The government’s move to lift the ban on the export of premium quality non-basmati rice, which should normally have pleased rice exporters and growers alike, has actually left them dismayed. For, the notification treats the scented Pusa-1121 variety, which is predominantly grown in the basmati belt, as non-basmati rice. By doing that, the government has degraded one of the finest evolved types of basmati, and one that has dominated the global basmati bazaar for the past few years. Having secured a place in the Limca Book of World Records as the longest-cooking, slender-grained aromatic rice, this variety has been fetching higher prices than even the best traditional basmati rice on offer from India and Pakistan. Exporters’ worries go beyond the likely fall in the prices of this rice, on its being traded as non-basmati rice in the global bazaar. As non-basmati rice, Pusa-1121 consignments would be denied the rebates and concessions available to basmati rice in the European Union. In turn, the growers who have replaced the earlier dominant basmati variety Pusa-1 and other traditional basmati varieties with this relatively high-yielding and low-water-guzzling basmati rice would be deprived of the high returns that they have been expecting. Worse, overall basmati exports from India will nosedive because the output of the notified basmati varieties now constitutes only a small part of the total basmati harvest. In the process, India will have needlessly conceded the valuable basmati market to its traditional rival, Pakistan.
This ill-advised move overlooks several decisions taken earlier by other wings of the government, to give basmati status to the Pusa-1121 variety, which has become the country’s trump card in the global basmati market. For one, this variety was evolved under the “basmati development and improvement programme” of the national agricultural research system. The agriculture ministry, too, had declared in May that Pusa-1121 met all the requirements for being notified as a basmati variety. Punjab has in fact included this strain among the basmati rice varieties recommended for commercial cultivation. All this has been disregarded by the commerce ministry and the directorate-general of foreign trade while issuing the contentious notification.
The broader issue here pertains really to the definition of basmati rice, as distinct from other aromatic rice types, and its right to be treated as a special category. This issue impinges also on the prospects of securing intellectual property protection for this unique rice under the geographical indications (GI) provisions of the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) agreement. This is especially so because India alone cannot claim the GI title for basmati rice, which is grown also in the neighbouring Pakistan. Ideally, India and Pakistan should initiate joint action in this regard, but such cooperation is not readily forthcoming from across the border. The first thing now is to do whatever is required under the domestic intellectual property rights regime. Since the agricultural research community and the agriculture ministry are convinced about treating evolved basmati varieties at par with traditional basmati, there is little reason for the commerce ministry to disregard this opinion. It is not too late to take corrective action, and to issue a fresh classification of Pusa-1121.
