Consumer Justice Report: Weak consumer rights could weaken India’s economic growth

Indian trade negotiators and diplomats soliciting foreign investment never miss an opportunity to showcase the country’s swelling middle and its robust legal system as the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy. Data emerging from recent research, however, shows both these bragging points to be over-wrought and unsaleable today.The size of India’s vaunted middle-class is projected to go from 500 million individuals currently to over 700 million in 4-5 years.

This expansion is expected to translate into growing consumption of goods and services, apart from increased household outlays on education, healthcare and investment products. Speculating on how much of this will come to pass is a parlour game.

What is really critical here is the ceteris paribus premise, that consumption will keep growing, all other things remaining constant. What merits examination is whether ideal conditions exist for consumption and whether the consumer is being served.

Various studies unambiguously show that the system is loaded against the individual consumer, as the December 2025 Indigo flights fiasco so visibly demonstrated.The team that publishes the annual India Justice Report has now come out with a Consumer Justice Report 2026, which assesses the capacity of quasi-judicial grievance redressal commissions across the country. What emerges from the findings is not a pretty sight.

The problem with consumer redressal commissions echoes a structural and deep-seated deficiency that plagues all tribunals and appellate bodies.A little background might be helpful here. The Consumer Protection Act of 2019, which replaced its namesake legislation of 1986 vintage, retained the original legislation’s three-tier consumer disputes redressal structure, but