Before exploring the question about the status of a consumer in India, it would be apt to examine rights in India. Across the sections of the society, only one section has notably enjoyed any kinds of rights, be it as a citizen, a student, a taxpayer, a traveler, a tourist or a consumer; this section is the rich and the mighty. The fabric of the legal, executive and judicial branches of our government has always been prejudiced to this group. Revolving within such as social realm of injustice, what rights to the common man in India have when it comes to rights as a consumer? Very little, as explored in this article.
The first and fundamental right of a consumer is the right to be protected against products that could endanger them in any manner, otherwise known as the right to safety. This is a very convenient right as anyone can claim its existence and criticisms can only be supported through presentation of evidence that such a right does not exist. In other words, effort is required to disprove in a circumstance where no evidence is provided to prove and only an unsupported claim is made. India has one of the worst safety records when it comes to pharmaceuticals. Several allegations of wrong doings by the pharmaceutical companies surface each year but they all mysteriously disappear after a period. There have been allegations that pharmaceutical companies even distribute their products to the general public in India as a part of their human pilot and drug test programs before they ever market these products in developed nations, in particular the United States. Such allegations have been made against African nations and a few other south and south east Asian nations. The government of India does not officially maintain any figures regarding wrongful deaths and serious impairments that arise in the general public due to the consumption of dubious drugs. This ladies and gentlemen, is not due to lack of machinery for data collection, but a cognizant and convenient strategy to not deal with the problem at all. Over the counter drugs that come for domestic use, seldom have a child proof bottle cap, enabling children to be easy victims of this non-existent right. Another arena is that of food consumption. India is the hub for a multitude of food borne diseases, both packaged and otherwise. Yet what are the origins of these diseases? I would suppose that the government knows or at least has the capability to find out. It can safely be assumed that a large part of these food borne diseases are caused by consumption of below standard, unhygienic and expired foods that the consumer has paid for and purchased. This in fact puts them unprotected against products that could endanger them. Again here the villain is the lack of availability of data; I could be in fact accused of making allegations that I cannot back up. The third arena worth exploring is clinical services. How often do you hear about the person who went into surgery for the left leg and got operated on the right leg? How often do surgeons forget their tools in the stomach of a surgery patient? Any cultured society would be aghast by such happenings but all in all, we Indians as a society have grown callous to such incidents. The fourth area to be examined is that of automotive safety. All major markets in the world including China publish information regarding vehicle safety so that consumers can make an educated choice about the automobile to purchase to keep themselves and their dear ones safe. Yet, in India we have no standardized and efficient mechanism of publishing vehicle safety information to the consumers. Our record of civil aviation safety is the fifth area of concern. Over the past few years the number of hairline incidents or “just miss” incidents have increased exponentially as more and more Indian consumers take to the skies. Resources such as air traffic controls and airport infrastructure are being stretched beyond what is acceptable per safety norms completely compromising protection of the consumers from life threatening dangers. It is only a matter of time where a large and catastrophic accident would get us asking the question of what we could have done to prevent it. The last area worth exploring is our railway system which I am ashamed to say enjoys the worst record of safety perhaps among any mass transport systems in the world. Coming from a logistics background it is amazing that the government has not been able to prevent even the most common safety hazard, collisions, using technologies such as GPS Trackers, proximity monitors or active / semi-active RFID devices. Billions and billions of rupees of the tax payer is wasted every year on this languid mammoth, yet in the area of safety it is perhaps in the 19th century mode when first incepted by the British. If you assess the risk of a passenger dying in a train accident, I am sure no insurance company would willingly insure the Indian railways for a reasonable premium and that perhaps explains why as a consumer you do not enjoy a single paisa of insurance no matter what grade of ticket you purchase. I am sure you have had the anxiety of listening to a major railway derailing all the while hoping that they would announce that it was goods train. Mishaps such as falling of a train are not uncommon either due to the 19th century doors engaged on all the compartments, and the ability of the passenger to climb on top of the train to avoid the crowd within. Railway safety is not just a concern to passengers but also to people living in the periphery of any railway infrastructure, visitors to the railway station and to the railways own employees.
Right to information, an apparently stalwart right is perhaps the most fragile among the overrated Indian consumer rights. As a patient, you visit a doctor for a headache, your chances of being prescribed medicines that don’t even have the remotest chances of curing you can be prescribed to you since no doctor in this country is required to complete any standardized Indian Medical Association (IMA) approved record of therapeutic procedures that he or she recommends. The doctor is absolved of any and all liability the moment his analysis and diagnosis are strictly verbal and undocumented. Most developed nations in the world require medical practitioners to supply a patient with a complete and detailed report of their diagnosis, a detailed report of the recommended therapy and a detailed rationale correlating the diagnosis with the therapy. Right to information is a critical right when it comes to consumable goods and in particular Pharmaceuticals. Almost all modern nations in the world require that over the counter drugs bear clear package labeling indicating the side effects of the drug. Yet, the Indian government has never enforced such a right to the benefit of a consumer. How often have you been frustrated at the absence of a standardized nutrition label on packaged foods? Decisions that consumers strive to make regarding healthy eating choices are completely compromised due to the inability of the governments of India in enforcing display of such information. While buying a car, besides the claims that “honest” salesmen make, is consumer privileged to any standardized information such as mileage or safety ratings of a car, two critical buying decision points on most automobiles. Absence of information is only a tip of the iceberg; misinformation is the more treacherous danger that visages the consumers of our country. How often have you seen that advertisement that says ‘fly on our airline to paradise for just one rupee’ when the airline actually has “other” surcharges that usually run into thousands and thousands of rupees? Who hasn’t fallen into the trap of a credit card company whose terms and conditions change, dramatically and dangerously, when one payment is missed? Ridiculous insurance companies that require consumers to have claims filed by the deceased to process insurance payouts can happily exist in this country along with consumer product companies who can change terms and conditions as and when they like and even make up their own rules as they go along! Absurdities in warranty agreements extend from “warranty that doesn’t cover replacement of parts and cost of labor”, “warranty where the product has to be shipped to manufacturer at own cost” exist nowhere else in the world except in our country. Adverse effects of published misinformation to consumers are magnified when it comes to costly purchases such as jewelry for example. Ornaments in precious metals and precious stones are seldom broken down depicting how the constituents tally up to the total cost. Domestic services sector thrives on misinformation of consumers. How often have you bought that direct to home television service on a lucrative deal only to realize that you are tied down to buying their service for a fixed term regardless of whether or not you find purpose with the service? India has a long way to go managing consumer information; currently at best it lacks basic ethics, reliability, accountability, visibility and transparency that is expected within any cultured information sharing community.
Right to chose being the primary right of every consumer, in India today, most industries operate on virtual monopoly created by the government to promote, support and strengthen the interests of the privileged few. In the sector of energy, we are constantly amused by the petty fights between the Ambani brothers. Analyze as a consumer and you will find that the sibling’s juvenile squabbles are just an inlay for an undisputed leadership in a lucrative energy market that run into lakhs and lakhs of crores of rupees. We laugh as consumers at their silliness, but we do not realize that we are being laughed at by them for our stupidity as we sign away our ability to choose in tomorrow’s energy intensive life. Right to choose has been made virtual mockery of in every realm of India’s consumer arenas. When the common man wants to travel from Delhi to Calcutta, he has no choice; it is Indian Railways, one of the most notorious violator of consumer rights, or no travel at all. When we want to light up our houses in Kerala, we have to depend on the Kerala State Electricity Board, a highly lethargic, corrupt and sluggish agency. Now let us examine a few of the more seemingly “competitive” markets such as the cell phone Industry. These are again dominated by the likes of the Ambanis, Tatas and Birlas. A common man run company simply cannot compete against these mammoths, not due to the lack of business savvy, but due to the daunting task of greasing the bureaucratic wheels that locomote any industry in India today. If your mistaken that the consumer protection is protected in at least the recent years much better than in the past, you are mistaken beyond your wildest dreams. The direct to home television industry that has sprawled in the Indian consumer arena since 2005, is considered the best example of a new industry being plagued by the oligarchy. The players in this industry again adorn the Tata and the Ambani logos on their caps. So where are we as a consumer in this picture; nothing but a fly on an elephant, hoping for a journey to the honey cove. If an innovative and business savvy entrepreneur is to come out with a product that benefits consumers technologically or monetarily, he / she can be wiped off in a matter of weeks by the giant business conglomerate groups that operate in the country today. The closest analogy I could think of during the developing phase of any major economy would be how the mafia ruled (and some believe still rule) Italy in an autocratic fashion wiping out any rights fellow citizens had in that era. Scary as it maybe, consumers need to realize this danger associate with our capitalistic consumerism and support cottage / small scale consumer industries to the maximum. Lest, your right to choose will remain a dream outside the pages of the Indian constitution and legislative compositions.
Right to be heard is a fourth non-existence right that our politicians want us to believe exists. Supposedly the government conducts frequent polls and focus groups before framing consumer related policies. The consumer protection act requires creation of consumer councils on a district, state and national level. However, the efficiency of the governments in composing and convening efficient consumer councils that are the ears and eyes of consumers have been very dismal. Consumer councils are non-existent in most districts and when they exist they are mostly platforms for the politicians to park the posteriors of their near and dear ones so that they can cheat the taxpayer and obtain some emoluments that they could not otherwise dream of. There are however a few resolute consumer councils in a few districts and states, and they do a wonderful job of hearing out what consumers have to say and providing legislative strategy to the lawmakers and implementation techniques to government executives. Sadly majority of these recommendations get dumped into the bureaucratic red hole never to be seen again. When it comes to being heard we are perhaps the most destitute regulatory structure in the world. I want to share a story with you on the right to be heard when I was living in Springfield, Commonwealth of Virginia of the United States of America in 2004. The condominium I lived in developed a leak that spread on the walls of the master bedroom and the leak was from a sewage line (this was unknown to me at that time). I made 3 requests with the landlord one after the other over the course of week to get this leak fixed and the wall repainted. All the three requests were promptly and cordially ignored by the landlord. Without recourse, I approached the Fairfax county consumer department website with an online complaint against the landlord. My hope of being heard by such an agency was justifiably low as I had emigrated from India where I have had the immense pleasure of dealing with various government agencies from the Panchayat level to the Central Ministry level. The complaint was lodged and exactly 72 hours after the complaint, the landlord approached me with a request to move into a local hotel (at the landlord’s cost of course) so that he could repair the leak and repaint the wall. Amused by the turn of events, I moved to the suggested hotel and spent the next two days there all the time wondering what could have caused such a 180 degree reception of my complaint by the landlord. Once the wall was fixed, I moved back into the apartment and two weeks elapsed. One day I received a large package from the Fairfax county consumer department and it is only then I had remembered about the complaint I filed with them. On opening the package, I found that inspectors from the county department had come to the landlord’s office for an inspection of my apartment and during the inspection it was found that the landlord had violated several building, maintenance and safety regulations in my apartment along with violation of several health codes. Citations amounting to $10000 had already been issued to the landlord and more where on the way! The second part of the package contained a detailed inspection report along with photographs, laboratory analysis reports, copies of the citations and findings to aid me in proceeding legally against the landlord should I decide to do so. Vindicated I promptly visited the landlord’s office and met with the property manager who apologized and pleaded with me not to proceed with a legal complaint. My rent at that time was $750 a month and my yearly rent was $9000. In one swoop, not only had the landlord lost an entire year of rent, but also another one thousand dollars and was at the risk of losing more if he didn’t promptly remove any such violations in the remaining of his property. I decided not to pursue this matter any further as it was not my intention to make quick money of a molehill. Anyway this incident gave me an in-depth insight into what the consumer right to be heard means; it’s the government’s responsibility to keep its eyes and ears open regarding consumer complaints and to enforce any law that is vital to the protection of the consumer. In India, if you observe a packaged food it has a maximum retail price (MRP) and the quantity of packaging. But if this is violated in any manner, do we even know the agency to approach to be heard? Such information is not published or made readily available to the general public; not because the government lacks the resources to do so, but because it fears the number of complaints to such complaint cells will expose the fallacy of the claim of right to be heard being protected in our country. Now, the right to be heard of the consumer is a right that needs to be protected by a consumer product company also. How often do you realize that the enthusiasm a company shows in selling you a product far outweighs the efficiency in which it hears a complaint from the consumer? Most of the consumer product companies have no mechanism to hear out the issues of its consumers. Most of them conduct surveys the data of which is not utilized for any improvement purposes. 99% of the companies either have no customer support numbers or publish ones that are non-working. In July 2009 I had sent a complaint to the Lufthansa customer support email address at the customer relationship management office in New Delhi, India. As a general practice I enable delivery request and read request on all my emails. The email although promptly delivered was never read by anyone till January 2010. In January I got an email response from the email system which can detect whether the email is read or deleted. The response I got was that the email was deleted without being read! I am a senator with Lufthansa, the highest “privileged” customer status that one can hope for unless you decide to live your life on an airplane. As a privileged customer to one of the most supposedly efficient companies in the world, in India this is how my rights to be heard was satisfied. I shudder to think what would be the case if I had no privilege and I was up against a regular mom and pop company who are not most renowned for their efficiency.
Right to redressal, is the pre-final right that the Indian legal system privileges the consumers to. It promises a speedy, just and due process in closing any disputes that the consumers may have when they have been wronged by a merchant through over-promising, under-delivery, defective merchandise. Let me give you a simple statistic. Today in India, less than one percent (1%) of consumer disputes actually reach the consumer court; the reason? Fairly simple. No one has faith in the Indian legal system. I recently had the misfortune to go to a magistrate court in relation to a complaint that I had filed. The court that I went to was very different from the courts I have grown to see in the movies (the only other place where I have seen a court). It was housed in the most denigrated building and it was quite a horrifying situation where I was waiting in its verandah not knowing when the roof was going to collapse on my head. The walls had not been painted for years and the railings and the furniture had an inch lacing of fine dust. There was disgusting smell due to the police horse units being housed in the next compound. In short, the building had not had a single paisa worth of maintenance done to it since the British (who originally constructed the building) left India in 1947. Ironically, what went through my mind while waiting in that dusty disgusting environment was the advertisement I had seen from the Government of India, Ministry of Communications a few days ago titled ‘India Shining’. A magistrate court in a major city in India.. you might have a few concepts about it; I would ask you to wipe out all those concepts and think of a cow shed that has not been cleaned for several years. That was what it was. My immediate concern was how would a magistrate sit in such a premise and serve justice in an efficient manner. As I was engrossed in all these thoughts, there was suddenly a huzz buzz because it was 10:42 AM (the start time of the court is 10:30 AM, by the way) and the magistrate was arriving. I waited patiently and carefully, so as not to be hassled around in the crowd to get a glimpse of the person who was going to serve me justice. My wait for a white colored government car with a red light was in vain, although I didn’t know it at that time. After sometime an auto rickshaw stopped in front of the court building and out came a lady from it. She immediately handed over her ladies bag to the policeman who promptly saluted her and escorted her inside. I stood in shock as these events unfurled in front of me only to be awakened by a small commotion near the auto. Apparently the auto driver had not been paid and he was trying to get his fare. He mumbled something to the police man in a language I couldn’t understand, apparently trying to explain that he had driven a long distance and would like the fair fare to be given. The policeman immediately raised his lathi and told him to zip it up and leave the premises or receive the end of his baton. The look on the auto drivers face was something I had only seen in the movies; one who had gross injustice done to him yet could not do anything about it. This ladies and gentlemen, was the magistrate who I was going to give me justice. I quietly picked up my phone and talked to the senior lawyer to call off my appearance in court and what it would cost me. A few minutes later the junior lawyer who had accompanied me to the court came and told me that a sealed envelope bearing 10 crisp notes of 1000 Rupees each would permit my absence for each session I need to be in court as the witness / plaintiff except on the day I need to be cross examined. I would also have to produce a medical certificate and make the payments to a specific party who would wait outside the court premises. Of course, if I were to pay for my absence for more than one day, then I would get a discount. I paid Rs. 30,000 and walked away promising myself never to go to court if I can afford it. Our government creates and maintains a system that forces people to be corrupt. I don’t think I can blame that judge for being corrupt; how is it possible to live in this city with a salary of Rs. 15000/- and no mode of transportation? This my dear readers is the plight of the legal system in the country today. The chief justice mentioned that it would take another 400 years just to settle the cases currently pending in the courts today. No criminal goes to jail for his crimes within the first year of the crime. It would take 10-20 years of tedious legal struggles before the plaintiff even in a murder case gets justice. The situation of the consumer courts in this country is only worse. If the civil and criminal courts have judges, most of the consumer courts in this country do not even have judges (or presidents are they are called) or buildings or infrastructure to operate. Even if you get your case to such a “redressal forum” imagine if you are up against a multinational company, what are your chances of getting justice in this corrupt decadent system?
The last right of the consumer is the right to consumer education. Education is absorption of knowledge from materials distributed by those who want to educate you in this country. That, my fellow consumers, is not unfortunately education and not most certainly the right that the constructors of the consumer protection act wanted to bequest upon you. For consumer education, read the papers about the plight of consumers today, walk down your streets and see the gross injustice and exploitations that the multinational companies are engaging in, and keep your eyes open; for it takes no longer than a second to have your rights dashed to smithereens in this country of ours…. India is shining of course, but Indians I doubt are!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Welcome to Consumerdaddy Blog on Consumer Rights
Welcome to consumerdaddy.com official blog on blogspot.com on consumer rights. Consumerdaddy.com is India’s largest consumer portal with consumer reports of over 40,000 companies and 200,000 products. In this blog you will find day to day matters relevant to consumer protection that are tracked for your benefit as a consumer by www.consumerdaddy.com
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