Officials Urge Industry-Led Standardisation, Flag MSME Relief, Testing Gaps and Phased Quality Mandates
The Indian government officials on Tuesday said quality standards should be viewed as a market enabler rather than a compliance burden, urging industry to take ownership of standard-setting even as they acknowledged gaps in testing infrastructure and implementation challenges that continue to weigh on manufacturers, particularly MSMEs and consumer-facing sectors.
Senior officials from the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) called for a shift from compliance-driven practices to industry-led participation and adoption, underlining the role of standards in building trust and credibility in Indian products.
“Quality is not a compliance cost. It is an enabler for market access, and it is a brand differentiator. Any industry that conforms to quality standards is able to distinguish its brand from its competitors,” said Bharat Khera, Additional Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs. “Viksit Bharat is not just about the scale of manufacturing. It’s about credibility, consistency and trust in Indian products.”
Khera said globally competitive manufacturing is built on robust standards and credible conformity assessment systems. He noted that around 23,000 Indian Standards have been published so far, nearly 95 per cent of which are already harmonised with ISO and IEC norms. Alignment with international standards is critical as India integrates more deeply into global value chains, he said, with deviations arising only from India-specific operating or climatic conditions.
“Where international standards exist, our objective should be ISO or IEC plus, not minus,” Khera said, citing sectors such as tyres and renewable products, where domestic conditions require additional testing parameters.
Voluntary Standards and MSME Relief
BIS officials stressed that standards remain voluntary unless mandated through quality control orders (QCOs), pushing back against the perception that compliance is entirely regulator-driven. Of the nearly 55,000 BIS licences issued so far, about half are voluntary, while more than 80 per cent of licensees are MSMEs, Khera said.
“Quality control orders eliminate substandard and unsafe products and protect compliant manufacturers from unfair competition,” he added, cautioning that poorly sequenced QCOs and inadequate consultation can disrupt supply chains. He further said that QCOs must be implemented in phases to ease compliance pressures and prevent unwarranted supply disruptions, allowing industry adequate time to comply before mandates are enforced.
The government also said BIS certification fee concessions for micro, small and medium enterprises are likely to be extended by three years beyond the current mid-2026 deadline. Under the existing scheme, micro units receive an 80 per cent fee reduction, small enterprises 50 per cent, and medium-sized firms 20 per cent.
“Concessions in marking fees have been specifically given for MSMEs—80 per cent for micro, 50 per cent for small, and 20 per cent for medium enterprises. This concession is in place until mid-2026. Very recently, we have moved a proposal, which is likely to fructify, to extend this concession for another three years,” he said.
Testing Infrastructure and Industry Participation
Testing infrastructure emerged as a recurring concern, particularly in sectors not covered by mandatory certification. While BIS operates only 10 laboratories, it has recognised nearly 700 private labs. Harmohan Jit Singh Pasricha, Deputy Director General, BIS, acknowledged that capacity remains uneven across regions and product categories, especially in emerging sectors.
“Where there is competition among labs, costs come down. Problems arise where there are only one or two labs,” Pasricha said. Private laboratories have emerged quickly in sectors covered by QCOs, while investment lags in areas without clear mandates. The Consumer Affairs Ministry’s National Test House is actively assessing gaps in industrial clusters, including Dholera near Ahmedabad, Shendra in Aurangabad, and Vikram Udyogpuri in Ujjain, with officials prepared to fund government labs where private investment is insufficient.
BIS has also removed the requirement for in-house testing laboratories, allowing cluster-based or shared facilities, and has made quality assurance plans recommendatory rather than mandatory.
Digitisation and Industry Engagement
The government has digitised the BIS certification platform, achieving 96–97 per cent compliance rates over the past two years, with Indian manufacturers obtaining certification within 30 to 90 days. Over 23,000 Indian Standards have been published, all free to access online except adopted ISO and IEC standards, which are priced at roughly one-tenth of the original ISO and IEC publications.
Both Khera and Pasricha stressed that industry participation remains weakest at the stage of framing and revising standards, which occurs every five years. They highlighted the Manak Manthan programme, which collects state-level feedback to improve standards before technical committee review. “Most interest comes only when a standard becomes mandatory,” Khera said. “That mindset needs to change.”
Pasricha underlined that standards are effective only when industry is able to implement them without friction. “If industry cannot implement a standard, it becomes a useless document. Standards have to be practical and usable from day one,” he said.
He also outlined BIS’s structure, noting that it covers nearly 17 sectors, more than 400 technical committees and around 15,000 external experts, with one-third of committee members drawn from manufacturing and the rest from users, academia and consumer organisations. He urged industry associations to establish standardisation cells to enable voluntary adoption and smoother implementation when standards are eventually mandated.
Officials said the way forward lies in treating quality as a shared responsibility—industry as the owner, BIS as the technical anchor and chambers as consensus builders—if India’s manufacturing ambitions under the Viksit Bharat vision are to translate into durable export competitiveness.
