Of south India, Handicrafts and changing types — GI trends

If anyone’s glanced through the latest GI Journal, No. 33, available here, you will have seen that the number of applications for GIs in India has crossed the 200 mark. Of these, at least 120 have been granted already, according to this note that’s up on the IPO site.

Since the IPO hasn’t put up an Annual Report in a very long time, and I was curious about some trends I noticed in the GI applications/registrations, I thought I’d do some number-crunching myself. I used the data from the list of registered GIs (numbering 120), and not the applications (which are presently 206), and did some very simple arithmetic, and found the following.

A. Southern Indian states more GI registrations than rest of India

The first, most interesting, trend I noticed was the state of origin of the various registrations — a simple majority of these come from the four states in southern India, i.e., Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala – in that order. They have about 58 per cent of the GI registrations (or 70 registrations) to their credit. The rest put together have 50 registrations.

These four southern Indian states are the only ones to have reached double figures, with Karnataka head and shoulders above them all, at 27 registrations! A similar bias exists among the applications, although I didn’t attempt a numerical analysis there. My own theory for this is “proximity” – the GI registry is in Chennai, and attracts more applications from the ‘neighbourhood’. There are other likely explanations, but may be politically incorrect. In any case, some one is really marketing GIs in this part of the country. Does anyone have a deeper explanation to offer?

In total GIs have been granted to applicants in 18 Indian states, as well as to Peru – the sole international representative in the Registry of granted GIs in India. There are several parts of India that are yet unrepresented on the Register, such as the North-east (except for a couple of registrations for Nagaland and Assam).

B. Maximum number of GIs for “Handicrafts”

A second trend is the type of goods that are being registered – I have not attempted a class-wise split, but the data in the registered list suggests that GIs for “Handicrafts” have been granted the most – about two-thirds of the total number of GIs. The remaining are split between “Agricultural”, “Manufactured” and “Food stuff”.

The GI Registry also appears to be denominating types of goods afresh — what appears as “Alcoholic Beverages” in the list of applications shows up as “Manufactured” in the list of registered GIs; similarly an application for a “Textile” converts to a registration for a “Handicraft”.

Do readers have any insight into why this is happening? Are these typologies being raised and changed during prosecution? Or are we to assume it’s the whimsy of the Registry and that they bear no relevance to the registration itself? As an aside, I note that “Food Stuff” remains “Food Stuff”, distinct from “Agricultural” and “Manufactured”. Pity we couldn’t see the Jamnagar applications play out, otherwise that may have morphed into something interesting too?

This typology also throws up another issue — I note that details about the type of goods being registered is not of much use, because one particular type covers a whole range of items. For example, the “Manufactured” descriptor includes alcoholic beverages like Feni and Peruvian Pisco, the Coimbatore Wet Grinder, Mysore sandal (oil and soap) and East India (EI) Leather.

C. Occasional dips, but registration on the rise?

There doesn’t seem to be any fixed pattern on the number of registrations being granted every year — if you were to look at the chart, the numbers are erratically rising and falling. 2006-07 to 2008-09 had an accelerated trend, but then dropped drastically in 2009-10.

Logically, GIs for handicrafts form a chunk of the registrations every year, perhaps also because of re-classification of textiles as handicrafts. GIs for Manufactured goods, such as they are, have been just about kept alive over the years. And only two GIs for food stuffs have been registered so far, in 2008-09 and 2009-10.

We’ve reported on trends in GI registrations previously — see this post criticising misreporting in mainstream media about GI numbers in India.

But during most of our reporting on GIs, whether it is by way of discussing trends or analysis of registrations, a question repeatedly rears its head — do we have any post-registration evidence of the value of a GI registration? How have these registrations helped communities convert their rights into a viable tool for protection and profit?

There is some discussion on the challenges of the application process, which is interesting to study because it often involves bringing economically or socially backward communities in India into direct engagement with intellectual property. However, there is not enough data on what happens after registration. The last I recall having read about was a study from Himachal Pradesh on the plight of Kullu weavers after they got a GI. If anyone has similar information on other GIs, please do share.