News: India’s creative industry found mention in Union Finance Budget speech, as she announced plans to boost the country’s ‘orange economy’.
About Orange Economy
- It is also known as the creative economy.
- It is the knowledge-based economic activities upon which the ‘creative industries’ are based.
- It is a production model where goods and services have intellectual value because they are the product of the ideas and expertise of their creators.
- The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) defines it as an evolving concept which builds on the interplay between human creativity and ideas and intellectual property, knowledge and technology.
- The first mandate on creative economies came from the UNCTAD XI’s outcome document – the Sao Paulo consensus – in 2004.
- Creative Industries under Orange Economy
- Advertising, architecture, arts and crafts, design, fashion, film, video, photography, music, performing arts, publishing, research & development, software, computer games, electronic publishing, and TV/radio
- People conceptualize and arrange this work, the produce and/or publish it and get paid for it.
- This is no different from other production processes, except that the major input stems from original or copyrightable intellectual property (IP).
- According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Orange Economy accounts for 3% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and 30 million jobs worldwide.
India’s Orange Economy
- India’s Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics (AVGC) sector is a growing industry projected to require two million professionals by 2030.
- Economic Survey 2025-26 has stated that revenue from gaming in 2024 was around Rs 232 billion, while animation and VFX amounted to around Rs 103 billion.
- Live entertainment accounted for more than Rs 100 billion in 2024, with strong spillovers to tourism and urban services.
- Budget 2026-27: Union government has proposed to support the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies, Mumbai, in setting up AVGC content creator labs in 15,000 secondary schools all over the country and 500 colleges.
