The GI craze in India is as inexplicable as the ways in which the Registry grants it

People of Hoovina Hadagali (population: 27,958), the taluka headquarters of Bellary district of Karnataka, are inordinately proud of their variety of mallige (jasmine). So are the growers from Udipi and Mysore, all of them claiming unique and distinctive features for their varieties of these sweet-smelling flowers which are offered to temple deities or used by south Indian women to adorn their hair.