One of the biggest issues we face in our cities as to today is the problem with regard to our sorry state of municipal services. The level of services varies from city to city, but some of the biggest problems that people currently face are examples of sorry state of sewage and cleanliness, poor condition of roads and streets, inadequate sanitation and garbage collection, poor upkeep of our current infra-structure. These problems can be attributed to bad governance, bad leadership, corruption and sheer laziness. Many times, citizens suffer because of this, and because of lack of responsibility, are unable to do much about this poor condition of municipal services. However, the courts are always a way to get justice, even if it takes a decade to do this:

CHENNAI: The Madras high court has directed the Chennai Corporation to pay compensation of Rs 1 lakh to the parents of a child, who drowned in a storm water drain negligently left open by sanitation workers. Pointing out that the 18-month-old Venugopal died over 10 years ago, Justice Chandru decried the Chennai Corporation for having failed to submit its reply to the court in a timely manner.
He directed the civic body to pay the compensation amount to the child’s parents within four weeks, and warned that any failure in this regard would be viewed seriously by the court. “Insofar as the death of Venugopal, the Chennai Corporation is squarely responsible. Because of their negligence in not keeping the storm water drainage in closed condition, such an incident had happened. The minor Venugopal cannot be expected to know the danger of the stormwater drainage kept in an open condition,” he said.

In this case, the drain was kept open while cleaning was happening. This is negligence, since as the court pointed out, it is not expected that children will have the same sense of danger. Keeping a drain open like this was hence very dangerous.

Modern medical care can be very expensive. We have managed to push the boundaries of medical care much further in the recent years, and are able to diagnose diseases much better than just a couple of decades ago. As a part of this, we have much better equipment, much better diagnostic techniques, and a much higher level of specialization of the medical sciences. However, one direct result of this is that a lot of medical treatment has got more expensive; this is compounded by the fact that medical services are now increasingly privatized with the providing of medical services becoming a for-profit business. Along with these higher fees comes additional responsibility for these services, and also sees more patients hauling up these medical services for compensation if the treatment has not been correct:

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Saturday directed Max Hospital to pay a compensation of Rs.150,000 to a patient for not properly diagnosing him as a result of which he had to be shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Delhi State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission headed by Justice J.D. Kapoor observed that according to medical literature, sodium level below 120 mg per litre is dangerous and injection Lasix should not be given at all.
The doctor, who administered the injection, was negligent for not monitoring it before giving the injection, the commission said

In many advanced countries, this is the norm. Hospitals and doctors have to be responsible for the treatment they give. Sometimes, informally hospitals and doctors do advance an argument that with the large number of patients they treat, such mistakes can happen. This is not a permissible argument. When a patient has paid the complete amount required, a patient deserves the best treatment, and it is contingent on the hospital to provide the same.

In an order than held that an educational institution, if it provides education or holds examinations, provides a service that is covered under the Consumer Protection Act, the Lucknow Consumer Redressal Forum awarded a sum of Rs. 20 lakhs to a student whose examination results were not provided to him for a long period, and hence compensation was awarded to the sum of this amount of ruining his career, and for litigation costs. This was a complicated where a court case was needed to get the result finally declared, after which the student went to consumer court for getting compensation for time lost and damage to his career. The consumer forum also over-ruled the position of the educational bodies that the consumer court did not hold jurisdiction over them:

LUCKNOW: The State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Lucknow, has awarded a compensation of Rs 20 lakh to a student who waited for five and half years to obtain his marksheet for a back-paper examination which he undertook in 1999. The commission also held that an educational institution, while imparting education/or holding examination, does render a service as defined in the Consumer Protection Act. It was after repeated requests and written representations could not evoke action on the part of the opposite parties that he filed a writ petition in the high court.
The high court issued an order on May 24, 2004, directing the opposite parties to declare the result of the complainant. But, the order was taken lightly by the opposite parties and complainant, therefore, filed a contempt petition. However, the same was dismissed by the court because in the meantime the complainant’s back-paper result was declared (on April 11, 2004). The complainant then approached the commission. The commission, however, observed that inordinate delay in declaring the result has not only completely blocked but ruined the career of the complainant. It ruled that the case is of deficiency in service and rejected the contention of the opposite parties that the complainant is neither a consumer nor they (opposite parties) are rendering to him any service.

For many years now, there are many sections of society who claim to be serving interests of society, and not provide a consumer service. Medical services are one of them, and so are educational institutions, who take on the mantle of providing a higher service of education. However, in their conduct, they are nowhere near being of high morality, with their behavior being commercial. In such cases, it is eminently justifiable to hold them up for not acting in the interests of the student.

This is a consumer court judgment that will surely be appealed. Imagine the world of a person whose father died in a separate city (home town), and he had to rush home through connecting flights. And then the flight got delayed in landing, which means that the connecting flight was missed. He could not afford to miss the funeral, so he had to hire a taxi to rush home, costing him an additional Rs. 3500 for the taxi. Once he had completed the necessary formalities at the funeral, he wanted to know as to why the flight was late, especially when he was earlier assured that he would get the connecting flight:

Landing later than the scheduled time at Delhi airport has cost dear to Jet Lite. UT consumer forum directed the airlines to pay Rs 5,000 as compensation to Dr Mahesh Hukmani of Sector 19, who missed his connecting flight to Jaipur. He was to attend his father’s funeral in Jaipur on February 4, 2008.
Claiming that due to delay he had to hire a taxi for Rs 3,500 to reach Jaipur, Hukmani moved city’s consumer court. He added that on his return, when he contacted Jet Lite officials, they failed to give any satisfactory reply. Jet Lite in its reply pleaded that delay in departure occurred due to a technical snag, which was detected by the pilot, and in order to avoid any mishappening, the flight took around 40 minutes to remove the snag.

The airline would surely appeal against this ruling, since multiple low cost airlines get delayed often for no apparent reason, and when you ask their staff, they are unable to give any convincing reasons. More people would use such a ruling to push for their claims.

The whole concept of low-cost airlines in India demands a new form of business where costs are minimized. Hence, over the years, we have seen airlines which are no-frills (such as Deccan, Spicejet, Go, Indogo, etc), with no newspapers and magazines, where no food is served / food has to be bought, and so on. Such airlines have brought the total cost of travelling down tremendously, letting people travel by with cheap tickets rather than the very expensive tickets that had to be bought earlier from full-fare airlines such as Indian Airlines and Jet Airlines would be charging; these full fare airlines would provide a much better level of service, but would also charge a much higher fare, sometimes 3-4 times the fare charged by these low-cost airlines.
However, at the same time, some of the practices that they followed to save money were anti-customer. If a ticket was cancelled, they would not refund the whole amount, or in really bad cases, the airline would give a voucher to travel on a later date but would not actually give the money back; in some cases, the refund would take a really long to come through and only after much follow-up from the traveler. In order to change some of these practices, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has made it binding on airlines to refund the money and not follow a practise of proving a voucher instead. However, airlines have been loath to do, making the DGCA threaten to take action:

Some low cost carriers (LCC) follow a controversial policy of no refunds by insisting that those who cancel their tickets fly again within a certain period of time in lieu of the refund. The DGCA had some months back issued a rule that airlines must give the option of both a refund and future travel to those who cancel tickets in time.
But despite this legal requirement, some LCCs are still not refunding money and asking passengers to travel again within a cutoff period. “We have been receiving such complaints from the public. It’s our constitutional obligation to ensure that laid down rules and regulations are followed,” DGCA chief Kanu Gohain said. The agency is going to seek an explanation from defiant airlines this week by issuing notices to them and threatening stern action if they don’t start following the rule of refund.

Airlines have been protesting this rule, but the fact is that not allowing customers a refund when they have not availed of a service, and used a quite normal procedure of cancellation is a violation of customer service norms, and cannot be allowed just because it works in the airline’s favor. The DGCA should continue to enforce this rule, and customers, if presented a voucher by an airline rather than a refund should protest to the airline, and petition the DGCA, as well as consumer forums. They should also refuse to accept any such voucher, and point out to the airline that this matter will go to a consumer forum.