Arpita Mehta, who won the most glamorous designer of the year in her graduating fashion show from S.N.D.T. University in Mumbai is a very talented young Indian fashion designer. She started her own label in the year 2007 after working under renowned fashion designer Manish Malhotra for two years. Now she has her own studio in Juhu, Mumbai. Arpita recently joined NewsX for an exclusive interview for NewsX India A-List talking not only about how her journey started but her contributions to the pandemic situation as well.

Starting with her journey from school days Arpita told us, “To be honest I was an absolute nerd in school and was a hardworking student. But when the big question came about what I wanted to do next, I was really perplexed and I remember my parent’s reaction to fashion they were very surprised. Ten years ago people didn’t see fashion the way they see it now, so at that point of time it took me a while to convince them but I went ahead and studied fashion at S.N.D.T. University, Mumbai. After completing the three year course from the institute, I worked with the designer for 2 years and after that I launched my own label.”

With perseverance and knack for detailing, she debuted at the Lakmé India Fashion Week Winter/Festive ’13, showcasing her very first collection, ‘Violet Garden’ that featured unique digital prints embellished with intricate mirror work detailing. And there has been no turning back since. Today, Arpita’s illustrious clientele include industrialists, fashion industry stalwarts and celebrities like Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Sonam Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Alia Bhatt, to name a few.

“It was not immediately that I launched my own label, it took me a few years and more years for me to figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it. I had no contacts in the field of fashion to help me. I started from absolutely scratch and finding my own team of workers. The beginning years were complete struggles and mistakes that I made but I feel that something that helped me to decide upon what I wanted to do, what my brand should be about, what is the aesthetic to take forward. The struggle of starting everything from scratch made me have my own individual personality that I builded on myself and on my brand. Ten years later now, yes we are having a good time,” continued Arpita.

When asked about how she feels now after a decade in the industry and how she marked the occasion of launching her very own Flagship store, she responded, “Ten years to be honest was a very big milestone for me because even though it’s been ten years I feel we just haven’t been working for long. We launched our first Flagship store in Mumbai and as it was in 2020, we couldn’t make a big physical launch but we did do a digital launch and we did it well. The store houses all our signature style lehengas to raffle sarees to mirror jackets which everyone loves, basically everything and it’s kind of a very contemporary looking store where one can spot it from outside. Apart from launching this, we even launched a very special coffee table book which is something very dear to me and it had all the inspirations of the brand from where we all were inspired by. We did get a very few known actors from Bollywood who are also friends and well wishers of the brand to do a campaign for us. This was truly very special and once can see it online.”

Talking about her inspirations, Arpita said, “I feel constantly inspired by nature be it the sea, be it the forest or flowers. Nature is constant but even apart from that there’s always this added element that I am inspired by which keeps changing I feel every season, every three months or every six months. Inspiration comes anywhere and anytime and I feel something that always resonates with every collection that I do, be it in the form of print or embroidery. Therefore inspiration is everywhere, you just have to be active.”

When asked about her beliefs that sets her brand apart from the others, she said, “I feel very early on my brand as in me. There is this craft of mirror work which is very true to a place in Gujarat and Rajasthan and has been around for years. What we did is because I have a sentimental connection with that being a Gujarati, and it’s something I wore a lot as a child. It kind of stuck with me and I wanted to do something different and unique that no one has been doing at that time. We took this craft and we made it in a contemporary manner. We organised the craft and presented it in such a way that one could wear obviously not just in that part but people could wear from the smallest to biggest Indian functions. I feel that this identity, the kind of embroidery and the mirror work that we used is something that has stuck with the brand right from the beginning until now and I think that is something that sets us apart from the rest.”

Talking about 2020 and how she coped up personally and professionally as well, the designer said, “I feel all of 2020 and now also in 2021 there has been a mix of emotions. Some days you are feeling anxiety and some days you are feeling overwhelmed on what’s happening around and some days you feel helpless that am sitting at home. To sum it all up it has been a mix of all emotions, while you have been mentally active but physically inactive because we were all at home. But it has also given us a lot of time to reflect in our personal lives and the way we interact with other people where work is concerned or where family is concerned and I think that helped me a lot in this time to just kind of go back into the past and see where and on have we been spending our time doing all this life.”

On a concluding note, the designer shared with us about her initiative she started to help the community at large during the pandemic. “We thought of coming up with an initiative last month called ‘Wishful Wednesday’ where every Wednesday we hold a sale digitally and we reach out to all our clients all over the world. We are offering them our garments and our latest collections at a discounted price and whatever amount comes out of that sale we have been directing it towards charity. We have tied up with different NGOs who have been doing absolutely amazing work and reaching out to people who are suffering with multiple Covid issues.”

“I just felt that was the way for us to give back to our country because you know it feels helpless and therefore we thought of taking this initiative where everyone comes in together and try to do their level best on whatever they can. It’s been amazing, the responses have been overwhelming and you feel amazing about the fact that so many people have come forward,” added Arpita.

Kanika Dewan & Karan Kaushish, Founders, The Good Deed Foundation, recently joined NewsX for an exclusive interview as part of the NewsX India A-List. The Good Deed Relief Foundation has worked tirelessly to assist everyone in Covid-19 during these challenging times. They’ve also launched a ration aid relief project, which has so far aided 738 households. They assist eight non-governmental organisations, seven Bastis, two orphanages, and three old-age homes, as well as anyone who contacts them.

Kanika Dewan began by recounting her experience working in the social welfare field, explaining, “I’m basically a doctor by profession, and I qualified from Manipal University which is Asia’s top five universities. And somewhere in the process of being and remaining a doctor, to giving back to society, we started this wonderful journey. To sum it up, basically an incredible journey of becoming a welfare rights activist and it’s not something that started because of a cause or reason. It just turned into a way of life. As I mentioned, that ‘s not a task to do. It’s just something that I believe in. It’s the warmth and the passion that I have. And I think it’s very important for everybody to understand what it means and what it feels like to be able to give back to society. And I think 10 years has been incredible, because for the last four years, I’m also the director with People for Animals India, which is India’s largest animal welfare organization.”

“During this pandemic, we worked a lot towards animal welfare. I think it’s been a chain reaction always from adopting NGOs every quarter to being the director with people or animals. Somewhere in the process, everything that to one thing led to each other. And yeah, so that’s how my 10 years have been in this sector,” continued Kanika. 

Speaking of the work done by the foundation during the second wave of Covid-19, Kanika mentioned, “The good Deed is a setup that came out of the era of pandemic between me and Karan sharing the same ideology. We did a lot of work for Covid relief last year as well. This year, was very different as the wave has hit home of a lot of people. It’s more oriented towards various initiatives, we have various verticals that we are working on.”

“We have provided food aid relief to Covid families free of charge, started a food aid initiative for providing healthy, nutritious fruits to underprivileged. We also have ventured into doing a drive of gratitude for frontline warriors which is our biggest venture so far. The biggest vertical in this initiative has been the Ration Aid a journey, where we are catering to about 1500 to 2000, kgs of Ration aid that we’re providing to all the partners that we’ve set up with, which is about eight NGOs and seven bastis and Aaganbaadi and orphanage three old age homes. And apart from that anybody who’s seeking then coming to us or Ration Aid need,” elaborated Kanika on the cause and work done by them so far in order to help people. 

Karan Kaushish explained to our viewers the idea behind starting this foundation and said “What got me started was I’ve always believed in giving back, I always had that sense of philanthropy or whatever you want to call it. I found that there is a huge need for people to actually unite, come together and then work together on efforts to actually make a difference. Kanika contacted me for some different fundraisers, which was again, for some sort of impact. At that point of time, I think when we were in London and then after that we shared the same sort of passion and the same thought process of giving back.”

“There are four pillars which now define our foundation, which is integrity, trust, measurability and impact. Kanika and I really want to make an impact and a big impact,” Karan added. 

When asked how can one volunteer or contribute in The Good Deed Relief Foundation, Kanika replied, “Since we have our various initiatives and everything is based on the number of mobilization and task forces that we have. There are various ways that people can actually associate themselves with us. Firstly, they can volunteer with us on ground. Second, they can work with us on the back end, because it’s a lot on some days, about 16-18 hours of back and forth calls in organizing, rationing and everything. Apart from that people can actually support us by giving us ration aid. Alternatively, if they cannot give us Ration, they can actually support our cause. We have a fundraiser going on on Ketto, they can actually support and sponsor a Ration kit. And yeah, so these are various ways in which people can help us with our initiatives.”

Karan concluded the conversation by elaborating “I think in the next five years, we would have actually become a household name and I believe that our foundation would instill so much passion in people that they will be giving back to themselves.”

Agastya Dalmia, Dir, CEO of Keventers and Managing Trustee of Amba Dalmia Foundation, recently joined NewsX for an exclusive interview as part of the NewsX India A-List and talked about their ongoing initiative to help out the Covid patient and hospitals. Keventers, India’s legendary dairy brand, is running a fundraising campaign in partnership with EduTennis, an initiative of the Amba Dalmia Foundation Trust, to raise Rs. 1 crore to support Delhi-based institutions and grassroots organizations in their efforts to provide vital care to Covid-19 patients. Their main focus is on giving life-saving oxygen to individuals in need in the Delhi NCR area. 

Agastya Dalmia began by explaining their ongoing mission to help out the Covid patient and said, “These are difficult times, and as citizens of India, everyone of us has a responsibility to combat this crisis in our respective capacities, We, as a brand, have the resources and connections that we want to leverage and optimize, as well as build up a structure that allows us to do so.” 

He further said, “When there was a sudden surge, in the cases of Covid, that led to a breakdown of the infrastructure. There was a lot of stress on the hospitals. There was a sudden unexpected surge, which led to a paucity of oxygen and some other material like ventilators, bipap machines. We all decided to sort of try and work on this problem and to fix it as much as possible. This meant addressing the issue by giving more COVID care facilities like beds, ventilators, bipap, machines, and by giving more oxygenated beds to hospitals, building oxygen generating facilities.”

“We found out that there was a lot of oxygen available in different areas, and due to lack of cryogenic containers and lack of other things, Oxygen wasn’t being able to get transported from one area to another. So an oxygen generation facility enables the hospital to be self-reliant. I think this was a very important step. We need to continue to do this. Even in the future, when a third wave and the fourth wave comes, we are more prepared than we were this time around.”

Talking about the team behind the initiative, Agastya Dalmia said, “It was run by the Keventers team and they helped me in sourcing and in identifying what the hospital needs, what is required on the ground, with various hospitals and certain other NGOs, like, Harmony house. They really helped me pulling together and giving volunteers all sort of transporting materials from one place to another and just speaking to the hospitals and speaking to the doctors, just to understand what exactly, there is a shortage of. For example, one hospital had concentrators but they didn’t have ventilators. It’s really important to just go on the ground and to address that problem.” 

When asked about the response they are getting for their initiative, Agastya said, “Quite overwhelming and I’m quite humbled by how much money and how much support we were able to generate. We started off with the aim of achieving 1cr, and now we got around 1.4Cr. This enabled us to give at least 5-7 bed facility in Cantonment General Hospital. We’re also almost finished with the plant situated at Moolchand which will enable the hospital to be self reliant and completely reduce its dependency on external sources of oxygen. We’ve been able to do this much because we’ve had 400-500 donors, and we’ve had a lot of volunteers.”

Talking about the next goal they hoped to attain, Agastysa said, “The best possible way is just to continue talking to more hospitals on the ground, understand what they want, and address their needs. This is how we keep building and because the problem is far from over. Although we have seen a dip in cases in Delhi, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t be asserted again, unless, which would mean herd immunity solves the problem. A high percentage of the population that is inoculated would also solve a problem that will take some time to do. We need to be prepared for more future cases. My next course of action is simply just to go to more hospitals and understand what they want.”

Addressing if there was a single event or tipping point behind starting this initiative, Agastya said “I don’t think there was a specific moment like that. There was a surge in cases of covid as well as lockdown. We really could see that there was a crisis. We just tried to do what we can get addressed, and try to cater to the needs of as many hospitals as possible. So, there was no moment as such but it was just a general way that things were going bad and everyone tried to do their best.”

As India is fighting the biggest enemy the world has seen so far, the global community is doing its part vehemently. The Toronto Business Development Centre (TBDC) supported India’s fight with the Covid-19 by providing 5000 ventilators and other medical supplies. In an exclusive conversation with NewsX for its special series NewsX India A-List, Vikram Khurana, Chairman of the Toronto Business Development Centre talked about their beneficial initiative and shared his insights with us.

Talking about the initiative, Khurana said, “These ventilators have been donated kindly by the province of Ontario and the province of Saskatchewan. The ventilators are made to survive on their own. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of global relations among the nations. The virus doesn’t recognize any borders; it is evident that it moves freely, in the air. We cannot build any borders around this pandemic unless we’re able to build walls in the air,” said Vikram Khurana on the importance of co-relation between the nations.

Vikram explained about the organization that facilitated the supply of ventilators in collaboration with Air Canada. TBDC is the oldest business incubator in Canada that support entrepreneurs with all their needs. While talking about giving rise to 9 Unicorns, Vikram said, “Our current focus is on India. We think that there is a great amount of innovation and start-ups coming from India.”

Vikram Khurana also threw light on their Start-up Visa Program, which is extremely helpful for young and new entrepreneurs. He continued, “While there is a great discussion on brain drain, there is not as much discussion on business expansion. Start-ups that grow internationally become multi-national. To facilitate this, Canada started the Start-up Visa in 2013. It essentially allows entrepreneurs to move with their families, be closer to their markets, and access technology and sources easily. Currently, about 2500 entrepreneurs from all over the world migrate to Canada under this program.”

“Innovation does not go to sleep, and innovation is spurred when there is a challenge,” said Khurana when asked about some innovations he saw during the pandemic by Indians. Khurana pointed out that one of the most considerable collateral damage of Covid-19 has been seniors citizens. He applauded several start-ups helping to solve the problem faced by senior citizens and start-ups to find vaccine sites by diverting and balancing traffic among those vaccine sites. He mentions the fact that most of the time, entrepreneurs executed these initiatives without concern of making money which is a very noble way of entrepreneurs giving back to society.

He talks about the collaboration with Air Canada, which made this initiative a success. “Many people of the crew were Indians living in Canada for a while and have roots in India like Captain Rash Pal who piloted the aircraft that carried those ventilators along with many other supplies with great pride. Every member of the team took great pride and went above and beyond to make this happen,” he said.

Talking about the world being caught flat-footed by the virus, Vikram said, “There are a lot of lessons learned on the fly”. He concluded the conversation by talking about having a front window view of great ideas coming from all around and the dominance of AI, Data Modelling, and Machine Learning in the area of innovation.

Kunal Rawal, the youngest designer to exhibit his collection at the Lakme Fashion Week, has worked for several prominent Bollywood celebrities like Anil Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Siddharth Malhotra, and Varun Dhawan among others, who have come ahead to close the show for him.

Recapping his journey and how Kunal decided to become a designer, he said, “I knew pretty early on as my family works in textiles and my father has an export firm. He used to go to this factory and used to take me and my sister as well to late-night drives at the factory. We both used to climb up and shut our eyes and play this game and guess the fabric. Pretty early on, I knew textiles and fashion is what I want to do, what my calling is, and where my interest lies.”

Kunal started his label ‘Kunal Rawal Dstress’ in 2006. Having graduated from the London School of Fashion, his style of design can be best described as a melange of traditional Indian clothing and contemporary designs with an edgy twist. The designer added, “The more I got into it the more I realised that there were so many things going wrong as a lot of men didn’t choose what they wear for an occasion. They didn’t dress according to how they felt and had a severe lack of optionality.”

Talking about the USP of his label, Kunal said, “The idea was to put in elements and details to pique men’s interest rather than having them just wear something that’s given to them. And the more you pique interest, the more the conversation starts, and that’s what I’ve been consciously trying to put in elements and a design aesthetic that is slightly more relatable and caters to the user. Today, I am all for traditional clothing, I love it, but it needs to be modernised and contemporise to suit the headspace of the millennials and the lifestyle that we all live globally.”

When asked what inspired him to create his first designer collection back then to now, he replied, “Inspiration keeps changing, it keeps evolving. But if I have to pick one or two inspirations I would say people inspire me. I believe that the youth in India, the younger generation is far more progressive than the youth of even the strongest first world countries and that is very inspiring.”

Sharing some lessons learnt and challenges faced during the lockdown, Kunal said, “This last year and a half has been quite a challenge for all of us and especially for as much for our industry compared to any other. Well, I am a creative person first, and then a business owner. So, both these have called on different emotions throughout this time. I think we’ve all learnt as much as we’ve learnt our whole life in the last year and a half. We’ve been through a gamut of emotions living life. We felt anger, pain, happiness, and helplessness, have gone through the entire cycle of emotional circumstances, and every month, every day has been very different.”

“Being a creative person, I have enjoyed bits and pieces of last year as it gave me a good amount of time to go back to how I used to create when I was much younger, finding and chasing a thought and doing R&D and all of that was exciting. Creatives have a way of constructively using any emotion. I managed to put out the two big collections last season, we were a part of the India Couture Week and Lakme Fashion Week so I’m glad I got some creative energy out. But, as a business owner, things kept changing and it’s been quite challenging. My biggest learning through last year is the importance of plan A, plan B, and plan C,” he added.

India and the world are living through a once in a century global pandemic, a most tragic and devastating event in the history of humankind, It was only in February this year that experts across the world had commended India on dealing wisely with the first wave of the pandemic, belying ominous predictions. Contrary to the raft of canards being circulated, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not sit back in complacency after. In March 2021, he explicitly requested Chief Ministers of India’s 29 states and seven Union territories to remain vigilant about a potential second wave.

As Dr Fauci noted, no government could have anticipated the tsunami-like second wave of the pandemic in India, with the highest ever severity and transmissibility. No country in the world has ever had to deal with anything analogous, in scale, scope and complexity and impact, with several battle zones rolled into one.

That, unlike China, India is a democracy, and that there are rural-urban, centre-state and other binaries, and the opposition instead of coming together, is indulging in political oneupmanship, is overlooked. Dr Fauci has rightly made pleas to Indians to remain united and eschew divisiveness at this most threatening juncture in India’s evolution.

In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic first broke out, India sent out multiple shipments of medicines to the US and later in an act of remarkable generosity, it sent vaccines to over 90 countries. Now, a monstrous second wave is engulfing India and its population, four times the size of the USA. It is facing an “unrestricted biowarfare” as some have pointed out, jeopardising the health, economic and social security of its people. The world must look at India with empathy, not the least as it can happen to and is happening to even the most well-resourced of countries.

The UK, USA, Japan, and other countries, are repaying India for its initial acts of generosity. The pandemic has united the world and its leaders in some measure at least. Given that it is global in scope, it necessitates a global response and cooperation. Nothing less will suffice. 

The United States, the world’s wealthiest economy, was almost paralysed by the coronavirus. Vivid images of dying patients in its major cities, especially New York were flashed but were never grisly, demeaning and crass, and were inevitably accompanied by ineluctable respect for the deceased and their grieving families. Then why is this rush to judge and be vulture-like when it comes to India? 

India survived the first wave of the pandemic with relatively fewer cases and deaths. The central government ordered a lockdown in April 2020 and adopted a Covid-19 war strategy which seems to have worked. The second wave of the pandemic is brutal — the virus more belligerent in its new, mutated avatar; symptoms vary, it is less amenable to usual treatments the onset of death is devastatingly rapid, and post-Covid-19 complications many. 

Throughout the second wave of the pandemic, a clutch of India’s journalists, self-appointed serial commentators, actors and other so-called experts berated the government, which is damned if it does, and damned if does not. They tweeted with malice and callousness, inevitably besmirching India’s government, its leadership, and India. They ruthlessly pounced, most of all, on the one man who had statesmanlike steered India through its difficult first wave — Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The mean-spirited drivel that is being used each day to personally attack PM Narendra Modi is bottom-of-the-barrel. On Twitter and other social media, the slugfests multiply.

The Western media is now quite blatant apropos of its civilising project for India. It is open season for invective, and newly-minted Orientalists, for racist rhetoric, and expletives. It passes judgement on governance in India, which is most complex, and challenging, at the best of times and routinely misleads the world about the on-ground realities in India, It receives overzealous help from a raft of our colonised journalists, and certain echelons of the Indian diaspora. They are, together, a veritable parco dei mostri. 

Then there is the breed of the pyromaniac journalists, who revel in visiting cremation grounds, parking themselves there, amplifying the theatrics, and ‘heroically’ broadcasting, contra jour, from within the midst of funeral pyres. They violate people’s right to privacy in their time of tragic bereavement. That Hindus cremate, rather than bury their dead, makes for searing and grotesque images, does it not? How morally repugnant and ignoble is that? If you can’t help amid a pandemic, at least don’t harm, desecrate, malign, I say. 

You wonder why the international media is fascinated by this particular brand of voyeuristic atrocity and opinion fetishism. Why view India, its government, and its Prime Minister, through the bigoted lens of a phenomenologically reduced status, which it suo moto ascribes to them? 

India’s vaccine leadership was globally recognised in January-February 2021. India has already vaccinated 200 million of its citizens: no mean feat, given the magnitude of the logistics it has to negotiate with lesser resources. It is impossible for India or any country in the world to produce and secure enough vaccine to cover its entire population of 1.4 billion immediately and at one go. India has rolled out a vaccination plan that will permit it to cover most age cohorts by September and have 2.4 billion doses of vaccine by the end of 2021. India has also launched new cure/treatments for Covid-19. 

The government has worked assiduously, and sans cessation, to set up oxygen-manufacturing plants bought oxygen concentrators and other essential equipment, enlisted the support of the Indian Armed forces, set up field hospitals, converted hundreds of railway carriages, as well as indoor stadiums, into hospitals for coronavirus patients; and spared no effort in battling a behemoth with public-private partnership. 

Dr Devi Shetty, a world-renowned cardiac surgeon, and head of the Supreme Court of India’s task force on the pandemic affirms: “Our government has moved heaven and earth. If the whole country is falling sick, no infrastructure in the whole world can manage it.” Proving the doomsayers wrong, there is a significant decline in infections, positivity and death rates and recoveries exceed new cases. 

Coopted Indian journalists resuscitate and perpetuate the colonial myth that India is brutish, out of control, wayward, and still inhabits the middle ages. The perpetrators of these falsehoods are colonised Indians too, and activists, who crave assimilation, and are woefully in thrall to their past masters and new ones like China. Instead of forging the solidarity of democracies with India, they seek to undermine it. 

If you have nothing constructive to say, and no help to offer, eschew the divisiveness. Negativity at this historical juncture is unconscionable. It is not civilised to be vicious, xenophobic, or mendaciously tarring when millions of Indians confront a mortal threat. If you can help — and God knows our journalists and activists are well connected —please do that. But if you cannot, then: Stop harming a vulnerable India. In a pandemic, this is an ethical imperative.

The compassionate and caring India I love is one that no odious journalists, activists, or viruses can ever destroy. Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden recently articulated his beautiful, if anguished, response: “As it battles the alarming spread of the virus, the world media has lost no time in lambasting a country with a population of a whopping 1.4 billion, where the sheer numbers make the implementation and success of any public scheme a challenge. I have always had the highest respect for the leaders and public officials who are entrusted with the running of this vast and diverse country.”

The author is a Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and advises world leaders on public policy, communication, and international affairs. The views expressed are personal.