Wisps of steam escape from immense dryers that stretch vertically into the sky. Inside the Chaman Lal Setia factories Exports, one of the largest exporters of Indian basmati, rice dust envelops the atmosphere to the incessant sounds of machines. This rice mill in Karnal, 150 kilometers north of New Delhi, processes and packages 500 to 800 tonnes of basmati rice every day.
The plant harvested from the surrounding fields undergoes a whole series of transformations and polishing to achieve perfection. After a final phase of mechanical sorting, all that should remain are elegant, naturally fragrant grains of rice, all in length, white or cream in color, characteristic of basmati. The loaded trucks then speed off to transport the noble cereal to Indian ports, from where it will be sent to more than 80 countries: Malaysia, the United States, Israel, but also Europe.
For centuries, basmati has been cultivated in the Indo-Gangetic plain of the Indian subcontinent, today shared between India and Pakistan. The enemy brothers are the only two global exporters of the cereal. “Over the years, many varieties of basmati have been created to improve the quality of rice and achieve the result we have today”, explains Vijay Setia, director of Chaman Lal Setia Exports. India alone has thirty-four varieties of basmati, compared to twenty-four in Pakistan.
A commercial offensive
In 2018, while exports of Indian basmati to the European Union (EU) fell drastically in favor of Pakistan, New Delhi launched a commercial and highly symbolic offensive against Islamabad. India files a protected geographical indication (PGI) application with the European Commission to obtain exclusive use of the term “basmati” in the EU.
This label allows you to “highlight the link between the geographical region concerned and the name of the product, when a particular quality, reputation or other characteristics are essentially due to the geographical origin”. A status from which champagne benefits and which allows only producers in the French region to use this name, but also to sell their products more expensively. When this label was given to darjeeling tea in 2011, prices skyrocketed.
India has been at the forefront of protecting basmati. At the end of the 1990s, an American brand attempted to file a patent on varieties of rice called “basmati” developed and cultivated in Texas. The Indian and Pakistani governments opposed it and won their case. India therefore began to protect basmati. First by delimiting in the country the contours of the geographical areas of production of this fragrant rice, a prerequisite for PGI recognition with the EU. “Our duty is to protect our rice in international markets and Pakistan should have done the same”, castigates Ashok Kumar Singh, director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. Islamabad, lagging behind its neighbor, will have waited until 2021 to establish the delimitation of the geographical zones of basmati production.
You have 67.17% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.