Frederick Noronha
It’s the type of book(let) that gets thrust into your hands; and that’s exactly how it reached me. But that, and the fact that this work was published really quite some time back, doesn’t make it any less relevant and important to our discussion today.
This modest 46-page publication (it wouldn’t be considered a ‘book’ by some definitions) is titled ‘Consumer Welfare and Protection: Rights and Wrong’. Its lengthy subtitle goes on to add: “Tips to consumers about consumer rights, protection and welfare, with special emphasis on do’s/don’ts and responsibilities.”
(Incidentally, there is no single worldwide definition of a book. But standards in publishing and libraries tend to distinguish a book from a pamphlet or booklet by the number of pages. The most commonly cited definition is the UNESCO standard, which defines a book as a “non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages”, excluding the cover pages; a publication of 5-48 pages is a pamphlet. That of fewer than five pages is generally considered a leaflet.)
This work has been authored by SU Kamat, then Head of the Department of Mathematics at DCT’s Dhempe College. We learn that it grew out of training workshops that two college professors (SU Kamat and KS Govekar) attended. The information in the book aims to “reach and educate not only the members in the college but beyond the college”.
Kamat’s inspiration came from his banker-father (who built an interest in unfair trade practices), global consumer activist Ralph Nader, and also Goa’s consumer activist Roland Martins. He acknowledges the information gained from others which, he says, he took “liberties to reorganise, edit, cut, caste and even mutilate” to suit the scheme he had in mind. But, in the interest of sharing such useful information (and with due credits given by him) one can hardly complain here.
One of the ways a text can be judged is to see how it ages. Obviously, some specific info (names, addresses) would have changed with time. But many issues and principles remain, important and relevant.
In seven short ‘chapters’, the text introduces concepts of relevance to all consumers. Including weights and measures; food; drugs; services sector; consumer disputes and redressal; and some NGOs involved in the field. The introduction focuses on wider issues, including ‘who is not a consumer’.
(In case this left you wondering, a non-consumer is: a person who purchases goods for a commercial purpose or for resale, or without any consideration, or any person who gets services free of charge, or as a contract of personal services.)
The texts are short and curt. This helps it to stay to-the-point and offers easy explanations. For instance, amidst a struggle with widely fluctuating power supply these days, one learns that an electricity provider (whether private sector or public) can be held responsible for any deficiency of service (or unfair trade practice) under the Consumer Protection Act.
There are other informative points here, about unfair disconnections (due to non-payment of bills), the duty of the electricity department to provide working meters, and of the consumer not to tamper with the same, etc.
We get a brief overview of some laws which affect consumers, the rights of consumers, and implied conditions and warranties in a commercial transaction.
Weights and measures is a topic in itself; it might seem not very important, but the small things add up. One might wonder about the logic avoiding traditional (“old”) units of measure, like seer, raath, foot, etc, and buying land or plots for housing or a building only in square metres or hectares (not acres, yards, feet and inches).
It’s true that these forms of counting have been phased out, but the harshness with which the old is sought to be hounded out makes one feel that we sometimes have a degree of colonial time cut-and-paste approaches going on here.
How does one deal with jewellers and ration shops? Did you know there was a concept of Class-I or Class-II weighing scales, and those weighing precious metals need to even protect their scales from the breeze?
Food adulteration is another issue of concern to us all. From adulteration to misbranding, there are some useful pointers here. The simple tests to detect common food adulteration make sense. so does the table pointing to the possible ill-effects of consuming adulterated food.
Information about medicines, spread over six pages, offers deep insight into understanding a complex and technical field. What is a “drug” is the first issue tackled, before shifting to labelling. Schedule X drugs fall in a separate category, and eye drops require specific labelling too.
Storage conditions, expiry dates, and self-medication are issues touched on. There are some ‘dos’ which need to be kept in mind with reference to medicines.
Services are another large area, affecting many. From banks (some of which can be a headache, while others are surprisingly efficient) to postal services and electricity.
Telephones have changed from what these were two decades ago. But couriers, airways, insurance, education, doctors, advocates and computer professionals are what we encounter so very regularly. You might not guess that the liability of the postal department was limited under the (colonial-times) Indian Post Office Act, 1898. It was changed only a couple of years back or so.
On the other hand, you don’t need to have an account with a particular bank to take action against it. But it’s enough if you avail of the services of that bank. Anyone buying an airline ticket is treated as a consumer; except a ticketing agent. Yet a flight cancellation is not a ‘deficiency of service’ as these things can happen for no fault of anyone.
Imagine education coming under consumer laws too; what happens in the case of paper leaks? One can only guess that many changes have occurred in the field of medicine and doctors over the past few years.
In a sense, this work is a welcome addition, though subsequent updates would have been very welcome. Consumer Rights—like other fields including Economics and Political Sciences—are surely among the subjects where Goa appears relatively under-researched compared with its rich historiography. There are other gaps too.
There is considerable scope for serious work on Goa’s political economy (tourism, mining, real estate, casinos, remittances, land markets and the informal economy), contemporary political science (voting behaviour, party systems, panchayats, communal politics, identity and governance), its consumer culture, public health and healthcare economics, education and private schooling, among other fields.
Likewise, one can find only a limited number of studies on Goa’s migration and demographic change, labour and the informal workforce, women’s economic participation, environmental economics, housing and urbanisation, fisheries and agriculture, the economics of religious institutions, even media and journalism. Goa’s digital culture, disability studies, aging and retirement and the sociology of the Goan diaspora definitely deserve more attention than these fields currently get.
Even in fields that have been studied, there is often a lack of sustained, data-driven longitudinal research. In the years after 1961, there were quite a few studies on Goa’s past history; but now one encounters limited academic work about how Goa’s economy, politics and society have actually transformed over the past six decades.
What are the other books on consumer rights linked to Goa? One can’t think of any; maybe one should blame forgetfulness. Long back, Nandini Sahai (formerly of the International Centre Goa) had co-authored a book on the Right to Information, a close topic, but not the same.
Distributed by GOACAN (P.O. Box 187, Margao 403601), reach out for a copy. Marked ‘For private circulation only’, this useful publication comes without an obvious price tag. It’s still the kind of text that should be seen as essential reading material by every consumer, and person, who’d like to empower themselves. With the knowledge that matters.
