The present study was carried out in village Pamal of Ludhiana district to find out the effectiveness of community participation to promote consumer education. The maximum percentage gain in knowledge was found for awareness about consumer rights and consumer protection act i.e. 77.4 per cent followed by weight and measures (73.7%) adulteration of food items (72.3%) and duplicate spurious articles (66.7%). The overall gain in knowledge was 72.52% which was significant at 1% level of significance. After the introduction of action programme mean post exposure scores on the components of community participation had increased i.e. group commitment (mean score = 4.87), sense of responsibility (mean score = 4.67), group felt needs (mean score = 2.67), popularity figure (mean score = 2.64) and use of indigenous knowledge and expertise (mean score = 2.52). The percentage increase of scores from pre to post mean scores was 62.63 per cent which showed that action programme had created interest among rural women for participation in community activities. The components of community participation viz. group commitment, group felt needs, sense of responsibility, popularity figure and use of indigenous knowledge and expertise were significantly related with age, education, caste, income, decision making, achievement motivation, group co-operation, group confidence and group dependency.
Action programme, Adulteration, Community participation, Consumer education
