Farmer As Consumer
A state consumer redressal commission is reported to have awarded substantial compensation to a farmer who suffered crop loss due to the poor quality of seeds sold to him by the National Seeds Corporation. This judgment breaks new ground and can pave the way for taking consumer protection to farmers who have so far remained largely beyond the operations of consumer laws. Although nothing prevents them from doing so, farmers have in the past rarely taken up the cudgels to move consumer courts and successfully
managed to get compensation for the wrongs done to them by input suppliers. So farmers continue to be cheated through substandard, and quite often absolutely spurious, stuff.
Though the present case involves a state sector seed agency, the role of private dealers in this business are more, if not less, culpable. Much of the seeds sold in the market are in any case uncertified. Even when the seeds are certified, there are legal
loopholes that are widely exploited by
the unscrupulous. The clause which permits the sale of "truthfully labeled seed" provides by far the most convenient avenue for misuse.
The sale of fake, substandard and poor quality pesticides and fertilisers is even more prevalent than that of poor quality seeds. The damage inflicted by them on the crops is also usually far higher. In the case of food crops, there can also be a health hazard for the general public but the malpractices go virtually unchecked. The pesticides and fertiliser testing laboratories all over the country are too few in number to cope with the job. The seed testing facilities are even fewer. Thus the official machinery has neither the ability nor the willingness to enforce quality.
One extreme fallout of all this is the periodic suicide by farmers who have met with huge losses. Cotton growers are the worst hit because this crop accounts for nearly half of the total pesticides consumption. Their plight is by now somewhat well known but that of other cultivators, whose suffering has gone unnoticed, is also serious. The lack of awareness among farmers about their rights as consumers seems to be the most important reason for the rampant trading malpractices in the farm sector. The lack of easy access to consumer grievance redressal forums is an important reason for that. The present three-tier consumer dispute settlement machinery at the national, state and district levels does not penetrate rural areas at all. Besides, receipt for the sale of farm inputs or written guarantees about their quality and effectiveness are seldom issued. This makes it extremely difficult for farmers to contest their cases even in the consumer courts which boast of procedural simplicity in their functioning.
The consumer protection Act has been under review for quite some time for a possible amendment. It is necessary to broaden this exercise to see how rural consumers can benefit from the consumer movement. The present distinctly urban bias of the consumer legislation needs to be corrected to enable the vast and rapidly expanding rural sector to benefit from it.