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| Amid tensions; India, Pakistan plan to share 'Basmati' tag stalled | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
NEW DELHI, Aug 4: Tensions between India and Pakistan have thwarted their plans to jointly own the term "basmati" for the aromatic rice, much as producers in Champagne, France, have the exclusive right to name their product.
South Asian neighbors are big producers of iconic long-grained rice, which is in rising demand from middle-class Indians as well as buyers in the Middle East and among Indians, and their restaurants, world-wide. India and Pakistan had planned to file joint application for what's called "geographic indication" to lay claim to the name "basmati."
A Kolkata vendor sells basmati, which India and Pakistan claim as their own. But the basmati bandwagon has been derailed in the wake of the November's terrorist attack on Mumbai, which was launched by militants sailing from Karachi.
"Talks on the issue are stalled following the Mumbai terror attacks," said Haroon Rashid, vice chairman of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan, in Lahore. Earlier this year, then-Indian Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh told upper house of India's Parliament that all negotiations and communications on basmati were on the back burner.
"The joint registration of basmati rice would have to wait till full normalization of relations took place between India and Pakistan," he said. The idea of jointly locking up the basmati name was first floated five years ago. Under the original plan, India and Pakistan would first file a joint application at India's Geographic Indications Registry office in Chennai, and then joint apply in Europe.
India is moving ahead. On Nov. 28 -- by coincidence, while the Mumbai attacks were under way -- a trade body that is part of the Indian Commerce Ministry filed an application at the Chennai registry. It sought to secure the basmati trademark in India, a necessary step before applying for international protection.
In February, India's Parliament passed a law that gave the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority the power to fight for protection of basmati. If it secures a trademark from the registry, it can apply for protection of the basmati name internationally -- with or without Pakistan.
That has worried the guardians of the grain across the border. "India definitely has the right to apply independently," says Rashid, of the Pakistani exporters group. "If they go alone to apply for international GI status, we will do the same."
According to the export-development authority, 123 nations export some of their rice production. But only India and Pakistan export basmati. In 2008, India exported 1.5 million tons while Pakistan shipped out 1.2 million tons.
In India, basmati is cultivated predominantly in Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan grows basmati on its side of the Himalayan foothills. About 400,000 farmers are engaged in the cultivation of basmati in the Indo-Gangetic plains on both sides of the border.
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