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Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, today said that closer cooperation between India and Italy in the area of design education would be extremely advantageous in view of the urgent need to close the gap of requirement of designers which is 5000 per annum at different levels in diverse sectors in India including the emergent services sector, against an availability of less than 500 per annum. Speaking at the Indo-Italian Design Education Road Show, organised by the European Institute of Design of Italy and the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, here, Shri Kamal Nath recalled that he had announced the government’s decision to come out with a comprehensive National Design Policy and informed that in order to gather inputs from the industry and designers, interactive sessions had already taken place in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. “The Policy will reflect the designer’s role in economy and commerce and quality of life, design as a profession, design promotion and most importantly an action plan for spread of quality design education. We look to the Italian experience for inspiration in fine-tuning our Policy draft”, he said. It was at his meeting with the Italian Minister Mr. Antonio Marzano last month that Shri Kamal Nath had mooted the idea of India and Italy collaborating actively to promote design.
The Minister underlined the crucial role of design in strengthening both the manufacturing and the services sectors. But Indian companies had not embraced designs sufficiently, Shri Kamal Nath pointed out, despite India’s potential to provide some of the best design solutions and the recognition enjoyed by Indian designers skills the world over. He said there were many areas in which the two countries could work together in mutual collaborations and active partnership such as textiles, leather, IT integrated design, animation and crafts.
He also called upon NID and other Indian design institutes to draw upon the successful experience of Italian small & medium enterprises (SMEs) in fostering design-industry interface with the help of their Italian counterparts so as to improve value chain of industrial clusters in India in the areas of auto components, shoes, toys appliances and knitwear.
SB/MRS
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