All’s Not Fair

In an increasingly liberalised economy, it is imperative that cut-throat competition will lead the business houses to attempt to gain ascendancy over one another by hook or by crook. It is then left to the country's administrative machinery to look after consumer protection. The government is late in reacting to the falsity of promises made in pushing up the sales of cosmetics in particular. But then again, even if the ingredients of cosmetics are detailed on the labels, how are the common consumers to judge whether an item is harmful or not? Perhaps even after a decade-and-a-half of initiation of large-scale economic liberalisation of the country, India is yet to formulate an effective system of tackling the harmful fall-outs of such leniency.