By August 15, in the 75th year of Independence, Bipin Kumar and his team want to develop the best-quality Indian flag.
For the last three months, the IIT professor from the textile and fibre engineering department has been mentoring a startup, SWATRIC, of IIT-Delhi, to design several advanced fabric structures for monumental national flags, or the ones which are at least 48ft to 72ft in dimension, weighing up to 55kg. Normally, these giant flags are seen hoisted in important locations where they are meant to be displayed all through the year. They cost anywhere between Rs 50,000 to 80,000. But, they hardly survive wear and tear beyond a month.
"The more these flags tear, the more business the vendors get to make. It is not economical to keep changing flags every few months. We aim to reduce the rate of changing flags from 7 times to 3 times in a year. And produce the best fabric for a market price which does not go beyond Rs50,000," Kumar tells THE WEEK, a day before the Republic Day parade kicks off in Delhi
At the lab scale, the researchers claim to have successfully improved the strength of the fabric by 100 per cent. Last year, SWATRIC and the Flag Foundation of India (FFI) joined hands to filter the best possible fabric design and structure for monumental national flags to suit India’s diverse climatic and geographical conditions. Using the advanced fabric being developed by the IIT Delhi startup, the FFI has already installed two different prototypes of the monumental flag on the field, one in Delhi and the other one in Ladakh. “The aim is to make the monumental flag material durable for extreme weather conditions without being too heavy. Next month, we are also sending 10 different prototypes to different locations in the country for installation. So far, our research is at the prototyping stage, the exact durability of the flag will be known in the next few months,” says Kumar.
The Flag Foundation of India is a non-profit body whose primary vision is to popularise the display of tricolour by more Indians. FFI is co-founded by industrialist Naveen Jindal who, in 2002, won a seven-year-long legal battle to amend the Flag Code of India, established in 1950, which previously did not allow private individuals to hoist the national flag. In a Supreme Court verdict on January 23, 2004, India's apex court said that flying the national flag is a Fundamental Right of an Indian citizen within Article 19(1) (a) of the Constitution of India that grants freedom of speech and expression. FFI has installed more than 80 monumental national flags all across India.
The several other fabric prototypes being developed at IIT are commissioned by the Army and some plants and factories under the Jindal group. "It is not easy to produce national flags. They take at least 15 days to be made. The ones made by Khadi Gram Udyog (the Karnataka Khadi Gramodyoga Samyukta Sangha is the only unit licensed to manufacture Indian flags) are biodegradable. The material quickly deteriorates in harsh conditions," says Kumar, adding that an all-weather national flag should survive the wind and the rains.
