Sheila Dikshit made it possible

Sati Grewal 

When I recently started from Berkeley, California, for my annual India trip, I didn’t know that I would be bidding farewell to a dear friend, former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit, on her journey to heaven. Sadly, I watched television channels and read newspapers admiring her laudable achievements. But the media missed the exciting story of her life before she joined politics.

It wasn’t their fault. TV anchors and reporters covering the news must have been too young, or maybe not have even been born, when Sheila started serving the nation. 

In the mid-seventies, the apparel export business was an informal cottage industry. A few like-minded friends itching to promote the nascent industry, knowing its potential, formed the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC). Those were the days of the licence raj. We needed an intelligent and influential young personality to create an understanding between the bureaucracy and us.

We found that person in Sheila Dikshit, who hailed from a Sikh family of Kapurthala. A product of Miranda House, Delhi University, in history, and smart and bubbly, Sheila clicked with me as I also hailed from Punjab. She had married into a powerful Congress family. Her father-in-law, Uma Shankar Dikshit, was a top party gun. Her husband, Vinod, was an IAS officer (UP cadre). We engaged her services for AEPC.

Her push and technique matched our zeal to upgrade the industry to international standards. She recognised that centuries-old fine craftsmanship was the key to success. 

Well-read, Sheila used to discuss with me economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s papers on under-devolved economies. She was an advocate of his views that less developed nations, like India, would grow faster as they had a rich source of labour.  

With the guidance of this visionary go-getter woman, AEPC soon became a semi-government body. The industry and AEPC flourished. In five years, it became the top foreign exchange earner as lakhs of labourers got jobs. There wasn’t a single metropolitan city in the world that did not display Indian labels in its fashion stores. 

We asked her to explore the opening of a fashion institute, as we were dependent on foreign experts for designs. She arranged a meeting with Pupul Jayakar, known for the revival of handlooms, at the residence of the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. With Sheila’s efforts, the first prestigious National Institute of Fashion Technology NIFT) opened in Delhi in 1986. Sheila and I were its founding directors. I’ll be least hesitant to call her the mother of the apparel export industry. 

Thank God, I was in Delhi to salute my lifelong friend on her journey into infinity. May God rest the soul of this ‘Punjab ki beti’ in peace.