Why the rural consumer should be educated?

• Rural consumer's income is on the rise, enabling more of them to buy products and services that improve the quality of their lives.
• The monthly per capita spending among the rural consumers increased 17 percent between FY10 to FY12, higher than 12 percent which is for urban consumers.
• Disposable incomes has gone up and fuelled aspirations thus resulting in a change in buying preferences.
• Spending on non food items rose from 40 percent of the total spend in FY 2005 to more than 50 percent in FY 2012.
• There has also been a shift in the awareness levels of the rural consumer and the increased media penetration has played a vital role in rural India's values and attitudes.
• The rural markets, which were earlier ignored by most of the big international market players, are now being seen having great business opportunity.
• Though, the consumers in India have been provided with various safety measures against their exploitation, still the sellers and producers are hoarding and black marketing and essential goods, resorting to economic corruption and frequently cheating the consumers.
• Rural markets are full of substandard goods and duplicity of branded goods is another major problem in rural areas.
• The expansion service sectors like Insurance, banking, electricity etc., without any checks and balances are utilised to exploit the consumers in rural areas by service providers.
• Due to entry of large number of players in the rural market and also due to stiff competition there are large number of misleading advertisements in the print and electronic media resulting in the exploitation of rural consumer.

What is the way forward to educate the rural consumer?

• The media has a greater role and responsibility towards the vulnerable sections of the society including the rural consumer.
• There are no effective sanctions against the misleading advertisements. The GOI has to setup a regulatory mechanism to penalise the media which portrays misleading advertisements.
• The same media should be used to proto the consumer awareness by the GOI and media advertising policy should be formed to regulate the advertisements in media.

Jago Grahak Jago campaign

• The Governmet carries out a multi-media “Jago Grahak Jago” campaign on Pan-India basis covering both rural and urban areas through print, electronic and outdoor media. Grants-in-aid are also released to States/UTs for creating consumer awareness in the respective States/UTs at local level in their regional languages so as to further ensure that the campaign reaches the rural and backward areas of the country. This campaign must be effectively utilised to promote the consumer rights and awareness.

Tackling Adulteration

• In 1986, the GOI had amended the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and authorised every citizen to become a food inspector and participate in the task of food safety. But this information is little known to the consumers and this kind of information must be promoted by voluntary organisations, community radio, Television etc., FSSAI also must take measures to contain the food adulteration as many rural consumers unaware of food adulteration may intake and can lead to health hazards.

Creating awareness through IT and internet :

• 'Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan' (PMGDISHA) was launched to make 6 crore rural households digitally literate.
• The outlay for this project is Rs.2,351.38 crore to usher in digital literacy in rural India by March,.2019. This is in line with the announcement made by Finance Minister in the Union Budget 2016-17.
• PMGDISHA is expected to be one of the largest digital literacy programmes in the world. Under the scheme, 25 lakh candidates will be trained in the FY 2016-17; 275 lakh in the FY 2017-18; and 300 lakh in the FY 2018-19.
• To ensure equitable geographical reach, each of the 250,000 Gram Panchayats would be expected to register an average of 200-300 candidates.
• Digitally literate persons would be able to operate computers/digital access devices (like tablets, smart phones, etc.), send and receive emails, browse internet, access Government
  Services, search for information, undertaking cashless transactions, etc. and hence use IT to actively participate in the process of nation building.

Panchayati Raj institutions :

• To reach the level of rural consumers, it is imperative to involve the Panchayati Raj institutions not only in educating consumers but also ensuring that fake and spurious products are not sold in the rural market. These institutions can play a meaningful role in consumer welfare and this has been recognized by the policy makers.