India Needs a Ministry of Creative Industries
India today stands at a crossroads of creativity and commerce. In less than half a decade, the country has witnessed an explosion in the field of design education, with over 300 universities and 3,000 colleges now offering programs in design, arts, and architecture. At the same time, corporate India has begun to embrace creativity as a driver of innovation and competitiveness. From the meteoric rise of animation and gaming to the global footprint of Indian fashion and the timeless appeal of Bollywood, the creative economy is no longer a peripheral domain; it is fast becoming a central pillar of national growth. And yet, our policies, institutions, and governance frameworks continue to treat these sectors in silos. If India is to claim leadership in the global creative economy, it urgently needs a Ministry of Creative Industries – a dedicated body that can unify education, industry, heritage, and technology under one coherent vision.
The creative industries span an area far broader than design schools or IT-driven AR/VR startups. They span India’s crafts and handlooms, performing arts, cinema, publishing, architecture, advertising, animation, heritage tourism, and fashion ecosystems to name a few. Each of these sectors has enormous potential but is currently constrained by fragmented governance. For instance, craft-sector, employing nearly seven million artisans and sustaining over 200 million livelihoods indirectly, continue to languish for want of design-led product innovation, quality control, and modern marketing. Countries like Morocco (through Maison de l’Artisan) and Japan (through its “Living National Treasures” program) have shown how government-backed branding and patronage can turn traditional crafts into powerful economic engines. India, with its diversity of crafts, should be leading the world in this space.
Cinema and performing arts, on the other hand, are thriving but underleveraged. Bollywood alone contributes billions of dollars annually, not to mention its global soft power. Regional cinema has seen remarkable growth through OTT platforms, making Indian stories accessible worldwide. Music, theatre, and dance too are increasingly finding international audiences, yet policy frameworks remain piecemeal. South Korea’s Hallyu model where K-pop, K-drama, and Korean cinema were systematically supported as a national export strategy demonstrates what a coordinated approach can achieve. If India were to integrate Bollywood, regional cinema, and performing arts into a single creative industries policy, it could unlock a new wave of cultural exports, tourism, and global influence.
More recently our design, animation, gaming, and AR/VR ecosystem has grown into one of India’s most exciting frontiers. Global estimates suggest that the AR/VR market will touch $165 billion by 2030, while animation alone is expected to surpass $500 billion by 2025. India has already built strong capacity in these areas. World University of Design, where I serve as Vice Chancellor, was the first university of its kind in India, and in just a few years, we have seen a design revolution unfold across the higher education landscape. Yet, despite this expansion, there is no single nodal body to connect design education with industry, or to link animation and gaming startups with global investors and markets. This gap is preventing India from consolidating its leadership.
Publishing, advertising, and media form another critical but often overlooked dimension. India has the largest newspaper circulation in the world and one of the fastest-growing digital publishing markets. Advertising is increasingly design-led, blending storytelling, branding, and technology. These industries are integral to the creative economy, but they sit across different ministries, making integrated policy impossible. A Ministry of Creative Industries could connect publishing with design schools, digital media with animation talent, and advertising with craft-based products, enabling the kind of ecosystem thinking that the UK’s Creative Industries Task Force pioneered in the late 1990s.
The heritage and tourism sector also deserves to be pulled into this narrative. India’s monuments, festivals, museums, and living traditions form one of the richest cultural reservoirs in the world. But without design-led curation, digital interpretation, and global-standard visitor experiences, much of this potential goes untapped. The UK’s Creative Cities network or UNESCO’s Creative Cities initiative demonstrate how heritage and contemporary creative practice can be woven together for sustainable urban innovation. Imagine Indian craft clusters linked with heritage tourism circuits, or AR/VR-enabled experiences at monuments! Such synergies can easily be created by a Creative Industries Ministry.
What binds these sectors together is not just culture, but connectivity and interdependence. Crafts feed into fashion and interior design. Cinema fuels tourism and music exports. Design education supports not just product innovation but also startups in crafts, publishing, and heritage curation. Technology enables artisans to sell directly to global consumers and allows heritage monuments to be experienced virtually worldwide. These cross-linkages are what make creative industries globally competitive. In India however, they are fractured across ministries of textiles, culture, information & broadcasting, tourism, skill development, and commerce.
It is not that the Ministry of Creative Industries would replace these ministries but integrate their creative mandates under one coordinated platform. Its agenda could include building creative clusters and hubs; offering fiscal incentives for creative startups; creating global branding campaigns for Indian crafts and cinema; embedding design education into crafts and tourism; supporting international co-productions in film and music; developing creative infrastructure such as museums, studios, and incubators; and ensuring intellectual property protection that truly supports creators. Crucially, it should be ablento link India’s creative economy to global networks, from co-production treaties to international design fairs, from UNESCO’s heritage programs to digital IP exchanges.
If India were to take this step, the results would be transformative. We could see not only millions of new jobs in creative industries but also a dramatic increase in exports, cultural diplomacy, and global recognition. Just as South Korea became synonymous with Hallyu, or the UK built its global image around design, music, and fashion, India could emerge as a creative superpower.
As someone who has witnessed firsthand the design revolution in India’s universities, I am convinced that the next leap will not come from isolated programs, but from a Ministry of Creative Industries that brings coherence, scale, and ambition to India’s creative future.
Written by – Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Vice Chancellor, World University of Design.
