We Are Being Robbed. Politely, Legally, and in Broad Daylight.
Barrister Usman Ali Lali
Partner
Pakistan’s salt is sold as Indian. Our mangoes ship unnamed. Our emeralds move without provenance. Billions of dollars in origin-linked value leave this country every year under someone else’s name. The tools to stop it have existed for decades. We have barely touched them.
In the heartland of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, a mine worker — risking his life in the process — hauls a lump of rose-coloured rock from a shaft dug deeper every generation since the Mughal era. Locally it is called Lahori Namak. The world calls it whatever the last person to rebrand it decided: Himalayan Salt, Pink Himalayan Rock Salt, Ayurvedic Himalayan Mineral, Ancient Ocean Detox Crystal. It appears on Amazon, Etsy, Walmart.com, and Alibaba under Indian brand names, packaged with Sanskrit typography and mountain panoramas, positioned in European wellness boutiques at several thousand dollars per tonne. Pakistan mines approximately 325,000 tonnes annually and exports it at forty to sixty dollars a tonne in raw bulk. The same mineral, rebottled in New Jersey or Ahmedabad, retails at fifty to a hundred times that price — frequently labelled, without irony, as a product of India. If Pakistan captured an additional $500 per tonne through certified origin labelling and basic processing, that single mountain range in Khewra would generate over $160 million in additional annual revenue. No new mines. No new exports. Just the legal paperwork that nobody, for reasons this article will explain, has ever seriously prioritised filing. Read the full article at https://medium.com/@usmanalilalim/we-are-being-robbed-politely-legally-and-in-broad-daylight-6db2d5a2d14f
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