CONSUMERISM

&

CONSUMER PROTECTION

Submitted to:-

Prof: Ilham

Group Members

Group No.5

Akash Doshi………………….66

Meena Jain…………………...74

Momal Mertia…………………84

Rahul Shah……………………97

Manisha Shah ………………..103

Nishant Solanki………………106

Amit Verma…………………..109

ConsumerismConsumerism a social and economic order that's based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase commodity goods in ever greater amounts. One of the phrases supporting consumerism is "Money can buy happiness." The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with or, more recently by a movement called Enoughism. Veblen's subject of examination, the newly emergent middle class arising at the turn of the twentieth century, comes to full fruition by the end of the twentieth century through the process of globalization

In economics, consumerism refers to economic policies placing emphasis on consumption. In an abstract sense, it is the belief that the free choice of consumers should dictate the economic structure of a society (cf. Producerism, especially in the British sense of the term).

Consumerism as "The movement seeking to protect and inform consumers by requiring such practices as honest packaging and advertising, product guarantees, and improved safety standards" or

alternately "The theory that a progressively greater consumption of goods is economically beneficial". It is thus the opposite of anti-consumerism or of Producerism.

Anti-consumerism is the socio-political movement against consumerism. In this meaning, consumerism is the equating of personal happiness with the purchasing material possessions and consumption.

In relation to Producerism, it is the belief that consumers should dictate the economic structure of a society, rather than the interests of producers. It can also refer to economic policies that place an emphasis on consumption.

Consumerism has strong links with the Western world, but is in fact an international phenomenon. People purchasing goods and consuming materials in excess of their basic needs is as old as the first civilizations (see Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Ancient Rome, for example).

A great turn in consumerism arrived just before the Industrial Revolution. While before the norm had been the scarcity of resources, The Industrial Revolution created an unusual situation: for the first time in history products were available in outstanding quantities, at outstandingly low prices,

being thus available to virtually everyone. And so began the era of mass consumption, the only era where the concept of consumerism is applicable.

Consumerism has long had intentional underpinnings, rather than just developing out of capitalism. As an example, Earnest Elmo Calkins noted to fellow advertising advertising executives in 1932 that "consumer engineering must see to it that we use up the kind of goods we now merely use", while the domestic theorist Christine Frederick observed in 1929 that "the way to break the vicious deadlock of a low standard of living is to spend freely, and even waste creativel’. The older term and concept of "conspicuous consumption" originated at the turn of the 20th century in the writings of sociologist and economist, Thorstein Veblen. The term describes an apparently irrational and confounding form of economic behaviour. Veblen's scathing proposal that this unnecessary consumption is a form of status display is made in darkly humorous observations like the following:

"It is true of dress in even a higher degree than of most other items of consumption, that people will undergo a very considerable degree of privation in the comforts or the necessaries of life in order to afford what is considered a decent amount of wasteful consumption; so that it is by no means an

uncommon occurrence, in an inclement climate, for people to go ill clad in order to appear well dressed.

The term "conspicuous consumption" spread to describe consumerism in the United States in the 1960s, but was soon linked to debates about media theory, culture jamming, and its corollary productivism.

Who is the Consumer?

All of us are consumers of goods and services. For the purpose of the Consumer Protection Act, the word "consumer" has been defined separately for "goods" and "services".

For the purpose of "goods", a consumer means a person belonging to the following categories:

One who buys or agrees to buy any goods for a consideration which has been paid or promised or partly paid and partly promised or under any system of deferred payment.

It includes any user of such goods other than the person who actually buys goods and such use is made with the approval of the purchaser.

Note: - A person is not a consumer if he purchases goods for commercial or resale purposes. However, the word "commercial" does not include use by consumer of goods bought and used by him exclusively for the purpose of earning his livelihood, by means of self employment.

For the purpose of "services", a "consumer" means a person belonging to the following categories:

One who hires or avails of any service or services for a consideration which has been paid or promised or partly paid and partly promised or under any system of deferred payment.

It includes any beneficiary of such service other than the one who actually hires or avails of the service for consideration and such services are availed with the approval of such person.

What are the Rights of Consumer?

Under the Consumer Protection Act 1986, a consumer is guaranteed the following rights:

Right to be protected against the marketing of goods and services which are hazardous to life and property

Right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods or services so as to protect the consumer against unfair trade practices

Right to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of goods and services at competitive prices

Right to be heard and to be assured that consumers' interests will receive due consideration at appropriate forums

Right to seek Redressal against unfair trade practices and unscrupulous exploitation of consumers

Right to consumer education.

Of the several laws that have been enacted to protect the rights of consumers in India, the most significant is the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. Under this law, everyone, including individuals, a Hindu undivided family, a firm, and a company, can exercise their consumer rights for the goods and services purchased by them. It is important that, as consumers, we know at least our basic rights and

about the courts and procedures that deal with the infringement of our rights.

In general, the rights of consumers in India can be listed as under:

* The right to be protected from all types of hazardous goods and services

* The right to be fully informed about the performance and quality of all goods and services

* The right to free choice of goods and services

* The right to be heard in all decision-making processes related to consumer interests

* The right to seek Redressal, whenever consumer rights have been infringed

* The right to complete consumer education

The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 and various other laws like the Standards, Weights & Measures Act have been formulated to ensure fair competition in the market place and free flow of true information from the providers of goods and services to those who consume them. However, the success of these laws would depend upon the vigilance of consumers about their rights, as well as their responsibilities. In fact, the level of consumer

protection in a country is considered as the correct indicator of the extent of progress of the nation.

The production and distribution systems have become larger and more complicated today. The high level of sophistication achieved by the providers of goods and services in their selling and marketing practices and various types of promotional activities like advertising resulted in an increased need for higher consumer awareness and protection. In India, the government has realized the plight of Indian consumers and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has established the Department of Consumer Affairs as the nodal organization for the protection of consumer rights, Redressal of all consumer grievances and promotion of standards governing goods and services offered in India.

A complaint for infringement of consumer rights could be made under the following circumstances in the nearest designated consumer court:

* The goods or services bought by a person or agreed to be bought by a person suffer from one or more deficiencies or defects in any respect

* A trader or a service provider resorting to restrictive or unfair trade practices

* A trader or a service provider charging a price in excess of the price displayed on the goods or the price that had been agreed upon between the parties or the price that had been stipulated under any law in force

* Goods or services that pose a hazard to the safety and life of a person offered for sale, knowingly or unknowingly, causing injury to health, safety or life.

Consumerdaddy.com is India's only online consumer protection site offering consumer report, consumer review and different opinions on different products and companies.

Consumer Rights in IndiaOn 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, consumers all over India (and the world) have celebrated March 15 as the National Consumers’ Day.

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 the right to basic needs, right to representation, right to consumer education, and right to healthy environment.

In the Consumer Protection Act 1986 in India, six of the following 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 labelled 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 labelling 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 litre. 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. Consumer daddy 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 Consumer daddy 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.