New Pathways for India’s Creative Economy

Context

• India’s legacy of innovation stretches deep into its history, spanning disciplines as diverse as metallurgy, medicine, astronomy, and the arts.
• Yet, as the country accelerates towards its vision of becoming a $5 trillion economy, a crucial shift is required, a renewed commitment to creativity and innovation, particularly at the grassroots level.
• The evolving dynamics of the global creative economy offer a compelling case for why India must strategically harness and nurture its rich creative potential. 

The Global Creative Economy: A Rising Force

• Creativity has emerged as a cornerstone of economic growth worldwide.
• According to the Creative Economy Outlook 2024 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the global trade in creative services reached a staggering $1.4 trillion in 2022 — a 29% increase since 2017.
• Exports of creative goods also rose by 19%, totalling $713 billion. Collectively, the creative economy now generates over $2 trillion in annual revenues and supports nearly 50 million jobs globally.
• The sector’s most prominent contributors include software services (41.3%), research and development (30.7%), and advertising, market research, and architecture (15.5%).
• These data underscore the transformative impact of creativity-led sectors and the opportunities they offer to emerging economies like India.

India’s Creative Economy: Promise and Paradox

• India has already demonstrated its capacity to contribute meaningfully to the global creative economy.
• In 2019, the country’s creative goods and services exports totalled around $121 billion, with creative services comprising the bulk at nearly $100 billion.
• Within goods, the design sector accounted for 87.5% of exports, while traditional arts and crafts contributed approximately 9%.
• As of 2024, India’s creative industry is valued at $30 billion and employs about 8% of the workforce. Creative exports grew by 20% in the previous year, generating more than $11 billion.
• Despite these impressive figures, the paradox lies in the underutilization of grassroots creativity.
• While urban centres attract substantial investment in traditional creative sectors, there remains a disconnect between rural creativity and its translation into scalable innovation.

Understanding Creativity and Innovation

• Creativity is a precursor to innovation, the spark that ignites novel ideas.
• Research categorises creativity into four types: deliberate-emotional, deliberate-cognitive, spontaneous-emotional, and spontaneous-cognitive.
• Furthermore, creativity may be endogenous (internally motivated) or exogenous (externally triggered), and can arise episodically during crises or climate events.
• Local innovations in India often stem from the deliberate and spontaneous cognitive domains.
• However, the conversion of creative concepts into impactful innovations is stymied by a lack of institutional support and investment.
• While creativity can thrive independently, innovation demands a structured ecosystem for development, scaling, and market integration.

The Way Forward

• Bridging the Creativity-Innovation Gap
  • India’s creative wealth is evident, but its potential is often left unrealised due to the absence of a robust mechanism to convert ideas into tangible innovations.
  • Grassroots organisations like the Grassroot Innovations Augmentation Network (GIAN) have made laudable efforts to spotlight local ingenuity, from pedal-powered washing machines to the MittiCool clay refrigerator.
  • Yet, many such initiatives remain isolated successes without broader institutional or commercial backing.
  • A case study from Indonesia offers an illustrative model.
  • The Antrodam Project, developed by students at Binus School, leveraged biomimicry inspired by Indian Harvester ants and other natural elements to design a flood protection system.
  • This solution, deeply rooted in creative thinking, has the potential for global application, if supported by investments for scale.
• Policy Interventions
  • Enhanced Investment: Direct more capital towards grassroots and informal innovations, including those tackling climate adaptation and sustainable development.
  • IPR Reform: Strengthen intellectual property rights (IPR) frameworks to protect indigenous and community-led innovations.
  • District-Level Initiatives: Expand the successful "One District One Product" initiative to include a parallel "One District One Innovation" program.
  • Public-Private Collaboration: Facilitate partnerships between local innovators, private investors, research institutions, and government bodies to foster innovation pipelines.
• Community-Driven Creativity
  • Despite the climate tech sector in India receiving nearly $2.85 billion in 2023, grassroots innovation receives a disproportionately small share.
  • Redirecting even a fraction of these funds toward community-driven creativity could yield transformative socio-economic and environmental outcomes.

Conclusion

• India’s journey from a historically rich creative civilization to a globally recognised innovation powerhouse hinges on its ability to support creativity at all levels.
• As the global creative economy continues to expand, India must create an enabling environment that bridges the gap between individual creativity and institutional innovation.
• With the right policies, investments, and cultural appreciation, India can ensure that its creative economy not only grows but thrives, from the grassroots to the global stage.

Q1. What is the current value of India’s creative industry?
Ans.  India’s creative industry is currently valued at $30 billion as of 2024.

Q2. What is the main challenge in India’s creative economy?
Ans.  The main challenge is the lack of support to transform grassroots creativity into scalable innovations.

Q3. Which sectors dominate the global creative economy?
Ans. The global creative economy is dominated by software services, research and development, and advertising, market research, and architecture.

Q4. What is the role of grassroots creativity in innovation?
Ans. Grassroots creativity generates original and practical ideas, but these often need institutional support and investment to develop into large-scale innovations.

Q5.  What policy suggestions are made to boost local innovation?
Ans. A key suggestion is to implement a “One District One Innovation” policy, modeled after the “One District One Product” initiative. 

Source:The Hindu