Filter Coffee #004

On consumer rights and elephants

Hello regular readers, and welcome new readers!

I am very grateful for your support and for the thought-provoking comments that you have posted. Please continue to do so — I really enjoy hearing your point of view on these topics.

If you missed my previous editions, you can 🔗click here to catch up on the website where you will find all 3 of them.

💸 Caveat Emptor is now Caveat Vendor

(Buyer beware is now seller beware)

On July 20th, the re-enacted Consumer Protection Act 2019 came into force, replacing the previous enactment of 1986. The Act overhauls the administration and settlement of consumer disputes. It provides for strict penalties, including jail terms for adulteration and misleading ads by firms. More importantly, it now brings within its ambit e-tailers. The consumer is the king!

You, whether as an individual consumer or as an organisation, should give the Act a once over - 🔗click here to read it.

Here are some of the highlights:

• You can file complaints about goods or services from where you live, before the nearest consumer forum. No need to go to the town where the offending party stays or operates from. You can do e-filing as well.

  • No court fee to be paid if the claim is within Rs.5 lakhs

  • You can conduct the case yourself via video conferencing. Engaging a lawyer is optional.

• Provides for compensation on account of product liability.

• Producers of spurious goods can be punished.

• Misleading advertisements can be punished. Celebrities endorsing a product may not be punished but can be barred from endorsing if the advertisement is misleading.

• A group of consumers can join and file class action (similar to how it is done in the US).

• E-commerce has come under the lens, and they are now expected to disclose much more information.

• Provides for settlement of disputes through mediation.

• Consumers now have several protected rights, including to safety, to information, to choose, of redressal, to be heard, to be educated as consumer, and to a mediated settlement.

To cite a simple example, if you buy a branded hair dryer online, the e-tailer is now required to disclose the country of origin, all the information required for its safe operation, some of the dos and don’ts, assure you of a warranty period during which time the after sales service and defects rectification shall be free provided as consumer you abide by the warranty conditions. If a product is defective or the after sales service is not provided, then you can lodge a complaint via e-filing before the nearest consumer redressal forum. If you have any questions about this, please leave them in the comment section and I shall do my best to answer them.

Corporates and other entities that cater to consumers will have to exercise greater care and caution in terms of quality, quantity, and product safety. In my view, the boards of corporates that manufacture or trade in consumer goods must create a Consumer Affairs Committee or mandate the Stakeholder Grievance Committee, if there is one, to periodically review consumer complaints and address the need to proactively offer mediated settlements by holding online mediation and save themselves the expenses of defending a matter in some corner of India besides incurring the collateral damage to reputation.

(I will be writing about Mediation in general, in some detail, in my next edition)

🐘The Elephant Man

I am sure most of you are familiar with Freemasonry. 🔗 Click here for a quick introduction if not. Mathew George (Matt) and I are freemasons of Lodge Southern Brotherhood 3311 EC (English Constitution) in Bangalore.

Elephants have been Matt’s passion since childhood. In his own words :

“As a child, I used to wait for the sound of chains, which was an indication of an elephant and his mahout passing by our house. The gentle movements of the tusker with palm leaves in his mouth and patiently listening to his master fascinated me. While growing up, when everyone was aspiring to become an Engineer or Doctor, my ambition was to become a Mahout.”

While he didn’t quite get to fulfill that ambition, Matt is now a conservationist and has been working closely with The Bandipur National Park, a short distance from the city of Mysore in Karnataka. He knows a ton about elephants, and here are some facts and anecdotes he shared: 

A typical elephant herd comprises related individuals of grandmoms, aunts, daughters, nieces, and nephews. The males in their teenage year of around 10-13 years move out or disperse from the group. This is nature’s system to avoid inbreeding. These adolescent males try to join another family or join the group of teenage males until they reach adulthood. A male of 20 years till their entire life span of 50 years, will stay solitary and may join a female herd for a short time for mating.

Elephant mating is something like a swayamvaram, with the female having the last say in the selection process of accepting the mate. The bull elephants get to know if the female elephant is in “heat” by the strong smell from its urine and dung. According to researchers, they can ascertain the strong gene pool of the approaching male, and if it is not the best gene pool available, the matriarch gives a signal to move on so that the approaching male will not be able to mount.

Domesticating an elephant involves a long process of making it dependent on humans for food and sustenance. It consists of breaking down the animal emotionally and physically to become dependent on humans.

In the first few months, the elephant will be in a cage with little or no room to move around and is given simple commands like tapping its legs as an indication to move. On obeying the command it will be rewarded with food., In the forests, very rarely elephants experience pain, and the concept of the “pain-reward” system makes them subservient to humans.

Over six months, if the animal positively responds to the commands, the animal is brought out of the cage with the help of other domesticated elephants to be given larger tasks.

Gradually, the elephant and their handlers develop a close relationship and the foresters have shared exciting stories about this unique human-elephant relationship.

An elephant in Coorg blocked the gates to the police station when its mahout was taken into custody. Another elephant used to carry its mahout back in its trunk after his late-night drinking binges. Yet another elephant had a habit of running close to the mahout’s wife to take cover when his master used to shout at him.

The life of a mahout is tough; they become easy targets for the elephants when they turn violent, as the mahout is at the closest proximity to them. Elephants evolved in the wild, and can be very unpredictable at times. In studies of captive elephants, mahouts reported that over 80 % of them were attacked at least once in their career by their elephants, and around 40 % of such attacks resulted in severe injuries and fatalities.

You can follow Mathew George 🔗 on Facebook here to learn more:

Here’s a video of Tim, reportedly the largest elephant in the world - a majestic giant!

Trust me to turn things in the direction of wordplay! Here’s a bit about expressions that involve elephants:

• Elephant in the room: Often used in business meetings and when negotiations hit a roadblock, this expression points to a very difficult problem that the people in the room aren’t dealing with or confronting. This comic by John Atkinson captures vividly the various reasons for using that expression.

  

• Seeing pink elephants: Apparently this alludes to the hallucinations of a drunk person. When the title character in Disney's Dumbo accidentally drinks a bucket of booze, he dreams about a parade of Pink Elephants. It’s also used in mental exercises: “Don’t think of a pink elephant!” —> well, now I’ve pretty much ensured you’ve thought of one! But the point of that exercise isn’t to make you try to not think about the pink elephant. The point is to realize that while pink elephants are easy to imagine, they warrant no attention. Great message for our lives - not everything that shows up requires our involvement.

• White elephant: “A thing that is useless and one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to get rid of.” In business, an unprofitable vertical with debt and other liabilities could well be the white elephant.

Finally, as a child, I remember hearing several elephant jokes. Here’s a sample:

Q. Why did the Elephant paint itself red? 
A. To be able to hide among the berries.

Q. Have you seen an Elephant hiding among the berries?
A. No? See how well it hides!

Q. How does the Elephant make a call?
A. It uses the Ele-Phone!

Oh! Ho! I can sense you reaching for something to throw at me! Ciao.