The definition of consumerism has changed as the world scouts through technological leaps, digital deliveries, virtual reality, booming entrepreneurship and compound collaborations. All these undertakings have opened gates to many new facets of consumerism, presenting both opportunities and alarms. In 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approx. 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide, thanks to the pandemic-induced digital activities around the globe. This figure could reach about 7.4 trillion dollars by 2025. While non-physical buying like e-commerce, social media shops, stocks & insurance, tickets & bookings, infotainment subscriptions, e-property dealings etc. grows outrageously, the absence of centralised prescribed rights of the digital buyers & consumers is adding to the backlog of cases and issues which may jeopardise global future endeavours.
The requirements are not just regarding not just the grievance reddressal of the e-buyer(s) but also their data protection and digital security. One could refer to the ‘Right to be forgotten’ on these lines, which empowers individuals to ask organisations to delete their personal data. The concept has been discussed and put into practice in several jurisdictions, including Argentina, the European Union (EU), and the Philippines. The European Court of Justice, in fact, legally solidified the “right to be forgotten” as a human right when the court ruled against Google in the ‘Costeja’ case in May 2014. Such a right can be a good point to start with for India too, which however, has much more complex systems, restrained resources and a flood of data breach cases waiting for just a proper redressal system to be in place.
The recent release of the detailed guidelines by RBI are an effort worth appreciating. The guidelines aim to strengthen India’s digital payments structure and improve security, control and compliance among banks, gateways, wallets and other non-banking entities that are contributing for India to meet its goal of going cashless. The new rules come at a time when India’s payments ecosystem is also vulnerable to frauds and cyber breaches.
RBI’s efforts for consumer protection had begun in 1995 with the setting up of the Complaints Redressal Cell. Later, three Ombudsman schemes of RBI namely the Banking Ombudsman Scheme (2006), the Ombudsman Scheme for Non-Banking Financial Companies (2018) and Ombudsman Scheme for Digital Transactions (2019) were launched. These three were merged to launch a more systematic and centralised scheme i.e. the Reserve Bank – Integrated Ombudsman Scheme (RB-IOS) in November 2021. Some other steps by RBI include launch Complaint Management System (2019) and formulation of the Charter of Customer Rights, etc.
When it comes to traditional buying also, India has taken various measures to safeguard the consumer rights of the citizens. At top of this, is the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 that provides for the establishment of three-tier quasi-judicial machinery, called Consumer Commissions, to provide simple and speedy redressal of consumer disputes. Further, provisions have been made for e-filing and e-payment, video conferencing based hearing, court-monitored mediation, etc. to facilitate early disposal of cases. The Act also lays down provisions for E-Commerce Rules, 2020 and Direct Selling Rules, 2021. As per the latest data available, there are 632 Consumer Commissions operational in the country. 2,83,889 cases were disposed of from 2019 to 2021. As for the enhancement of consumer grievance redressal mechanism, the Department of Consumer Affairs has expanded “E-Daakhil” facility across 11 more states/UTs in the last one year (facility available now in total 23 states/UTs). Helpline number of the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal ( i.e. 155260) has also been added to the NCH portal for filing grievances relating to financial cyber frauds.
SHARE
