Artists decry inadequate infrastructure for arts in India

While India-born artists like Anish Kapoor and Zubin Mehta have found fame on the world stage, the country itself lags in infrastructure and state funding for arts impeding its march to become a 'soft power', according to prominent personalities from the field.
Music maestro conductor Zubin Mehta, who fulfilled his lifelong dream of playing in Kashmir in September this year, said it was "a disgrace" that there was no concert hall in Delhi or Kolkata while the same was not the case in countries like China, Japan or Korea.
Mehta was participating in a discussion at the NDTV Solutions Summit, which talked about ways to "reestablish the primacy of art, music and culture in the country".

Cultural theorist Homi Bhabha said it was not possible for India to become a soft global power if it neglects infrastructute for the arts.
"If you want be a soft power, it is not a cuddly thing. You have got to have the infrastructure," said Bhabha.
He emphasised on the need to invest in a public-private model to build infrastructure for the arts like museums and galleries in India.

Mumbai-born British artist Anish Kapoor, whose works are exhibited in galleries across the world, agreed with Mehta. "I think institutionally, we are very poor."
Kapoor also said it is a stigma to recognise artists by their nationality in the contemporary times.

"In today's art world I think being labelled on the basis of nationality is a stigma," said Kapoor, who lives in the UK and showcased in 2010 a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Arts in Delhi and Mumbai.
"Artists are born they are not made. It is not Indianness that defines us as artists," said Kapoor. He said artists from India had come out of the phase they were in after Independence where they were concerned about "making something Indian".