In 1898 sir Jagdish Chandra Bose discovered wireless communication system. Sister Nivedita, one of the prominent important dispels of Swami Vivekananda, advised him to apply for the patent. Jagdish Chandra Bose firmly rejected advice saying that knowledge should not be monopolised. After some decades Marconi found the wireless communication system in Europe and applied for the patent in no time. Today the world considers Marconi as The pioneer of wireless communication technology.
After a hundred years in 1898, an American company in the state of Texas claimed the patent on the Basmati rice. The Basmati was of Indian origin. Already this journey was very problematic. For us, however, such a kind of journey is not affordable in 21st-century post modernised world.
WHEN THE FRAGRANCE OF DEAREST BASMATI BECOMES ALIEN
If at all we analyse the contribution of India to the world Basmati may stand well before perhaps everything. The origin of Basmati is in Punjab Himalaya across India and Pakistan. The atmosphere, precipitation, traditional cultivation, methodology storage, and many other things make Basmati something very special. Long and thin grain, which becomes double after cooking yet very soft but free and beautiful taste and a very special fragrance makes Basmati topmost among all rice categories. Earlier Basmati was concentrated in a certain region and its production was limited so the price was very high. India is one of the topmost exporters of Basmati rice. Her export destinations are West Asian countries.
When production is from a specific area and it has some special characteristics, it is qualified to have the status of Geographical Indicator. However, an American company called Rice Tec applied for The trademark named Texmati. The company had also referred a patent in the US for procuring the trademark.
There was already a Trademark application for Basmati in the United Kingdom. Agricultural and Processed Food Exports Authority (APEDA) wholeheartedly opposed the registration of Trademark in Britain, and in due course came the already granted patent of Texmati to Rice Tec company.
The company had prepared patent on categories of Basmati rice in America in 1997. According to the company, there are many experiments on normal types of rice in the USA. After 10 years of constant research and development, they succeeded in bringing out the fragrance and taste of Basmati. The granted patent was on this hybrid Rice.
The Rice Tec company used to sale Texmati and Kasmati rice in the USA. This patent had further empowered them to export the rice worldwide as the ‘Basmati like Rice.’
There were whooping 20 claims by Rice Tec in the patent of Texmati, some of them were as follows.
- Basmati like fragrance of rice
- Length of rice grain
- Cultivation
- Method of cultivation
- Seedlings
- Selection of seedlings for cultivation
India did not have GI over Basmati till 1998. However, Basmati was a pure case of traditional knowledge for cultivators. As a result, the US patent law was not convenient to grant a patent to Rice Tec as the process lacked novelty. Traditional Knowledge comes in public domain hence it is not monopolised by anyone.
But this kind of plagiarising of Traditional Knowledge was nothing but biopiracy by the US company. So far, India’s annual export of Basmati to the US had already crossed 6 billion tons. This entire trade was under a big threat now. Hence the Indian Rice cultivators started pressurising the government of India which finally decided to challenge this patent in the year 2000.
This battle, however, was not easy as India had not procured GI for the Basmati rice so far. So the US was not bound to provide any protection to Basmati as an Indian Product. Moreover, filing a trademark on Basmati was possible. But Trademark would have the ownership of only one entity whereas Basmati was being cultivated by many. Further, the attributes and ingredients developed by Rice Tec in Texmati were extremely similar to Basmati hence the company was in a better position to present her product as Texmati, which was exactly like Basmati.
The patent of Basmati was written so neatly that it was impossible to challenge the merit of that. Then what India was remaining with? The only way out was to prove that whatever ingredients, the Texmati has, were presented in India traditionally.
For example, the Basmati smell and taste exists because of 2 Acetyl Pyrroline (2-AP) and other mixture of ingredients. It successfully showed that the rice which Rice Tec prepares already exists in India. There were many other attributes which were already present in Indian rice.
The commerce ministry formed a high-level committee for this purpose. The then director of CSIR, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar, was again the chairperson of this mission.
The CSIR came out with their own development of Basmati type. i.e. Pusa Basmati-1. This developed rice had all ingredients that were present in Texmati. A 1500 pages dossier of Traditional Knowledge in India about Basmati was prepared. With this development, Rice Tec withdrew most of the claims in the patent of Texmati. The remaining patents were only on the common rice. And that is how the nearly alien Basmati again became Indian.
Today Basmati Rice stands with GI Tag from India.