Consumer Rights in India
This article examines in detail the origin, establishment and status of Consumer Rights in India today.
Consumer
rights were recognized broadly in many ancient Hindu, Islamic and
Christian religious scriptures; however, no literary work formalized
them into a concise set until the 1960s. Consumer rights in India and
the modern world owe their origin to the consumer revolution of the
pre-60s in the United States of America.
On
March 15, 1962, US President John F Kennedy made a historical speech
about consumer rights as he introduced 'The Consumer Bill of Rights' in
the US Congress. Ever since, countries all over the world have
celebrated March 15 as the Consumers’ Day. However, in India December 24
is celebrated as the National Consumer Day since the Consumer
Protection Act, 1986 was enacted on this day by the Indian Parliament.
Kennedy
strongly believed that it is vital to United States’ National Interest
to ensure the welfare of the consumers, as it is the consumer who
fundamentally drives the economy. He formulated four rights for
consumers, namely the right to safety, right to choose, right to
information and right to be heard which, in 1985, was accepted by the
United Nations (UN). The UN added to this list the right to basic needs,
right to representation, right to consumer education, and right to
healthy environment.
In the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 of India, the following six consumer rights have been recognized.
Right to Safety
As
stated in the Consumer Protection Act 1986, this consumer right is
defined as the ‘right to be protected against marketing of goods and
services which are hazardous to life and property’. Specifically
significant in areas such as healthcare, food processing and
pharmaceuticals, this right spans across any domain that could have a
serious impact on the consumers’ health or well being such as
Automobiles, Travel, Domestic Appliances, Housing etc. Violation of this
right is almost always the cause of medical malpractice lawsuits in
India. Every year, it is estimated that thousands, if not, millions of
Indian citizens are killed or severely hurt by unscrupulous practices by
hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and the automobile industry. Yet the
Indian government, renowned for its callousness, fails to acknowledge
this fact or to make a feeble attempt at maintaining statistics of these
mishaps. Indian government is required to have world class product
testing facilities to test drugs, cars, food, and any other consumable
that could potentially be life threatening. It is not a coincidence
that Tata Nano sells in India for half of what it would cost in an
industrially developed country; this being a classic case of need for a
cheap product outweighing the need for safety of self and family. In
developed countries such as the United States, stalwart agencies oversee
the safety of consumer products; the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
for food and drugs, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) for automobiles and the Consumer Product Safety Commission
(CPSC) for all other consumer products, just to name a few. This right
requires each product that could potentially endanger our lives to be
marketed only after sufficient and complete independent verification and
validation. With respect to empowering this right completely and
adequately, India is about 50 years away.
Right to Information
This
consumer right is defined as the ‘the right to be informed about the
quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods or
services, as the case may be so as to protect the consumer against
unfair trade practices’ in the Consumer Protection Act of 1986. In the
Indian market place, consumers get consumer information through two
popular, yet unreliable means, namely advertising and word of mouth. Due
to this, the consumers in India seldom have accurate and complete
information to assess the true value, suitability, safety or reliability
of any product. Mostly we find out hidden costs, lack of suitability,
safety hazards and quality problems only after we have purchased the
product. Another right again trumpeted by our government on paper, this
right should ideally ensure that all consumable products are labeled in a
standard manner which contains the cost, the ingredients, quantity, and
instructions on how to safely consume the product. Unfortunately, even
the medicines in India do not follow a standard labeling convention.
Unit price publishing standards need to be established for consumer
market places where costs are shown in standard units such as per
kilogram, or per liter. We, as consumers, should be informed in a
precise yet accurate manner of the costs involved when availing a loan.
For benefit to the society from this right, advertisers should be held
against the product standards in the advertisements, pharmaceuticals
need to disclose potential side effects about their drugs, and
manufacturers should be required to publish reports from independent
product testing laboratories regarding the comparison of the quality of
their products with competitive products, just to name a few.
Consumerdaddy is a website meant to empower the consumers with the right
to information. We do not seek or expect any support from the
government of India in this mission; yet, we ethically, systematically
and fearlessly dissipate consumer satisfaction information to the
general public in India. Without websites like Consumerdaddy.com we
believe Indian citizens are about 25 years away from being fully
empowered by this right.
Right to Choose
Consumer
Protection Act 1986 defines this right as ‘the right to be assured,
wherever possible, to have access to a variety of goods and services at
competitive prices’. Competition, invariably, is the best regulator of a
market place. Existence of oligopolies, cartels and monopolies are
counterproductive to consumerism. How often have you noticed a
conglomerate of companies that lobby the government to compromise
consumer rights? Our natural resources, telecommunications, liquor
industry, airlines have all been controlled by a mafia at some point.
Coming from a socialistic background, tolerance of monopolistic market
forces are ingrained in the blood of Indian Consumers. It is not very
often we can say we are going to switch the power company, when we have a
blackout at home! Interestingly, even micro markets such as the fish
vendors in particular cities have known to collude to drain the
bargaining power of the consumers. In any size, any form, or any span,
collusion of companies selling a similar type of product is unethical,
less illegal. We estimate that India has about 20 years more of stride
to empower our citizens fully in this right.
Right to be Heard
According
to the Consumer Protection Act 1986, ‘the right to be heard and to be
assured that consumer's interests will receive due consideration at
appropriate forums’ is referred to as the right to be heard. This right
is supposed to empower Indian consumers to fearlessly voice their
complaints and concerns against products and companies to ensure their
issues are handled efficiently and expeditiously. However, to date the
Government of India has not created a single outlet for the consumers to
be heard or their opinions to be voiced. There are several websites
that strive to do this, and the underlying mission of Consumerdaddy is
to ensure that the voices of the consumers are heard by the corporate
world. At the Consumerdaddy.com website, consumers can upload criticisms
and file complaints. Each criticism filed will slightly lower the
overall score of the product being criticized, and each complaint will
be independently evaluated by an investigator from the Consumerdaddy.com
website. Consumerdaddy.com gives the consumers the benefit of doubt
always, in that their voice is heard over that of the company. We, at
Consumerdaddy.com, strongly believe that a consumer is always right, and
that customer is king. If a consumer makes an allegation about a
product, the onus is on the dealer, manufacturer or supplying company to
disprove that the allegation is false. In other words, the consumer is
heard, and the burden of proof rests with the company. Feeble attempts
have been made by the government to empower our citizens with this
right, and we believe we have 10-15 years more to go on this route.
Right to Redressal
The
right ‘to seek redressal against unfair trade practices or restrictive
trade practices or unscrupulous exploitation of consumers’ is defined as
the right to redressal in the Consumer Protection Act 1986. The Indian
Government has been slightly more successful with respect to this right.
Consumer courts such as District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forums at
the district level, State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions and
National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions have been established
through the consumer protection act. Each of these consumer grievance
redressal agencies has fiduciary and geographical jurisdictions to
address consumer cases between consumers and businesses. Consumer cases
less than 20 lakhs are heard in the district consumer forum, between 20
lakhs and one crore are heard in the state consumer court and cases more
than one crore are heard in the national consumer court. On paper these
sound nice; but hold on before you rejoice. Once started as the
guardians of consumer protection and consumer rights in India, these
courts have today been rendered ineffective due to bureaucratic
sabotages, callousness of the government, clogged cases and decadent
infrastructure. Very few of the district forums have officials appointed
in a timely manner, and most of them are non-operational due to lack of
funding and infrastructure. Estimates put the open legal cases in India
at 20-30 million, which will approximately take 320 years to close.
With the legal system in this manner compromised, consumer cases that
form mere civil litigations will be pushed down the bottom of the
priority list. We estimate that India is 10 years behind in effectively
ensuring this right to every Indian consumer.
Right to Consumer Education
The
right of each Indian citizen to be educated on matters related to
consumer protection and about his/her rights is the last right given by
the Consumer Protection Act 1986. This right simply ensures that the
consumers in India have access to informational programs and materials
that would enable them to make better purchasing decisions. Consumer
education may mean both formal education through school and college
curriculums and also consumer awareness campaigns run by both
governmental and non governmental agencies (NGO). Consumer NGOs, with
little support from the Indian government, primarily undertake the
ardent task of ensuring this consumer right around the country. India is
20 years away from ensuring this right empowers the common citizen
consumer.
கூடலூர் நுகர்வோர் மனித வள சுற்றுச்சுழல் பாதுகாப்பு மையம்
மக்கள் மையம்
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