Creating opportunities through Designs

[Applause]

i am rahul mishra i am a fashion

designer

my studio is based out of noida in up

and i worked from different regions all

across india

i showcased my work at paris fashion

week

and i am one of the newest entrant

at oddcouture in paris

my journey has been really amazing

i have seen almost every kind of life

which a person can live starting from a

very very humble beginning

in a very small village called malasi in

my early childhood was really humble for

first 10 years of life i studied

in a school that had thatch roof

and we used to sit on jude gunny bags

on the ground and study then

finally my father being a doctor always

wanted that i should become

an engineer or a doctor

but somehow since beginning i was

fascinated with art

craft and

i kind of enjoyed creating things

that’s how i had a very big struggle in

my family like a normal north indian

you know middle class family their

father would say

if i get into art i will not have

stability in my life and probably career

was really important at a point in time

so when i said i want to be a designer

there was no choice left for me and then

after that i got a chance to run away

from my house

i reached my sister’s place she was

living in delhi

i went over there then i got to know

about an id and the bad

i applied for an id i got into an id

and i wanted to be a filmmaker when i

went to an id

but somehow my qualification was not

good enough

to join the course in film making

so i had to settle with apparel design

and merchandising one of the weakest

courses

at that point of time which was offered

from nid and the watts

party campus

but somehow that

entire thing about apparel design gave

me lot more freedom to learn about

various things related to design

and one of the biggest impact

what happened to my life was meeting

late professor mp ranjan

ranjan was the best design thinker i

could ever think about

he showed me the way he showed me the

power of design

how design can solve so many problems

across the globe

he somehow introduced me to mahatma

gandhi

now the mahatma gandhi which i know

and that was the point when i understood

the value of

gandhiji’s talisman which says any step

you think about taking any direction

think about the weakest person you can

help to gain

swaraj so idea of satyagraha

swaraj swadeshi all these things i

learned

when rajan took me to cochran vashram

and he showed

what amazing design thinking gandhiji

had

and how every step every garment or

anything which i create in life

should have inclusivity about people who

can work on that

india is a country which has got

more than 45 million people related to

craft

and another 60 million people related to

allied fields

so it’s a huge number

after agriculture the craft

is one of the largest employer

but now when you see craft and when i

started traveling all across india

looking at the craft i went to kerala

met master gopinathan over there

master gobinathan started a great

initiative and that was my

classroom project from an ied i took a

train from yamdava to nagarko

reached a district called balrampuram

and very small village over there

where i met master gobind he was single

handedly

helping to employ more than 700 women

beavers

and these viewers had very small dreams

but somehow bigger than all of our

dreams put together

they were dreaming about earning enough

to send their kids

to school they were dreaming about

earning enough to have

you know food on their plate

that has somehow changed me as a person

and that taught me

a design thinking which ranjan showed me

so as a person i was born although in a

small village called

alhassan up but as a designer

i was born in kerala the small village

where i stayed for more than a month

when i came back from there i started

feeling

that design is a superpower which can

change the world

which can create so many solutions

around us

so that is where this entire thinking

started

so although we had involved ourselves in

various projects across different

villages of india starting from kerala

but it was an afternoon of

2012 when i went to

a workshop in dharavi

and one workshop in jija mata a slum

area

where i came across group of artisans

doing the finest work i’ve ever seen in

my life

they were doing it for a super luxury

brand

which has turnover in multi-billion

dollars

all these people they had migrated out

of their villages

working from the tiny space

they would 20 of them would work in that

space

then in the evening time they will erect

those carts

next to the wall and would sleep over

there

just for the simple thing like nature’s

call they would walk

couple of kilometers

there was no drinking water available

who will take

shower every day and we are talking

about hot and humid conditions of mumbai

although these guys were earning they

could earn enough

to support their families and they were

spending really less amount of money on

themselves

most of them were having

one cook meal in the evening and that

meal

would continue with serve as a breakfast

next day

away from family working really hard

because the jobs could not reach to

their villages

so that’s why they have to leave their

home migrate

almost 2 000 plus kilometers in search

of work

that is why i found my calling i started

asking them if they would like to

reverse migrate

from that place i would like to use

embroidery as a tool in my work

and that is where this process of

talking to these people started

there’s one amazing craftsman

abdulvariwala

who was who came to bombay from from a

small village called bondhur in west

bengal he migrated over there

in 1984 in the same area from the same

region more than 200 people

reached to the same pocket of slum

in mumbai living together supporting the

families

abzus aliwala was living from 1984 in a

very very small

you know room or chal

after earning for 10 years he could

build a beautiful house

in his village one pool one of the most

speculating

villagers is to get the dignity the

first thing they want to do is

first thing on the bucket list is to

build a house for themselves

and he did build a house in 1994

and it took me almost 20 years

to have opportunity to able to live in

that house

when we asked him to reverse migrate

back

to his village then after that

this caravan started of people coming

back to the village

in bond poor now we have got around 200

people

working from bond and this place

is completely socially audited in terms

of happiness quotient in terms of

social security

and all these people they work from

there they earn the same amount even

amount than what we’re doing they were

earning in mumbai and they get home

cooked food

they live with their children they take

care of the old parents

and they are enjoying fruits that

they’re earning

in the houses they built for themselves

with their heart and money

and because of happiness they create

some of the most

remarkable pieces for us under our

guidance

this is power of indian village

you know this pandemic has taught me how

fruitful how good

this reverse migration as an exercise is

which allows us to continue

our work like after pandemic

paris ocular body asked us to do a

digital show

and i think amongst all the designers i

was the most

ready because still people were working

from home

from the safety of their home they could

still embroider for us

i think as a designer it becomes a

greater responsibility

for me or for us as a team

to create designs which are more

inclusive

designs which create opportunity for

people to able to participate

and i’m i’m extremely proud to share

that we are able to create some of the

most unique

pieces of clothing ever seen in the

world

and this is all happening in

very very small tiny villages of india

and all this produced by villagers who

probably would have never gone to

their to any school they have never got

any formal education

but they are just god gifted and they

are the most skilled people

i have ever come across i will again go

back to gandhiji’s idea which is written

in in a beautiful book called harijan

he said that

the real independent india will emerge

out of villages

cities are are snatching away not just

resources

which are supposed to belong to villages

also because

70 percent of india still live in

villages

and 30 in india lives in cities whereas

resources of india spend on 30

population

which lives in city and they also take

away talent

from the village

i think best india

economically as well as

socially can emerge out if we can create

through our entrepreneurship through our

abilities

we can create jobs back in the villages

so that people do not have to migrate

out and they do not have to live into

the conditions

where humans should not live or nobody

should live

i would like to end my talk with this

thing

that let’s all try to include villages

try to decentralize the processes

which are involved in producing anything

and include

people who need us the most

thank you