India’s National Institute of Fashion Technology Bill 2006 has been enacted. The act aims at nurturing and promoting excellence in fashion technology. Its object is to grant statutory status to the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), which was set up by the Centre under the Ministry of Textiles in 1986.

NIFT is fully funded and supported by the government as a national-level institute for design, management and technology to train professionals to face the challenges of the global market in promoting India’s exports in textiles, garments, lifestyle products and other fashion goods.

The Institute is already  running full-time diploma programmes in fashion design, garment manufacturing technology, apparel marketing and merchandising, accessory design, leather garment design and technology, knitwear design and technology, textile design and development and fashion communication through seven centres located in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar and Bangalore.

In 2003, its academic programmes were restructured to bring them in line with technical education programmes offered by other professional institutions with international benchmarking.