The Department of Consumer Affairs launches various initiatives to ensure a digital world that everybody can trust
“Government is already on the right track in facilitating the consumers to harness the full benefits of digitisation and putting in place sufficient safeguards against risks associated with the online world,” said Ram Vilas Paswan, Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, in his presidential address on the occasion of the World Consumer Rights Day 2017. Paswan added that this is the age of technology, and educating the consumer and redressing his grievances in the digital world is a challenge. E-commerce companies are increasingly coming under our national consumer helpline convergence programme where consumer grievances entered online, are being addressed expeditiously.
The Department of Consumer Affairs, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs Food and Public Distribution, celebrated the World Consumer Rights Day 2017 with the theme Consumer Rights in digital age. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister law and Justice, Electronics and IT, was the chief guest of the event.
Paswan mentioned that packaged commodities rules are being amended to mandate that e-commerce companies should display the mandatory declarations on their sites if they are offering packaged commodities for sale on online platforms. The minister suggested that both ministries, the consumer affairs and the information technology, have to work in tandem to create digital awareness programmes and urged the NASSCOM to encourage companies to adhere to a code of ethics where they do not hide in fine print the consumer’s agreement to share his private data and make him sign inadvertently. Paswan emphasised that openness of the Internet, the lack of identification and the low level of users’ understanding of security; particularly among the first time users is a major area that requires focused efforts.
Ravi Shankar Prasad in his speech laid stressed upon focusing on a digitally empowered society instead of digitally enabled society. Prasad said that the focus of the government is digital governance, and service delivery systems using social media for good governance. He said that all information supporting public cause should be in public domain.
The National Building Code was launched on the occasion. The code marks culmination of efforts of more than 100 experts who worked for more than two years. The code contains provisions on use of new/innovative materials and technologies and on prefabricated construction techniques that can give fillip to speedier construction to meet the objectives of Housing for All by 2022. It also contains administrative aspects prescribing norms for time bound building approval based on integrated approval process from all concerned agencies through single window clearance approach and adopting online process, thereby promoting Ease of Doing Business.
New initiatives of the department on consumer grievance redressal and consumer education, leveraging new age technologies were launched which included a hindi portal and web chat for grievance redressal, mobile application for CONFONET (consumer for a network, a project that connects all Fora in the country and monitor the cases online) to enable track cases online, and model approval for legal metrology , and initiatives of Voluntary Consumer Organizations (VCOs) which included the survey report on consumer safety, QR code App for detecting fake/spurious products, and awards to five states Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana for their consumer friendly practices.
R. Chandershekar, President, NASSCOM in his theme address briefed about the impact of digital technology on everything that is around us, consumer behaviour and lifestyle. He mentioned about new digital technology that is riding on the internet and the importance of benefits and perquisites that accrue to the consumers, if this are being used positively for consumer information and education. He mentioned in this connection about user reviews of products in social media as best consumer protection channels. He mentioned that the important thing is to convert the digital technology to the benefit of consumers’ information and education as an aware consumer is best protected. He suggested that we should look into the best international practices on how security breaches in the digital area were tackled and minimised rather than going for a trial and error method. He said that just as a consumer is able to buy products online sitting at home, he should be able to file complaints and get redress in same manner.