A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF STATUTORY LAW IN ONLINE RETAIL AND E-CONSUMER PROTECTION: INDIA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
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Abstract
According to the October 2018 report by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India had 512.26 million internet users at the end of June 20181 . That is, 38 percent of the Indian population were internet users nine months ago and the percentage since then, has only risen. The consultancy firm, Bain and Company, reported that India has the fastest growing online retail market among top global economies in 2018. In its report, it stated that India’s online retail market witnessed a compound annual growth rate of 53 percent between 2013 and 2017.2 The above reports make one thing clear. Online retail has evolved from being a luxury into something that is a necessity in India. This can be attributed to two main reasons. Firstly, the process seems more convenient and secondly, the online market grants access to a wider variety of goods. Despite the aforementioned perks, not being able to use e-commerce websites in a way that it empowers the other interests of the consumer such as quality of the goods and efficiency in delivery, will inevitably result in these websites falling out of favor with online consumers. It will make these websites a last resort. This could potentially slow down the spread of online retail, thereby, negatively impacting the economy of the country. Thus, as more and more consumers enter the online market, there is a need for a set of comprehensive legislations that regulate these online markets and protect the rights of consumers. In this paper, an attempt has been made to figure out whether the statutory laws currently in force in India provide for the protection of rights of the electronic consumer (e-consumer) sufficiently. For this purpose, a comparison has been drawn between the statutory law of India and the United Kingdom (UK) with respect to online retail. The UK was chosen because of the fact that both countries followed a rather similar pattern in the development of laws governing consumer protection and electronic commerce (e-commerce) till the year 2000. After that, the approaches diverged significantly.
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