Assam tea and its GI status

Most peoples do know that Assam is famous for its tea. Assam tea by itself is a huge brand and it even received Geographical Indication status.


A geographical indication (sometimes abbreviated to GI) is a name or sign used on certain products or which corresponds to a specific geographical location or origin (eg. a town, region, or country). The use of a GI may act as a certification that the product possesses certain qualities, or enjoys a certain reputation, due to its geographical origin.

Orthodox tea is the second Assam product to bag the GI label after muga silk. The GI label is exclusive to only a handful of generically identifiable products such as Swiss watches, Czech crystals, champagne, Mysore sandalwood oil and Kancheepuram silk.

There are certain requirements that the product has to fulfill before getting the GI status. The products should have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are special to that particular state or place of origin to qualify for the GI status.

The GI status is going to be hugely beneficial for Assam tea as it would now prevent replication in other parts.

For additional information on GI visit http://www.geographicindications.com/

Match fixing: No games are Isolated?

Match fixing controversies have always haunted the sports fraternity. Some of them have even brought an end to big sporting careers.

Match fixing controversy created a huge flutter in Indian media when the names of Indian cricket starts was revealed as being involved in match fixing scandals. Well it ended the career of Indian players like Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja. Hanse Conje (one of my favorite player) was banned from all forms of cricket due to match fixing.

Some of the recent match fixing news are coming from unexpected places:
- India-Malaysia Azlan Shah tie was fixed: report (PTI News)
- Were Wimbledon matches fixed? (TOI News)

Looks like none of the games remains isolated from match fixing scandals.

I guess I will end up watching The Great Khali in WWE, because I already know the matches are fixed :-)

Do Asia cup cricket need more then three teams?

If you are tracking the Asia cup cricket in this Wimbledon and EURO soccer season, you might be disappointed to see the initial results. The big guns of Asia are winning by huge margins.

I wonder do we need to have six teams in Asia Cup just for the sake of making it bigger. Hongkong, UAE and should I add Bangladesh has come up with some awful performances. The initial scores say it all (Pak defeat Hongkong by 155 runs, India defeat Hongkong by 256 runs, Sri Lanka defeat Bangladesh by 131 runs). These are by no means competitive cricket. The three big guns India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the real deserving candidates to participate in this level of competition.

We can expect some good records to be made in this competition. I wonder if anybody are watching these matches.

India in FIFA world cup

With the EURO 2008 fever at complete high, we were discussing in office about India's chances of ever making it to the FIFA world cup? Well looking at the current situation, it looks impossible to me.

But most of us might not know that India did qualified for the FIFA world cup in 1950.

From wikipedia:

"India qualified by default for the 1950 FIFA World Cup as a result of the withdrawal of all of their scheduled opponents. However, they did not take up their place in the competition because FIFA demanded all players at the World Cup finals should wear football boots. A number of the Indian players refused to abide by this rule and the team was forced to withdraw. The team has never since come close to qualifying for the World Cup.

India also finished 4th in the football tournament at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and won the 1962 Asian Games Gold medal, and reached the semi-finals in the next two Asian Games tournaments in what became known as the golden era of Indian football."

The great rhino conservation success story

Something I thought worth sharing

*Information collected from the web, wikipedia

Here is a comment from the WWF website:

"The Indian, or greater one-horned, rhino is a conservation success story. Thanks to strict protection measures, its population increased from 600 in 1975 to 2,400 in 2002. But it is still an endangered animal that faces the ever-present danger of poaching for its horn."

The Indian Rhinoceros or the Great One-horned Rhinoceros or the Asian One-horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) is a large mammal found in Nepal and in Assam, India. It is confined to the tall grasslands and forests in the foothills of the Himalayas.

In Assam, rhinos are found in the Kaziranga National Park where it is under conservation.
Kaziranga National Park has been granted maximum protection under the Indian law for wildlife conservation. Various laws, which include the Assam Forest Regulation of 1891 and the Biodiversity Conservation Act of 2002 have been enacted for protection of wildlife in the park.

Here is the rhino population chart (from wikipedia).

Awesome isn't it??

There are still issues with poaching in Kaziranga.


Join the rhino conservation effort with http://onehornedrhino.org/