Economics [2 Mark Question Answer]

RTI means Right to Information, under it any citizen of India may request information from a public authority.

Consumer's awareness means consciousness of the consumer towards his/her rights and duties.

Exploitation by Retailers
(i) Goods sold to consumers are sometimes not measured or weighted correctly.
(ii) Sometimes, sub-standard goods are sold to the consumers. In the name of genuine goods, duplicate goods are sold to them.
(iii) In costly edible items such as oil, ghee and spices, adulteration is made to earn higher profits.
Explotation by Producers
(i) The sellers sometimes do not provide the satisfactory after-sale service in case of many high cost durable items such as electronic equipments, cars etc.
(ii) Large companies sometimes give false and misleading information.

COPRA denotes Consumer Protection Act.
COPRA gives various rights to the consumers e.g. right to be protected and marketing of goods and services, right to be informed about the product.
RTI means Right to Information, under it any citizen of India may request information from a public authority.

Duties of a consumer
(i) He should look at the quality of the product as well as on guarantee or warrantee period.
(ii) He should ask for cash memo and warranty card.
(iii) He should be aware of his rights..
(iv) He should know how to make a complaint
To conclude, we say that an alert consumer or a safe consumer.

Standardisation of product refers to the process of implementing and developing technical standards to ensure high quality of a products for the assurance of the consumers.
Example : Agmark certifies the quality of agricultural produce in India.

Mixing the substandard items with food item is called food adulteration. For example, mixing of toned milk with pure milk.
Two Harmful Effects of Food Adulteration :
(i) It causes damage to human body
(ii) It results in loss of nutrition.
The government has passed an Act to control food adulteration.

A consumer is a person who takes decisions about what to buy for satisfaction of his wants.
→ Importances education involves informing buyers about the services or products they propose to buy.
→ Consumer education helps protect consumers from business malpractices, such as false advertisements.
→ It also gives them information to make sound decisions based on facts.

Two/three reasons for Consumer Exploitation in India :
(i) Consumers in India lack information about the products.
(ii) Consumers are exploited when there are few powerful producers/sellers. Absence of adequate competition causes exploitation of consumers.
(iii) Producers/sellers provide limited information about the different aspects of the product.

Growth of Consumer Awareness in India: In India, the concept of consumer protection is not new. However, organised and systematic movement to safeguard the interest of consumers is a recent phenomenon. This developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the growing liberalisation of the economy. The government legislated a law in the year 1986 known as the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

(i) Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
(ii) Indian Standards Institutions (ISI)

Consumer awareness is an act of making sure that the consumer or buyer is aware of the information about products, services and consumer rights.
The reasons are :
(i) To protect and promot consumer interest.
(ii) to safeguard consumer rights.
(iii) To prevent consumer exploitation from unfair trade, practices.
(iv) to represent consumer interest before the government.
(v) To provide a meaningful consumer protection through proper legislation.

Consumer exploitation means taking undue advantage of consumers by the sellers for their own benefit.