
Darlie O Koshy is a thought leader. He has played a key role in shaping up institutions like the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New Delhi. He is the only Indian to have served on the executive board of the World Body of Design (ICSID) for three terms giving leadership to Indian design and NID in the global arena. Koshy is credited with the formulation of National Design Policy which was approved by the government of India and also the widely known campaign "Designed in India, Made for the World" which powered NID and Indian design to the centre stage to assume a leadership role. This June he takes over the chairmanship of NISTI - Northern India Section of Textile Institute, UK - after serving as the DG & CEO of the Apparel Training & Design Centre (ATDC) under the aegis of AEPC since 2009. At the ATDC he has set up over 200 directly run ATDC-AVI & ATDC-SMART centres across India in 24 states which have trained over 3,00,000 candidates by imparting skills and improving lives. His recent book Runway to Skilled India advocates the concept of re-skilling, up-skilling and new-skilling as the route to a 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' or self-sufficient India. In an exclusive interview with Richa Bansal, Koshy talks at length on how the industry can rethink and re-orient itself in a rapidly changing world order.
What could be the ideal runway to a skilled India?
Runways to developing a skilled and robust India are many; no single solution can be a panacea. The key to generating jobs is by creating a local economy as in Tiruppur (knitwear, Tamil Nadu) for example, or in Alappuzha (coir, Kerala) or Moradabad (brass metal ware, Uttar Pradesh), etc, and re-skill with new tools, up-skill for productivity, and new-skill for diversified activities and new manufacturing-service opportunities. I have been advocating for quite some time to reactivate more than 4,500 natural clusters and 1,500 other types of clusters through a focused approach of finance-design-technology-ecommerce intervention and that's why I have found the one district one product-or ODOP-a possible model. The PMKVY 3.0 or Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana puts emphasis on district-led approach through district skill councils which is a desirable direction, as a runway like this leads to a more 'be vocal about local' approach which is the need of the hour with the distressing migrant crisis and collapsing urban infrastructure.
Another fast-track runway is needed to push up the participation of women in the labour force which has slipped both in urban and rural areas. In fact, in the last four quarters it has been reported that the working women percentage has slipped precariously to less than six per cent as a result of the pandemic. So, the government must reserve the short-term skilling programmes in beauty and wellness, apparel and fashion, and such few sectors for women only for at least three years as an interim measure. India slipping by 28 places in the 2021 Global Gender Gap Report to a shameful 140th position among 150 countries indicates a serious situation calling for policy interventions.
There is also need for better skilling efforts especially for life and soft skills in the context of gig-flexi economy which is a big hope, more so for urban economies with potential to create 90 million jobs.
A runway to MSMEs and the informal sector, which are generally ignored, need to be brought back as 87 per cent of jobs are in these sectors. Recognition of prior learning (RPL) and top-up courses are required more for them than factory workers as there can be disproportionate positive impact on gainful employment and productivity through this.
Another important point to be noted is the big push for a runway to productivity. If a simple job like sewing earlier had helpers hanging around for threadcutting and the like on a line reducing productivity, after UBT (under-bed trimmer) machines made an entry how the scenario changed is an illustrative example. So, both automation and multi-skilled operators are inevitable. India's productivity in most sectors is pathetic which reduces profitability drastically.
Therefore, runways need to take into consideration specific local needs and employment patterns very carefully.
Future proofing in the era of the pandemic. From machinery to the final product, what is the roadmap that the integrated textiles industry needs to follow to future-proof itself from further such shocks, which apparently will be the new normal in the years ahead?
Future proofing comes from, as Nicholas Taleb said, in moving from Fragile to robust to Anti-Fragile with Skin in the Game, which will help textiles-apparel industry entrepreneurs to emerge victorious in the medium to longterm. Future proofing is when, like the frog in degree-by-degree rising temperature dies gasping; but by seeing the likelihood of temperature rising to plan ahead, or in some cases jump out and parachute to land safely. Change management when done through continuous innovation helps companies to rediscover and recalibrate all the time. An alert system with the antenna to pick up change signals early would be a prerequisite and rapid adaption to the changing environment is the key. You don't need a Kodak moment anymore.
Coming to design, you say in your book, and rightly so that the "importance of strategic design does not get the attention it deserves". What would be your key steps to ensure this?
I was part of the founding faculty team in 1987 to set up National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in New Delhi and played a role along with my colleagues in introducing the word fashion and its implications to the consumers and the industry at large. When I became the director of the iconic National Institute of Design (NID) at the beginning of the new millennium, I went a step further to evangelise design in the broader context of strategic design and had played a decisive role in formulating India's first National Design Policy which was announced on February 7, 2007.
So, I am an ardent believer of using design strategically for a design-enabled India. It is design thinking and design attitude which will transform adversity and constraints to opportunities by both redefining and reimagining the problem, and the solution can change every industry, especially the textiles-apparel-fashion-lifestyle-retail industries. I had argued forcefully in my books in 1995-97 to position India as a creative manufacturer of apparel/fashion. The industry hardly paid any attention and look at the opportunities missed as China, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam raced ahead. A creative country like India with so much diverse value addition skills still using labour arbitrage for survival in apparel exports to say the least is a tragedy, still struggling with $15-16 billion exports.
My book during my stint as the fifth director of NID, Indian Design Edge, has argued for using India's design prowess to create a design-enabled India for achieving leadership in global trade. Also, there is need for design democracy, a word I had coined, to focus on greater participative design for our country's industrial and service sectors and even for other spheres.
We need stronger industry-academia interface to pursue innovation through the technology-design-management triad in a more proactive manner and more so for India's backbone, the textiles industry. Digitalisation can aid in expanding scope to scale in a borderless format as in e-commerce and virtual solutions. We have to embrace the new world order.
In textiles, what could be the five key steps to ensure a skilled India within a 2-3-year period? Two to get the wheels moving and three to implement and ensure that by the end of five years, India can emerge as a stronger skilled hub for the world?
The textiles industry is seen as a vestige of the past. So, if the industry can be seen as a whole from the ultimate consumer point of view and using the lens of time-based perishable fashion, then the skills required also begin to change including visualisation, realisation skills through digitalisation. Hence, skilling for the textile value chain from downstream to upstream may need:
T-shaped skilling to combine creativity and skills;
Completely reformatting the courses with new nomenclature and hybrid approach to make the courses and careers aspirational;
Setting up a skill pyramidal ecosystem from ITI to IITs and ATDC to NIFT and craft and design-oriented polytechnics to NIDs for NSQF levels to degrees and beyond with entrepreneurial inputs to encourage startups;
Special women-specific courses in apparel, clothing, fashion and related beauty-wellness areas;
A thrust and focus on life and soft skills in a huge way with stress on learnability, so that the individuals and groups adapt to change and organisations become anti-fragile.
When it comes to skilling challenges, the textiles value chain has huge diversity from the point of raw materials (cotton, jute, flax, wool, silk, various other natural fibres and of course MMF) and manufacturing processes (khadi, handlooms, powerloom, millmade, etc). So, from farms to fibre, fabric, fashion to consumer, the chain has the potential to value add in every stage. More important, to maintain profitability and to move up at the market level, there is need for higher level of skills, especially competencies on the job which will help to create higher value products. So, the re-skilling, up-skilling, new-skilling need to be carried out through the chain creating horizontal, vertical, geographical mobility. This requires a multi-tasking workforce with few core skills and many adjacent and related skills.
When we talk skilling, re-skilling and up-skilling, the future ahead will see more and more of robots entering the workforce. What steps need to be taken to ensure that humans and robots can co-exist?
In the context of the pandemic-triggered digital acceleration, there is need for assessing skill intensity level of each course to transform them on a hybrid platform just as the World Economic Forum (WEF) is attempting to do under the Re-skilling Revolution platform globally. Already 16 countries and 10 industrial sectors are participating in it to achieve 1 billion re-skilled workforce by 2030. We need to be part of such a major initiative.
The National Textiles Policy is said to be in the draft stage, as mentioned in Parliament recently. Considering all the points above, and the fact that India really needs to pull up its socks when it comes to seizing opportunities and missing (post-quota) and now when a lot of manufacturing is moving away from China, what can be the catalyst to convert Advantage India to a win-win situation?
Textiles is seen by a large number of people as an unexciting sunset industry! Look at Singapore and the UK which have set up a ministry for creative industries or China for brand, design, etc. Here, a creative country, has squandered away the opportunities! How has the industry, both domestic and exports, used NIFT designers for the last three decades or the textiles and other designers from NID? If they had used them effectively, don't you think we would have had more global designs? Which Indian designs have created a breakthrough in the marketplace?
So, if the textiles industry can use the lens of fashion and lifestyle, everything changes with a new perspective. Even the ministry will have to be recast as Ministry for Fashion and Creative Industries instead of the boring Ministry of Textiles or small and medium industries. These are obsolete nomenclature like the job profiles. Time to reset the agenda, reimagine an innovation agenda for the textile-apparel industry which provides employment to about 4.5-5 crore people along the length and breadth of the country. If the industry does not grab the opportunity of sustainable textiles and fashion industry and pursue vigorously the MMF and technical textile opportunities that beckon, we will have only ourselves to blame. Failing to plan and seize the moment is planning to fail and descent into a downward spiral. (RB)
This article was first published in the June 2021 edition of the print magazine.
Published on: 15/06/2021
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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