After four years of heated debates on the origins of the rasagola, Odisha on Monday received a geographical indication (GI) tag for the Indian sweet.
Last year, the Odisha government had filed for the recognition of the “Odishara Rasagulla” with the GI Registry office. The state government was under pressure to file for recognition of its variant of the sweet after West Bengal was awarded the GI tag for its own variant in 2017, prompting heated arguments on the origin of the sweet.
What a geographical indication tag means
A Geographical Indicator tag for a particular product, which experts call a ‘legal right’, recognises it as distinctive to a particular locality or region or country. As a member of the World Trade Organization, India had enacted the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration & Protection) Act, 1999, which came into force from 2003.
Read more of this in a report by Sampad Patnaik published in The Indian Express... (Link given below)
