CONSUMERISM

&
CONSUMER
PROTECTION

Submitt
ed 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
 Consumerism
Consumerism 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 India
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, 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.