Suffering consumption

Consumer rights ? or wrongs ? seldom make news. They ought to. And, of late, they are making news.

Consumer rights — or wrongs — seldom make news. They ought to. And, of late, they are making news. People are increasingly exercising their rights, enforcing the Consumer Right Act that promises the right to safety, choice, and information and the right to be heard. India is the only country that has a network of quasi-judicial consumer courts to address grievances.

HT Image

Progressive legislation in the form of the 1986 Consumer Protection Act, 1986, and its 2002 amendment ensures that a cheated consumer is empowered to have his case settled in a time-period between 90 and 150 days. Government websites detail the three-tier hierarchy instituted to address grievances — all very efficient. Most cases, over 85 per cent, are apparently ‘solved’. That’s the ‘feel-good news’.

The ‘get-real news’ is that the department of consumer affairs seems to have fallen into the same trap that organisations use to peddle their wares — promising value for money but failing to deliver on that promise. The department’s consumer clubs in schools, thematic celebrations and back-patting promotional pamphlets only address one end of the spectrum: that of educating the consumer. Yet, a recent CAG report observed that 76 per cent of consumers in Delhi alone are still unaware of their consumer rights while 86 per cent don’t even know that legislation exists for the same. While the system is in place, its use is minimal. Whether it is checking food adulteration, transparency of land allotments, the running of hospitals, billing procedures, mislabelling or getting insurance payments, neither is there a watchful State machinery nor enough public awareness to get the law invoked. After-sales service has to be extracted from companies. At the same time, vigilance is not the only thing required on the consumer’s part. Many consumers are willing to forfeit their rights by refusing the protection that billed purchases carry to save on a few hundred rupees. Equally, manufacturers have to be made accountable to deliver on the quality and quantity of their product.

What is needed is not long-drawn schedules to educate the consumer, but an easy, interactive and immediate complaint interface between sectors and clients; a sector-monitoring system to identify frequent defaulters, and a redressal machinery that minimally impinges on public time, effort and energy. The courts should not be the first resort. It is the consumer-corporate dynamic that needs to be strengthened.