Why is tacit knowledge important for civilizational economies like India?

Tacit knowledge sustains India's informal economy, preserving ancient wisdom vital for cultural identity and economic resilience.

- VENUS UPADHAYAYA

The recent Prada's Spring/Summer 2026 show at Milan featured footwear strikingly similar to India's Kolhapuri sandals, triggering an online backlash about designers not giving due credits to the design's origin. The social media backlash was only what it was meant to be—an emotional outpouring—we can't expect it to help us understand why India keeps inspiring the best creative and the most organized industry abroad but struggles to uplift its context back home.

A non-confrontational and solution-oriented assessment of this problem could begin by correcting a misplaced understanding about India's informal economy that's predominantly unorganized—this unorganized economy can also be rightly understood as our civilization's economy, surviving and resilient because of its tacit knowledge systems.

Knowledge is explicit or it's tacit (अनकही या नहिं). Between the explicit and the tacit, all spheres of our knowledge systems can be divided, permeating our history, economy, politics, and possibly everything. This is undeniable in nature; things in such societies can be very old, visible, and yet inexpressible or tacit.

Thus, if an European or American fashion designer or even an Indian from one of the National Institutes of Design (these societies and institutions represent explicit knowledge-based ecosystems), loitering through ethnic bazaars of Indian tourist towns, picks up an idea amply existent in the tacit knowledge around, he can simply credit it to his inspiration. However, his output, a product or a design, will become part of his organized market with no credit or returns to the source of origin.