Business self-regulation and consumer protection in India: A critique

The International Business Ethics Index: Asian Emerging Economies

“…Some hope for the future of business ethics in India was expressed by Singh (1993) based on the enactment of the Consumer Protection Act of 1986. Singh reported that, even thought it might be too early to tell, the Act has resulted in increased self-regulation and social responsibility on the side of businesses.…”

Distributional Consequences of Transnational Private Regulation: Institutional Complementarity as a Structural Source of Power in Global Product and Financial Markets

“…The reality and fear of diseases spreading across countries via their port cities therefore spurred not just rapid increases in local and national public health regulations in trading nations but also some of the earliest attempts to develop common rules to address "market failures" in a global economy through transgovernmental collaboration among government agencies responsible for human 11 The issue arose again in the introduction of digital TV; see Hart (2004); see also Farrell and Shapiro (1992). 12 Non-commercial civil society groups have also sought to govern the behavior of firms through "social regulations," then reward firms for compliant, "good" behavior; many such transnational initiatives started within the domestic confines of a country (e.g., Baron 2003;Bartley 2003;Singh 1993;Snyder 2003;D. Vogel 2005;Werner 2012).…”

The State, Business and Corporate Social Responsibility in India

“…The findings of such search are likely to be rich, provided one keeps an open mind, in view of the inherently holistic nature of CSR itself, 'a concept which suggests that commercial corporations must fulfill their duty of providing care to the society' (Agarwal, 2008: 12). It is hard work, but rewarding, to make the necessary connections, engaged in parallel reading of specialist Indian studies, for example, on corporate governance (Joshi, 2004;Sampath, 2006), consumer protection (Saraf, 1993;Singh, 1996), public interest litigation (Jain, 2002) and the future of human rights (Baxi, 2002).…”

“…A wider search identifies that the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History has an entry under 'Consumer Protection: Hindu Law' (Singh, 2009), which starts with the poignant observation that ' [a]lmost unnoticed by the world, India has become one of the most innovative jurisdictions in consumer protection' (Singh, 2009: 173). During the 1980s and 1990s, in particular, led by Professor Manubhai Shah, the Consumer Education and Research Centre in Ahmedabad spearheaded a large number of public interest initiatives to hold businesses and government institutions to account, challenging monopolies and seeking to inculcate better corporate ethics through activism, teaching and publications (Saraf, 1993).…”

“…CSR is certainly not new to India (Agarwal, 2008) and other South Asian countries. Especially in the related field of consumer protection, Indian developments of the mid-1980s ‘have propelled the corporate sector in India to become more socially accountable than ever before’ (Singh, 1993: 1). Even if specific CSR literature can be traced back only to the 1930s, the underlying vision and philosophy of CSR itself are much older, probably as old as human civilisation.…”