Geographical Indications Regime in India: Commitments and Consequences

Abstract

Getting into WTO willy-nilly brought many changes in India’s trade sector, with IPR being a dominant tool in the hands of powerful economies. Geographical Indicators (GI) are a form of complete ownership over knowledge-based products, sometimes even traditional articles, and their necessity is rationalized through their possibility of being used for the benefit of the owners/producers of commodities. This group of beneficiaries is believed to essentially include people with low incomes. This paper is intended to bring out specific fundamental issues like the distribution of benefits across sectors and beneficiaries. Here, we integrate qualitative and quantitative data using a mixed-methods methodology and some crucial case studies as support.  Data used are also from official GI registries, government papers, and academic literature, which provide secondary data to understand patterns in GI registrations across several product categories. The skewed distribution of the benefits of GI registration across beneficiaries is noted. It raises an issue of the possibility of GI favouring veiled capitalist tendencies of the usual market operators, with a new tool.