Thinking big: Which? on how Right Choice will build consumer rights in India

Helen Parker from Which? blogs on a new fund aimed at promoting consumer rights in India. 

Why should you read the fine print when shopping online? How can you best care for an elderly relative? And which ice creams failed hygiene standards when we tested them?

These, along with a bumper Diwali shopping guide, are just a few of the questions answered in the latest issue of Right Choice, the independent consumer guide that offers  Indian consumers 'Unbiased, expert advice. Always.'

Right Choice is an Indian operation, based in Mumbai, and powered by Which?, the UK's largest consumer organisation and a founder member of Consumers International.

Right Choice is almost five years old and has 30,000 subscribers. Its ambition, though, is to reach hundreds of thousands, maybe eventually millions, of Indian consumers.

We want Right Choice to offer them the type of independent, expert advice that UK consumers have been able to rely on since Which? itself was formed by a group of entrepreneurial friends in London in 1957, friends who were themselves inspired by  Consumer Reports in the US.

So why did Which? set up Right Choice? And why are we now setting up a Right Choice fund offering grants totaling $50,000 (US) to support other Indian organisations working to promote consumer rights in India?

With Right Choice, we want to see if we can use the strength and know-how that Which? has built up over the last 60 years to increase consumer power in India.

It has been a challenging journey. But we knew that was likely at the start; building any new business in today's crowded consumer marketplace is a time consuming and expensive business.

It's particularly challenging for publishing businesses built on the no-advertising model that independent consumer organisations favour as a way to build trust and ensure that they speak as they find.

Right Choice has learned many lessons over the last five years and the excellent team in Mumbai will undoubtedly learn many more before Right Choice realises its full potential.

But we found early on that there is a real appetite among India's fast-growing middle class for the type of independent, research-based advice that it offers.

As a consumer organisation, Right Choice has started where Which? did - offering information and advice.

But, as we grow, we also want to support other Indian organisations that have the ambition and determination to promote consumer rights in India in other ways, including through campaigning and advocacy.

As with Which?'s mission in the UK, Right Choice wants to make Indian consumers as powerful as the organisations they have to deal with in their daily lives. It's a big ambition. But then consumer organisations are used to thinking big.

Consumer awareness is on the rise in India, but it still needs serious attention

George Cheriyan from CI member CUTS International discusses the results of a recent survey showing the poor state of consumer awareness in India.

Even after 25 years of the Consumer Protection Act (CoPRA) in India, only 20 percent of consumers know about it and only 42 percent have heard about consumer rights. Fifty-three percent of consumers are unaware of the country’s redress system, the objective of which is to give consumers access to simple, speedy and inexpensive redress of their grievances.

These are some of the key findings of a national survey conducted by CUTS International as part of a project entitled ‘Indian Consumers in the New Age: A Forward Looking Agenda to Address the Concerns of the Common People’ (ConsumersUp).

The purpose of the study is to get a closer look at the consumer’s level of awareness of their basic rights and to present a forward-looking outline to the Indian government to help guide ongoing action based on the recommendations.

The study has been conducted in the backdrop of the establishment of a working group to give input into the United Nations Guidelines on Consumer Protection (UNGCP) . The UNGCP are an international reference point for the consumer movement and Consumers International will be working with its members over the coming months to feed in proposals on how the guidelines can better address the concerns of today's consumers.

The CUTS study also shows that, of the 47 percent of consumers who do know about India’s external redress mechanisms, only 28 percent believe that it is easily accessible to common people. Sixty-seven percent of the complaints are redressed beyond the stipulated time frame of 90 days or 150 days, whichever is applicable.

Ninety-three percent of consumers have never made a formal complaint. And of the seven percent who have filed a complaint, only 0.3% have achieved redress. If this is an indication of consumers losing faith in an existing system, then the matter needs serious attention.

Still, these percentages are encouraging because compared with the situation five years back, the trend is upward. For example, a survey by CoPRA commissioned by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India from May 2006 revealed that only 18 percent of consumers were aware of CoPRA and 34 percent of consumer rights.

The key findings of the CUTS survey, along with eight chapters on each of the consumer rights and a synthesis chapter, are part of the ‘State of the Indian Consumer 2012’ report released in New Delhi on 11 October 2012 by the Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Prof. K.V. Thomas.

India debates influx of big supermarkets

Feelings are polarized in India about foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail trading. Alok Gupta from CI member Consumers Forum in India gives five reasons why FDI in the retail sector is good for India and its consumers.

1. Expansion of the market is good for consumers 

Our experience from the entry of Indian companies such as Reliance, Airtel and Big Bazaar or of multi-national companies such as PepsiCo, Adidas, etc. into the retail market has been excellent. These players have increased customer’s choice and competition.

Availability and choice under one roof and discounts on MRP were unheard of prior to their entry some eight years back.

With foreign direct investment (FDI), globally-prominent and popular single-brand retailers like IKEA, Apple, Nike and multi-brand retailers such as Walmart (USA), Tesco (UK), Metro (Germany) and Carrefour (France) will be able to open up shops here and, as a result, introduce world-class products to Indian consumer. Also it will give Indian products the opportunity to reach global retailers (and buyers) for their marketing.

2. A growing Indian economy needs a growing retail sector   

The retail sector of India is vast, and has huge potential for growth and development, as the majority of its constituents are unorganised.

The retail sector of India handles about $250 billion every year, and is expected to reach $660 billion by the year 2015. The organised retail sector of India is set to grow  at the rate of 15-20% every year, and will reach the level of $100 billion by the year 2015.

It is noteworthy that the retail sector of India contributes about 15% to the national GDP, and employs a massive workforce, second only to the agriculture sector. India's growing economy with a rate of approximately 8% per year needs a matching expansion of the retail sector.

3. A strong retail sector will strengthen the Indian economy   

FDI in multi-brand retail notification states that foreign investors should make a minimum investment of $100 million, 50% of which should be invested in back-end infrastructure. 

It states that investments made towards processing, manufacturing, distribution, design improvement, quality-control, cold chain, warehouses and packaging constitute ‘back-end’.

Best practice of the multinationals in processing, cold chains, transportation and the like can be emulated by other players. This investment would strengthen the Indian economy and provide opportunities for consumers.

4. Promote acceptability of Indian products and services abroad and further investment in other sectors       

India’s opening up of its retail and other sectors will be matched by a similar response from other nations to Indian products and services.

Besides, it will boost India as a safe and  progressive economy. We need a revival in investor confidence domestically and globally.

This will integrate the Indian economy with the global economy and India’s success will be of interest to the rest the world.

5. The Government’s right to intervene   

Multi-brand retail trading is classified as a service and, therefore, covered by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). India has not undertaken any commitments in this area under GATS.

The Bilateral Investment Promotion & Protection Agreement (BIPA) was a post-establishment investment agreement. This implied that once an investor entered the country, that investor must be treated the same as a domestic investor unless the limitations to national treatment were clearly spelt out at the pre-establishment stage.

The FDI policy is a pre-establishment instrument and, therefore, not covered by BIPA. However, the Indian Government retains the right to impose necessary conditions in case certain malpractices occur in the future.

Crowd sourcing and consumer rights — a powerful combination

Julianna Smith, Policy Advocate for Consumer Focus in the UK, looks at the possibilities of crowd-sourced maps for the consumer movement.

Last year a web map appeared that displayed real time reports of people in India who were experiencing a power cut. It came about after Twitter users – fed up with the unreliable power supply during the summer – began a discussion with the hashtag #powercutindia. 

They used it to report details such as the location and duration of the power outage and whether it was planned or not. Given the high response rate, some of the tweeters took the initiative to feed the tweets into an infographic that collected and mapped this information, thereby highlighting the need for investment.

The map has since expanded to include many other methods of reporting and has helped to develop a better understanding of electricity demand by exposing areas where there is a need for investment in power production and distribution. 

The map creators also aimed to use the map to draw more attention to the rural areas of India which they say have been previously neglected in public discussions. This type of interactive map is often referred to as a ‘crowd-sourced map’.
The power cuts in India map is one of many examples that demonstrate how crowd sourcing supports empowerment and helps consumer representatives better understand and respond to emerging issues. 

 Other recent examples include the London Borough of Hackney’s Citizens Advice Bureau’s housing benefit map showing the effects of the changes in legislation to housing benefits and BBC’s 3G mobile data network crowd-sourcing map which challenges the availability rates that had originally been suggested. 

A new world of opportunity

Further exploration of cases like these can be found in our new report Putting problems on the map . 

It illustrates how data collected in this manner can complement and enhance traditional forms of intelligence gathering.

Interactive maps offer the opportunity for consumers to report their experiences. The geographical element means these maps can work as powerful visibility tools. Common features, such as the clusters of ‘flagged’ reports and the ability to filter reports according to the map’s key (for example, by company), mean that displaying data in this way paints clear pictures of emerging problems or hubs of activity.

This type of tool also produces real-time data. Not only can this result in a powerful early warning system, but it visualises the changes in consumer sentiment and the prevalence of an issue over time. 

Generated data can also be stored and re-used for further analysis. For instance, other data sets can be plotted on the same map in the form of additional layers as a way of investigating possible correlations. Maptube is a good example of a tool designed for this process.

With these online maps, organisations can communicate among themselves as well as directly with consumers to capture information on the specifics of a consumer issue – be it a roll-out, a collective buying initiative or customer service related issues. 

For example, bodies such as Trading Standards could use this type of tool to help address interregional problems and determine how to co-ordinate responses in each of the affected regions. This is valuable as many issues surrounding consumer detriment spread across local authority boundaries.

For other users, this service would function as a valuable tool to raise awareness of matters affecting their local area. Importantly, all of this can be achieved through user-friendly services that in some instances are more straightforward, convenient and powerful than conventional channels.

Since several of our own policy areas would benefit from mapped consumer-contributed data, we are in the process of trialling this technology with the hope of using it in future projects. Issues we have in mind include: collaborative buying of renewable technologies, community or area-based roll-outs of new policy initiatives and mis-selling.

There appear to be many advantages to consumer crowd-sourced maps. They can amplify consumer voices and present the opportunity for co-operation between consumers and the various bodies that work on their behalf. 

The intelligence that these maps capture can help bring greater transparency and scrutiny to provider performances; and can support consumers in collaborating on peer-led responses. In doing so, they form part of wider trends in the new and powerful forms of consumer empowerment initiatives that are driven by social technologies.

Build your own map

If you are interested in setting up your own map, you can go to Crowdmap.  Crowdmap is designed and built by the people behind Ushahidi, a platform that was originally built to crowd-source crisis information. 

Crowdmap allows you to set up your own map of Ushahidi without having to install it on your own web server. It is fast, free and easy to use; you sign up, choose a location and start plotting reports, information and other data right away.

mySociety , an organisation whose mission is to help people become more powerful in the civic and democratic parts of their lives through digital means, are also helping those in other countries to set up new web applications. They have developed free and open-source software for individuals and organisations who want to build copies of the sites they build.

FixMyStreet and MapIt are now available for people around the world to use, making it easier than ever to reuse code and set up new sites that help people fix things that matter to them.