Geographical Indication (GI) tag as a means to sustain/create few crore jobs

India being an agrarian economy, agriculture, textiles, and food product sectors are and will be the biggest job creators. The agriculture sector employs more than 50 per cent of the total workforce in India and contributes around 17-18 percent to the country’s GDP.

The Chinese invasion of our manufacturing has resulted in more unemployment than employment. The farmers, artisans and daily labour are at the receiving end of the World Trade Organization (WTO) entry and the information technology segment, which got benefitted most, has created a false illusion of wealth & jobs in our country.

It is matter of time; India will be reporting number of jobs lost monthly than the number of job additions. It is time India looks at ‘out of box’ ideas, which have potential for mass Job creation.

Geographical Indication (GI) is a perpetual Intellectual property (IP) owned by farmers, artisans or weavers of a region and not by a company, industry or an individual. The GI tagged products need to originate from a particular, defined geography and needs to possess unique, defining characteristics which differentiate them from same product from other regions (nutrients, taste, texture, weight, look, shape, etc.)s

As of now, India has around 350 granted GI such as Darjeeling tea, Coorg orange, Nagpur orange, Mysore silk, Mysore Pak, Basmati rice, Mysore Mallige, Channapatna toys, among others. After the grant of GI tag, Darjeeling tea has seen its domestic price rise by five- fold, basmati rice and Thanjavur paintings have seen doubling of the price, and importantly the employment based on them has increased by many fold. The number of farmers cultivating Nagpur ‘santras’ has doubled in last 5 years and these statistics indicate an upward trend of shift towards rural migration and farming being profitable. The export potential of GI products has made the livelihood of these farmers, artisans or weavers sustainable and the constantly increasing Indian diaspora are ensuring it stays this way. India has close to 4,00,000 unique products, which can qualify for GI due to India’s rich art, climate, culture & heritage and can potentially create and sustain about twenty crore jobs.

In an era where brand value draws sales, GI is the best possible brand creator till date and holds potential for increasing value for our communities. The task of empowering public is imminent in GI driven approach where typical GI tag sustains and creates about 5,000 to 5,00,000 jobs.

So far total of 320 products have been given GI status in India and have been registered in India. Darjeeling Tea, Tirupati Laddu, Basmati rice, Nagpur Orange, Kashmir Pashmina etc are among registered GIs in India, which have global brand recall. Karnataka tops with 38 GI products, followed by Maharashtra which has 32 GI products and Tamil Nadu comes third with 25 GI products, Andhra Pradesh currently has 15 GI products.

Article published in Deccan Herald newspaper written by Dr. Phani Kumar Pullela

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/panorama/gi-tag-a-means-to-create-millions-of-jobs-724270.html