Alive, but not kicking

In theory, the consumer is king. The evidence of this is available every time we see ads announcing price cuts, discounts, and enhanced product features to entice the consumer.

But some ads that induce customers to buy also end up exploiting them through misrepresentation or even fraud. At which point, the customer is reduced from king to supplicant.

The vast majority of aggrieved consumers, of course, take things lying down. They either don't know how to seek justice or do not bother to do so.

Nobody can blame them, for the reality is that many people who seek justice through consumer courts""the official grievance redressal forums ""do not always return satisfied. The settlement of disputes is either inordinately delayed or the compensation awarded is inadequate, or both.

The basic objective of creating a network of consumer courts was to allow wronged consumers to get speedy, cheap, and hassle-free justice without having to knock on the doors of already overburdened civil courts.

But consumer courts, too, have tended to function like civil courts, defeating the very purpose for which they were set up. The malfunctioning of the consumer grievance redressal system is not entirely of its own making.

The state governments, under whom this system works, are largely to blame. For one thing, the network of consumer courts is still underdeveloped.

Many consumer forums, specially at the district level, do not have even adequate facilities in terms of space, manpower, and other functional support systems and material. Vacancies for the posts of president and members of these forums are not filled up in time.

The recommendations of the selection committees that suggest these appointments are often overlooked by state governments. In some states, the remuneration paid to members of consumer forums is just a token sum of Rs 2,000""4,000. This dissuades competent people from serving on these forums.

Many states have not made full use of the one-time financial assistance offered by the Centre for strengthening the consumer protection infrastructure. The utilisation of this fund is less than 75 per cent. Little wonder the volume of pending cases continues to swell. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, over 30,000 consumer cases are pending. The track records of some of the other states, including Maharashtra and Rajasthan, are no better, with pending lists being in excess of 10,000 cases.

The obvious remedy is to do more of the right things in all areas. This means getting both the Centre and states to put in additional resources to make the machinery work, setting up additional benches of consumer courts, especially in states with a long list of pending cases, and speeding up the appointment of people to man these grievance-redressal forums.

The process of candidate selection should obviously begin even before vacancies arise in these courts. But none of this will fall into place without a robust consumer movement. A concerted push from below is needed to make the government-sponsored consumer-redressal mechanism alive and kicking.