Government need to intervene in publicity of local products to strengthen rural-urban linkages and promote much needed non-farm employment. Elaborate (200 Words)
Refer - The Business Line
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 5 years
KEY POINTS
· Local products strengthen rural-urban linkages and promote much needed non-farm employment. While a variety of strategies are required for promoting the local products from every region, there are about 361 products (foreign plus Indian) recognised for their uniqueness and registered with the Geographical Indications (GI) registry.
· As the Indian economy is slowly opening up its activities, it is time to think of ways to promote these GI recognised unique local products among the consumers by popularising the GI logo.
· This logo, when adopted, would serve to demarcate the GI registered products in the market from similar products and help protect the interests of the genuine GI product producers and consumers who want to consume authentic products.
· GIs are community intellectual property rights, where small artisans/farmers produce most of the GI products. Keeping this in the background, the logo guidelines are simple. There are no user charges.
Three main obstacles to adopting the logo.
· The lack of awareness about GI in general and the common logo in particular among producers and consumers.
· Identifying the authorised users of the GI products.
· The lack of collective organisation of the producers.
Given that GI products are heritage and cultural assets of a region, the State governments concerned will have to take the responsibility of publicising the application at the very first stage and later when it is granted.
Similarly, the logo will have to be publicised widely to reach both the producers and the consumers. As the logo is for all the registered GI products, wide promotion of logos like Hallmark/Agmark/ISI would help the consumers to associate the logo with the authenticity of the products.
Other concerns
· The logo guidelines do not prescribe any timelines for the use of logos. This defeats the very purpose of the certification mark.
· Yet another concern is the legal framework governing enforcement of the use of logos. Since there are no charges for using the logo and the tagline, DPIIT should make it compulsory for all the GI producers and other stakeholders to adopt the logo and check the free-riding in the use of the logo by non-GI producers.
Sandeep 5 years
Kindly review
IAS Parliament 5 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
Sanjeev Kumar Singh 5 years
Kindly give feedback
IAS Parliament 5 years
Try to include the challenges in publicity of products. Keep Writing.
