Asia Times: India's appeal to Pakistan just not cricket


	August 24, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

India's appeal to Pakistan just not cricket
By Muhammad Rafique

ISLAMABAD - The spirit of Agra has been given a body blow as well as a new lease on life by two contrasting issues.

Only weeks after the Pakistan-India Agra summit meeting in which some breakthrough in frosty relations had been expected, if nothing else than at least in cricket ties, India has officially announced that it will not play a cricket match in Lahore next month, much to the chagrin of the millions of cricket-mad fans across the subcontinent who are prepared to put aside their differences over Kashmir for their love of the leather and willow.

But just this week India has appealed to Pakistan to help it in countering the decision by the United States Patent Office to give a "varietal patent" to Texas company Ricetec for selling its rice as a superior strain of basmati. Farmers on the subcontinent have been growing the rice for centuries, and are obviously disturbed by the effects the ruling may have on their multimillion-dollar exports of the fragrant rice, particularly to the United States.

On Wednesday, Indian Agricultural and Processed Foods Exports Export Development Authority (APEDA) chairman Anil Swarup urged Pakistan to join hands to ensure that basmati rice is accepted as a geographical indicator and that no-one outside the region is able to use the name for its rice. He said that India had already passed the Geographical Indicator (GI) Act as required by the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to enable the exclusive use of the word basmati.

Basmati, which gives off a delightful aroma that can be smelt from far away while it is being cooked, was on the menu at banquets when Indian Prime Minister Atal Baharee Vajpayee visited Lahore in March 1999, and again when Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf held his abortive summit with the Indian leader in Agra in July.

Pakistan's visiting Commerce Minister Abdul Razzak Dawood, a leading businessman himself, said in New Delhi, "We feel strongly that basmati is a product of India and Pakistan and belongs to no-one else than than the subcontinent. We must take a common stand and jointly fight such issues," Dawood said on the fringes of a meeting of commerce ministers from South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

His Indian counterpart, Murasoli Maran, agrees with Dawood, and has called for joint action. "Basmati is the queen of rice, we will not let it belong to anyone else."

The president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Karachi says that in the long run the US decision could affect the country's exports, which Pakistan is desperately trying to boost. Rice is the second biggest foreign exchange earner for Pakistan after cotton, and the country is also trying to push other exports, such as dates, mangoes and vegetables.

Trade experts argue that both India and Pakistan should receive protection on products based on geography, as is the case with Champagne and Scotch whisky.

India has already submitted a list of 150 items, including a type of mango called Alphonso, and Kohlapuri chappals, intricately-carved slippers, to protect them as "geographical indicators" at the next round of World Trade Organization talks on TRIPS. Pakistani officials in Islamabad were unable to say whether Pakistan has submitted such a list.

But turning to cricket. Most cricket officials, players and fans have been thoroughly disappointed by the Indian government's decision not to send their team to play in the scheduled test match in Lahore as part of the Asian championship. The villain is being portrayed as Uma Bharti, the Indian Sports Minister. "She is the killjoy of the worst kind," says Abdul Jabbar, a banker in Rawalpindi who is among the millions of cricket-mad people who are glued to their television sets or radios whenever cricket is played in the region, be it in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.

Cricket ties between India and Pakistan have been rocky since the Indian government cancelled a proposed test tour of Pakistan late last year and banned all bilateral cricket between the two countries, including "off-shore" venues at Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and Toronto in Canada, where Asian immigrants there lap up the contests.

"The country's foreign policy is bigger than than sports. When we weighed national interest with sports interest we felt the scales tilted towards national," Bharti told an Indian Television channel. The root problem, she says, are the continued cross-border incursions by jihadis into India-held Kashmir with the tacit support of Islamabad and its Inter-Intelligence Service (ISI).

Pakistani cricket supremo Lieutenant-General Tauqir Zia has urged the London-based International Cricket Conference (ICC) to persuade India to participate in the tournament, which also involves Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The teams slated to play against India will now instead automatically be given a walkover.

In an editorial, the English-language Dawn newspaper in Pakistan said India's decision had been made out of fear of losing rather than for any political reasons. India is currently involved in a test series against Sri Lanka, where it has already lost the first test. It has not won a test series out of the country for more than a decade.

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