The Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), which comes under the Indian Commerce and Industry Ministry, is set to talk with e-commerce platforms like Amazon India and Flipkart to help promote geographical indication (GI) products and give impetus to locally produced items.
Government officials are to confab with the executives of these e-commerce platforms to discuss a pilot project that would identify GI products that have good demand in the market. The pilot project hopes to throw extra spotlight on the GI-Tagged goods.
GI tag is used on products that correspond to a specific geographical location or origin, including a certain town or region in India. These include Darjeeling tea, Coorg Arabica coffee and Kashmiri saffron. India has registered 361 GI products, as of March 2020.
GI sign is used on products that has specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin.
Government wants to help these manufacturers and sellers to leverage from online commerce independently to boost sales.
Betting big on Make in India
“The meeting will be on figuring out a standardized practice of listing these products on e-commerce platforms, and digital literacy, which is needed to be provided to manufacturers, sellers and cooperative societies manufacturing and selling these geographical indication products," according to a report in the newspaper Mint.
The government, it is learnt, will tell the online retailers to add respective logos on online listings of these products for greater visibility.
But the problem is most of these GI-tagged products are manufactured by local manufacturers who are unable to maintain the logistical demands of e-commerce companies. The e-commerce companies want the supply chain to be straightened out before committing themselves to any proposal.
Understandably, the whole effort is aimed at giving a fillip to the much-bandied Make in India campaign that is the clarion call in the country at the moment.
The government is betting big ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’ or 'Self-Reliant India’ vision. In line with this idea, the government has rolled out its Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules, 2020, and instructed all e-tailers to provide the ‘country of origin’ information for all products listed on their website. The ‘country of origin’ detail, quite evidently, will help consumers make more informed choices. The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has also made the ‘country of origin’ clause mandatory.
