Pakistan and India have had trouble sitting across a table and thrashing out the joint registration of basmati rice under Geographical Indicators (GI). GIs are a form of intellectual property owned by a community in a specific geographical region and they identify a product to possess a certain quality, characteristic or reputation attributable to such region and basmati, to deserve the title, must originate from the Himalayan foothills. Which leads to the inevitable question — how do you protect a GI shared by more than one nation and, in this case, two with such a fraught relationship? The TRIPS agreement doesn’t mention trans-border GIs, but a European Council Regulation provides that such GIs must be jointly applied for, by all stake-holders.

The joint registration process was chugging along smoothly — a few months back, in more innocent times, Pakistan had even suggested that 2009 be called the “Year of Basmati”. Now, the situation is entirely different. India has taken umbrage at Pakistan allowing a farmers’ organisation to register Basmati as a trademark, and decided to put the entire process on hold. Our minister of state for commerce also added, for good measure, that until those responsible for terrorist attacks in Mumbai and “all those working against India’s interest” were handed over, trade and commerce were distant priorities. 

Making it to the GI register would help both countries, and deter the misuse of the basmati stamp by foreign traders. Our export of basmati rice has gone up from 7.71 lakh tonnes in 2003 to an estimated 14 lakh tonnes in 2008. Unfortunately, again, residual grumpiness from our strained political equation has got in the way of genuinely productive economic collaboration.