New Delhi, April 15: Phone trouble? You’re not alone. More Indians complain about telecom services than about all faulty or overpriced products put together, says a study.

In general, three in four consumer complaints relate to the services sector, with banks coming a close second to telephones in this category.

So, say the researchers, the government may be barking up the wrong tree with its Jago Grahak Jago (Wake up, consumer, wake up) consumer awareness campaign, which focuses on defective products and exorbitant prices.

Some 74.48 per cent of all complaints at Indian consumer courts relate to service providers failing to deliver on promises or harassing customers, says the study by Bupinder Zutshi and Madan Paul, faculty members at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Almost one in four complaints relates to telephones alone.

The study also shows that very few consumer complaints have been registered in Bengal over the years. The researchers say the reason could be the late arrival of the post-reforms services to the state, thanks to the Left Front government’s policies.

Zutshi and Paul collected data on all complaints registered in district, state and national consumer courts since their inception following the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, till December 31, 2007. The state-wise comparison was based on the entire data, but the sector-by-sector analysis was done only on the complaints registered between March 15, 2005, and December 31, 2006.

The findings suggest a dwindling of the post-reforms consumer euphoria over an increase in choices within the services sector, the researchers say. “The headache that customers faced in the days when they had little appears to be coming back to haunt them,” Paul, assistant professor in the Group on Adult Education, JNU, told The Telegraph.

“The fall in call rates with mobile phones, precipitated by a competitive market, is good for the customers. But if the services are poor, and competitively poor, the customer continues to suffer.”

“The government needs to change the focus of its consumer awareness campaign. Services, and not product-related problems, are clearly troubling Indian consumers the most,” said Zutshi, assistant professor at the Centre of Study of Regional Development in the School of Social Sciences, JNU.

Officials at the ministry of consumer affairs accepted that their campaign should widen its focus, but said they needed to study the research before making any decisions.

Apart from advertisements in newspapers and television, the ministry also sponsors 15-minute radio shows and half-hour programmes on Doordarshan to educate consumers on their rights. The initiative is titled the “Jago Grahak Jago” campaign.

The researchers analysed the frequency with which consumers seek redress in the different states by calculating the number of cases filed per thousand people in each state. Everywhere, complaints were rarer in rural areas compared with urban centres.

Only 13 complaints were filed in urban Bengal for every thousand residents, in stark contrast to list-topper Himachal Pradesh, where the frequency crossed 300. The researchers cited two possible reasons.

“The services sector, to which most complaints relate, is largely a product of the ’90s reforms. Bengal’s resistance to the reforms till recently means its customers were exposed later to the problems that the rest of India faced much earlier. So cumulatively, complaints are rarer in the state,” Zutshi said.

He added: “Bengal is also largely rural even now.”