Formality of celebrating National Consumers Rights Day on 24thDecember Country every year fulfils formality of celebrating National Consumers Rights Day on 24th December photo-publicity of political rulers through costly full-page advertisements in newspapers but without announcing any new features of consumers’ interests. It will be better if Union Ministry for Consumer Affairs may instead take immediate measures to protect consumers from anti-public tactics of influential and dominating manufacturers’ lobby: • It should be made compulsory to pack all packaged commodities only in packs of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 gms/mltrs/kgs/ltrs to avoid gimmick packaging to befool consumers by manufacturers. Goods packed by numbers should likewise be only in packs of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 and similar multiples of 1000 abolishing packing by dozens etc. • Presently manufacturers deliberately leave a big gap between printed Maximum Retail Price (MRP) or list-price and actual ex-factory price of commodities mainly to be used as bribe for purchase-officers in offices including those in government and public-sector. Many a times, actual ex-factory price is just one third of printed MRP or list price. Union government should impose excise-duty on basis of printed MRP or list price rather than ex-factory price on all commodities rather than a few selected ones as at present • India should follow South Africa in extending ‘Right-To-Information’ Act in private sector too on companies with turnover over some specified amount. • Ensure adequate supply of coins in denominations of rupees one and five which are always in short supply and sold at high premium of 15-20 percent. • Union government should impose condition on manufacturers-importers of computer-printers for compulsory manufacture of ink-cartridges in India by any desiring manufacturers. Indian companies should also be authorised refill ink-cartridges without affecting warranty of printers because of using refilled ink-cartridges. Ink-cartridges costing several thousands of rupees are refilled in just rupees 200-300. Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) should call meeting of printer-manufacturers including representatives of foreign companies to minimise types of ink-cartridges. It is not difficult to standardise so many ink-cartridges in a limited number to be used uniformly in different models of inkjet and laser printers. Such standardisation will heavily bring down cost of ink-cartridges. • Legal-sized papers should be banned in India requesting courts to adopt most common A-4 size paper (29.5 cms x 21 cms) because normally used domestic photocopiers are equipped to handle only upto A-4 size paper. Colour-code of paper to be used in courts can be different like green is used in Madras High Court. • BIS should standardize common accessories like tyres and batteries so that same parts may be used in different models of cars produced by various car-manufacturers. It will heavily bring down cost of consumables through their bumper production in extra large numbers in some limited sizes and specifications. It can be achieved by merging some nearing sizes and specifications. Such guidelines though also mentioned in auto-policy of Union government, are never followed in actual practice. • Too many variants of any car-model confuse customers. Basically there must be only two variants (apart from the third with automatic gears), one basic Lx for economy customers and the other Vx with all company-fitted extra accessories and luxuries for affording customers. There is no sense in having too many confusing variants like Lx, Lxi, Vx, Vxi for same model. • Differential rates of excise-duty on cars should be according to ex-factory price of cars rather than linear dimension of cars to make car-manufacturers compete in providing the best in cars with lower excise-duty segments. S.P.Gupta,IAS (Retd.)
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 10:31:09 +0000
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