An analysis of performance of consumer dispute redressal forum: A special case of Mathura district

Consumer is the backbone of every economy. Without consumer there is no visible boom in any kind of business as well as economy. Every person who exists in the world is a consumer. Hence, it becomes very necessary for every government to safeguard the rights of the consumers. The present era is marked by rapid industrialisation and globalisation. Firms are free to sell their products anywhere in the world as well as customers are free to purchase from anywhere in the world. Firms have well organised and specialised groups to safeguard their interest but consumers are not organised and are not able to fights for their rights. So it is prime responsibility of each nation to protect the rights of consumers. India has also moved ahead in this direction and introduced the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 which mandates the establishment of three-tier consumer disputes redressal agencies at district, state and centre levels for protection of the consumer rights. This study focuses on the analysis of performance of consumer dispute redressal forum regarding decisions of the forum, satisfaction level of respondents on those decisions, how much of the claim was actually received, time taken for a particular redressal case, and whether any pressure was put on the forum to take decision in the favour of a specific party. The present research is based on the questionnaire method. 250 samples were randomly selected from Consumer Redressal Forum, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India. For the analysis of data, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and chi-square tests were used. The findings give an idea about the performance of consumer dispute redressal forum with regard to the case of Mathura District.