This year’s theme, ‘A Just Transition to Sustainable Lifestyles,’ reflects the urgent need to make sustainable and healthy lifestyle choices available, accessible and affordable for all consumers
Having practices in place to protect the spirit of business and ensure a transparent and fair marketplace has become essential today since commercial motives have overtaken the idea of welfare. Serving as an essential reminder of the need to uphold consumer rights and protection, World Consumer Rights Day is observed annually on 15 March.
The theme for World Consumer Rights Day 2025 is, ‘A Just Transition to Sustainable Lifestyles.’ The theme reflects the urgent need to make sustainable and healthy lifestyle choices available, accessible, and affordable for all consumers – while ensuring that these transitions uphold people’s basic rights and needs.
Aimed at empowering consumers, strengthening grievance redressal mechanisms and ensuring a transparent and fair marketplace, the Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India has introduced several new initiatives and policies. As per an official statement from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, major developments included improvements in ecommerce regulations, digital consumer protection, product safety standards and sustainable consumption initiatives in 2024.
Consumer Welfare Fund
To provide financial assistance to promote and protect the welfare of consumers and strengthen the consumer movement in the country, funds are given to the states/ union territories (UTs_ as seed money as one time grant on a 75:25 basis (90:10 in the case of special category states/UTs) to create a consumer welfare (corpus) fund.
During the financial year 2024-25 (FY25), Rs 32.68 crore have been released to various states for the establishment or enhancement of their respective funds as central government share. As such, out of 28 States and 8 UTs, 24 States and one UT have established the consumer welfare (corpus) funds, as per the Ministry’s statement.
New Ecommerce Guidelines
With rising competition in the rapidly growing ecommerce ecosystem, consumers can be prey to financial frauds. To safeguard consumers from unfair trade practices in ecommerce, the Department of Consumer Affairs has also notified the Consumer Protection (Ecommerce) Rules, 2020 under the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
These rules, inter-alia, outline the responsibilities of ecommerce entities and specify the liabilities of marketplace and inventory ecommerce entities, including provisions for customer grievance redressal.
The draft Indian standard on “Ecommerce – Principles and Guidelines for Self-Governance” by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) aims to establish a transparent, fair, and consumer-friendly framework for online marketplaces. It outlines principles across three key phases—pre-transaction, contract formation, and post-transaction—to ensure ethical ecommerce operations.
By Mandating clear product disclosures, including pricing breakdowns, seller details, country of origin, return policies and data privacy measures, the document enforces explicit consumer consent for transactions, prohibits misleading advertisements, and strengthens grievance redressal mechanisms under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
The National Consumer Helpline (NCH)
Emerging as a central point of access for consumers seeking to address their grievances, the NCH enables consumers to register complaints and seek resolutions. The National Consumer Helpline (NCH) has rolled out the NCH 2.0 initiative, which incorporates advanced technologies to streamline complaint handling. This includes the introduction of AI-powered speech recognition, a translation system and a multilingual chatbot.
The number of calls received by NCH have grown more than tenfold, from 12,553 in December 2015 to 1,55,138 in December 2024. Available in 17 languages, including Hindi, English, and regional languages, the helpline allows consumers to register complaints via the toll-free number 1915. Complaints can also be filed through the Integrated Grievance Redressal Mechanism (Ingram) portal, which provides multiple channels such as WhatsApp, SMS, email, the NCH app, web portal and the Umang app for ease of access.
Jaago Grahak Jaago
The Department of Consumer Affairs provides essential ecommerce information about all uniform resource locators (URLs) during a consumer’s online activities, alerting them if any URL may be unsafe and requires caution, through the Jaago Grahak Jaago online portal and the recently introduced mobile application
This date to celebrate the occasion was chosen to commemorate President John F. Kennedy’s address to the United States Congress on 15 March 15 1962, where he became the first world leader to formally recognise consumer rights. The Ministry stated that as India observes World Consumer Rights Day 2025, the focus remains on ensuring a safer, more transparent and consumer-friendly economy.
