Here is an example of how crucial consumer protection laws are enforced in the country: in 2001, the government brought in the Clinical Thermometers (Quality Control) Order, under which thermometers that have not been certified by the Bureau of Indian Standards cannot enter the market at all. Four years hence, state enforcement agencies are not even aware that such an order exists!

At a training programme organised by the Union ministry of consumer affairs in Delhi last week, I happened to meet the enforcement officials from different parts of the country. When asked about the enforcement of the law pertaining to clinical thermometers, they said they were only destroying thermometers calibrated in Fahrenheit, as the law requires that they be calibrated in the metric system ? Celsius. As far as accuracy was concerned, they said they did not have the necessary infrastructure to test the thermometers and stamp them as required under the Weights and Measures Act. As for taking action against those selling without the mandatory ISI mark, they said they were unaware of such an order! Hopefully, by the time they complete the training, they will be better informed! In fact, it is for this very purpose that the Union ministry of consumer affairs is organising a series of training programmes for enforcement officers from all the states .

Being an instrument for measuring body temperature, accuracy is a crucial element of a clinical thermometer. Yet, accurate thermometers have eluded consumers for years. Even though it was way back in 1988 that the Union government first notified quality specifications under the Standards of Weights and Measures (General) Rules, it was never implemented by the state governments for lack of calibration facilities. So obviously, substandard thermometers found their way into the market, forcing the government to eventually bring thermometers under mandatory ISI certification.

But the issue did not end there. While the law mandated that the thermometers be graduated in Celsius, the manufacturers demanded that they be allowed to graduate the instruments in both Celsius and Fahrenheit as consumers are used to the latter system of measurement of body temperature. So now the Union government has introduced in the Rajya Sabha, an amendment to the Weights and Measures Rules to facilitate graduation of thermometers in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. Hopefully consumers will now be able to get quality thermometers whose accuracy has been authenticated by the BIS.