By Srinath Sridharan
Despite many policy efforts and grievance redressal mechanisms, the overall time consumed in addressing consumer grievances is still high in India. As of December 2022, the state commissions had 112,000 pending cases, while district commissions had 429,000. The national commission had a pendency rate of 20.5% for the 106,088 cases filed with it, while the pendency rate for the 35 state and 637 district commissions stood at 22%. In terms of case disposition, the national commission has disposed of more cases than were instituted in it in just three out of the past 16 years. This means that for 13 years, the cases instituted were more than the cases that it disposed. Additionally, ten states had a pendency rate of 30% or higher, with the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir and Bihar having a pendency rate of over 50%.
Ironically, the Consumer Protection Act 2019 stipulates that the admissibility of a complaint should be decided within 21 days, and most states don’t even abide by this provision, breaking the basic tenet of public governance accountability. The consumer is the prosaic king in the 21st century, but when it comes to consumer dispute resolution, the kingly consumer often becomes a pauper, running from pillar to post without resolution in sight.
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Several factors have led to this situation. One is the vacancies in the consumer commissions. Eight of the 35 state commissions did not have a president, and 85 of the 637 district forums were without a president until December 2022. The issue of pendency within the consumer dispute redressal system has even been brought to the attention of the Supreme Court, which self-initiated a petition in 2021. But when would that petition itself get addressed?
The Integrated Grievance Address Mechanism (INGRAM) portal, under the aegis of the department of consumer affairs, acts as a central system for lodging consumer grievances. Other options include directly approaching the District, State, or National Consumer Redressal Commission, depending on the quantum of the dispute. The department of consumer affairs has undertaken many initiatives, including the organisation of national Lok Adalats in partnership with the National Legal Services Authority. Furthermore, the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, under Chapter V, has also established mediation as a formal method of dispute resolution for consumer disputes.
The pendency in the dispute redressal system causes mental, financial, and emotional hardships for consumers and requires reimagining or redesigning the current dispute resolution framework. There is an urgent need to lessen the mediation of the procedural, proper, and process brokers in the system.
Merely adding on to the current frameworks won’t solve this backlog. Delayed resolutions erode public trust and confidence, not only in the system but also in consumption as a utilitarian value. With solid credentials and experience of the Indian precedence of using PPP for developing digital-public-goods, we should harness private innovation and leverage the public institutional framework to deliver better outcomes for consumers.
One way of achieving this efficiency is by establishing a tech-capabilities-led National Consumer Lok Adalat helpline. Common queries may be automated, and with Al/ML tools, automation can get smarter by the day. This would help synchronise efforts between the complainants, companies, commissions, legal services authorities, private alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and online dispute resolution (ODR) agencies, and NGOs during the process of Lok Adalats. This would allow nodal officers to access data analytics capabilities through the system and probably even have common solutions for frequently raised complaints. This can transform Lok Adalats from being perceived as ‘slow-coaches’ to actual effective redressal mechanisms.
The devil is in the data (governance). In current data collection in many of the systems, even basic contact details of parties involved in disputes are missing. By making it mandatory to collect all KYC details of the parties, communication time can be saved. Similarly, institutional parties like banks, e-commerce entities, and large corporations can appoint nodal officers for speedier communication, negotiations, and settlements, which will translate into faster complaint disposals.
Finally, the introduction of technology can also play a role in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the settlement of consumer disputes. This should include the use of refined consent and listing mechanisms and the implementation of an online facility for hearings and withdrawal of cases.
Initiatives like Lok Adalat and mediation are highly contingent on effective implementation on-ground. If not implemented smoothly, they can become sources of high pendencies and inefficiencies, resulting in a mere transfer of unresolved cases in the dispute resolution ecosystem from consumer commissions to Lok Adalats and mediation forums. The commissions, across sectors, must adopt standard procedures for resolving disputes by engaging with private platforms that work in this area, such as those providing services for online mediation of consumer disputes. The government must leverage the infrastructure and platforms already established by ADR and ODR institutions through a PPP model and treat them as a digital public good.
Currently available private ODR platforms leverage multichannel communication methods and can provide multilingual benefits, making it easier for consumers from different backgrounds to participate in the dispute resolution process. Building a PPP facility with them will facilitate quicker and justice-oriented resolution, which facilitates communication between parties from diverse geographies, demographics, and socio-economic backgrounds, thereby making the process of dispute resolution inclusive and accessible. This approach can also significantly reduce the costs associated with physical dispute redressal mechanisms, including travel expenses and time.
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A developed nation must have its consumers’ trust and confidence and allow ease in getting their grievances redressed quickly. In this Amrit Kaal journey, we have to embrace technology and use the services of expertise available in the public and private spheres to build a consumer grievance system that would solve disputes within a set timeline. But then, will anyone not only monitor but actually take up timely grievance redressal as their responsibility?
The writer is author, policy researcher, and corporate advisor
Twitter: @ssmumbai