Q.Explain the role of consumer organisations and NGOs in protecting and promoting consumer's interest.

Consumer organisations and NGOs act as the bridge between individual consumers and the larger system of markets, laws, and businesses. Their primary role is to educate consumers about their rights and responsibilities, making people aware of what they are entitled to under laws like the Consumer Protection Act. They also test products and services independently, publish findings in magazines or reports, and expose unfair trade practices such as adulteration, overpricing, or misleading advertisements. …

The marketplace has never been a perfectly level playing field. A single consumer, buying a pressure cooker or a tube of toothpaste, faces a manufacturer with far greater resources, legal expertise and advertising muscle. This is where consumer organisations and NGOs step in. They are non-governmental, non-profit bodies with a constitution of their own, free from government interference, that exist to promote the welfare of consumers and to protect them from exploitation.

Think of them as the consumer's collective voice. An individual who receives a defective product often feels helpless, because fighting a large company alone is costly and slow. A consumer organisation can pool resources, act on behalf of many affected people, and apply pressure that a single person never could. The chapter sets out the main functions such organisations and NGOs perform.

• Educating the general public about consumer rights by organising training programmes, seminars and workshops.
• Publishing periodicals and other publications to spread knowledge about consumer problems, legal reporting, the reliefs available and other matters of interest.
• Carrying out comparative testing of consumer products in accredited laboratories, to test the relative qualities of competing brands, and publishing the results for the benefit of consumers.
• Encouraging consumers to strongly protest and take action against unscrupulous, exploitative and unfair trade practices of sellers.
• Providing legal assistance to consumers by way of aid, legal advice and the like in seeking a legal remedy.
• Filing complaints in the appropriate consumer courts on behalf of consumers.
• Taking the initiative in filing cases in consumer courts in the interest of the general public, and not for any single individual.