The Policy Tweak
A burning question.
Why spend ₹3600 crore on statues that are out in the sea when you can spend ₹20 lakh on a massive super-durable painted mural in the busy city center for achieving the same objectives — tourism, cultural heritage, pride etc?! This country could make 18,000 giant illustrations in that amount!
Of course having adequate, stable and wide pedestrian skywalks must be the utmost priority, but still — I would love to see larger-than-life Sardar Patel or Shivaji Maharaj paintings! Say if a particular brand of paint is used, they can sponsor it. Many citizens, artists or NGO’s will volunteer freely is you just ask them nicely. Basically — we can get this done at no cost whatsoever. Ministries can cut the middleman by straightaway contractually hiring a brilliant artist. No need for a third-party affiliation. I hear the Statue of Unity is being manufactured in China, at a cost of ₹2989 crore.
This is clearly an urban finance issue. If said painting is to be on the MTNL building, why would they not want their plain and boring walls to be totally mesmerizing? One can do something that is a bit contextual on the facade of the Churchgate railway station. Oh wait, both examples are already done! :)
Now what is the point of writing all this? So many street artists are doing this literally everywhere these days. A massive underground movement is already underway. The grassroots is hardly an issue. But despite all the splash that it is currently making in India — things are still a tad slow and require huge efforts. Question to be asked is, should this idea not travel upwards to the pyramid tip and get its due recognition and support? Our local ward officers, municipal commissioners, cabinet or chief ministers should all be actively looking at this. Because an infinite number of bus stops, prisons, flyovers, railway stations, airports, dumping grounds, parks, government buildings and museums are there for the taking. Take a moment to imagine what could happen if this is done on a massive organized scale. How incredibly positive an effect this would have on sanitation, cleanliness, social awareness, beauty.
Now it could happen in a very centralized fashion, but this global tendency is prone to corruption, bias, hidden agendas, and a one-size-fits-all templated approach that I earlier spoke about in this article. Some rich and powerful individual or entity has to prepare some goddamn proposal with a superb concept having a thorough breakdown of all the costs involved, then appeal and lobby endlessly so that they get the attention of multinational companies, urban local bodies or non-governmental organizations. Only to discuss about potential kickbacks, public relations and any political gains.
Or it could be done the other way round, with just a few basic guidelines that I mentioned again in the aforementioned article. A cohesive idea for the whole town or village could emerge organically (biomimicry?) — after the adequate participation from all sorts of groups. This means many college students, jail inmates, elderly people, tribals, transgenders, street vendors, slum residents, teachers, activists and perhaps most importantly — children. I think it is very important in this process to begin the work first, then build and reach some consensus on what sort of identity the whole neighborhood should aspire towards. What colors, issues and art styles are to be showcased, so that the content looks harmonious and unified instead of everything haphazard and disconnected. Smart city experts could come in at this point to help develop a street art masterplan and send it up to the state governments, who would collectively develop the national action plan from it. Okay, hold on..
Why involve the government in something so pure, innocent and untainted? Because I don’t see a ton of businesses doing this as a part of their corporate social responsibility or giving patronage to something like art. I am the last person who would want those who do cheesy social messages, and whose minions paste repetitive flyers everywhere which ultimately look ugly and tattered, to get involved. But the reason is simple.
Street art can provide cheap employment and meaningfulness to the lives of millions since creative painting is at a higher level of self-actualization than masonry or road-building — nor does it have the stigma of cleaning with a broom or being a ragpicker. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs backs me on this. Housing development programmes or mental rehabilitation hospitals can use it nicely if only they sit up and take notice. Same goes with national highway and state tourism authorities, they must make this a prime objective.
In fact, I propose something even more radical. In our financial budgets, there should be some allocation for street art. A small corpus of funds — which will guarantee every adult 100 days of employment per annum. Let us call it the Mahatma Gandhi National Urban Employment Guarantee Act. Yeah, am not kidding. You read that correctly. And true to the ideals of the Swaraj that he envisaged — the ownership of this whole initiative must be thoroughly 100% decentralized. Its accessibility and transparency fully distributed. Power and ideas must trickle up. Such a federated structure would ensure that all tropes and topics from the village to ones of international importance would have a say and get its place on the appropriate infrastructure. Maybe an even better method will be to crowdsource the money and concept doodles via ordinary citizens via social media. Upload good photographs, have them all rate the results, vote for the next piece of content and openly discuss things. Start hyping the extravaganza through timelapse videos, roadside interviews or whatever. Such an approach shall blaze forth a truly unfathomable wildfire, an artistic renaissance.
Gujarat, Kashmir, Tripura — this is the need of the hour. You employ the stone-pelters, for they want their voice to be heard. Employ the masons, you will still find them carving their natural instincts into wet cement. Employ those tribal folks from the hinterlands who are rapidly flocking to the nearest city, with their entire livelihoods threatened by the onslaught of the machine. Don’t make them dig roads, such drudgery is undignifying to the civilized soul.
Khadi is not dead. You just need to abstract it out, and see it beyond the fabric and spinning wheel. It is even more vital in this 21st century, that we don’t let go of the handicrafts that have been our companion since millennia. They in a sense, define our humanity. Frankly, there is still nothing invented to this date that can provide any worker with a decent level of eagerness and employment while sustaining the planet’s ecology and economy — other than the sweet bread won by the love and labor of their own hands.
I would like you to think of handicrafts as:
- Anything which involves physical and creative labor — be it painting, gardening, cooking or nursing.
- Critical tool that generates meaningful and dignified employment in the times of artificial intelligence.
- Foundation bedrock for most forms of education — spiritual, physical, civic, environmental, historical etc.
- The livery of freedom, empathy, humility, sincerity and most of all — lasting peace among brothers and sisters.
- We can add technology to these skills for saving labor time, but doing the vice-versa or using it to replace it is a bad idea.
To conclude this article, I would advise whosoever reading this to do whatever they can for these suggestions to somehow reach the right person. Converse, post, argue, joke, lament, rhyme — or paint! The latter would be ideal. One shall gain a much deeper understanding of all that I just said, and imbibing some of it in your own lives would enable you to be in a far better position to start preaching it to others with conviction. Start your own little hobby club for roadside creativity if you have free time on the weekends with fellow neighbors or school friends. Give it a try, I assure you won’t regret it.
