Compliance to product standards – The India Story

When we look around us, there are products under various categories, which we find carry compliances to various standards -ISI, CE, IEC, FSSI etc. While in few sectors & product categories, it is mandatory by the law, to comply with the standards but, most of the products, don’t have a comply to any standard in India or carry any certification mark.

The marks like ISI are mandatory only for very few products and rest is all voluntary. There are manufacturers, which make same product with both ISI mark and non ISI mark and price it differently. This is highly confusing and objectionable from a consumer point. While the manufacturers literature, website etc will claim that the products are ISI marked but, actual products available in market do not carry any mark & are non-complaint. This is largely true as most products do not require certification by law. This further gets compounded by issues like false ISI claims by manufacturers and manufacturers ability to get past the audits by BIS, owning to corrupt practices & compromised auditors.

The marks like CE and IEC  are even more confusing especially for a consumer in India. While IEC are standards but CE is the mark, which are mandatory for supplies to EU. The CE marks have to be complied by the manufacturers and the products have to carry the CE mark with a suitable number (or series- as given to the third party certifying body by the standards organization). There is also a practice by which manufactures put a CE mark as a self-certification of the compliance, which does not carry any series or numbers of the third party certifying agency, which unfortunately is also acceptable.

So a consumer in India is totally caught between the various standards, marks, compliance claims etc. and manufacturers take advantage of the loose enforcement & non mandatory requirements to supply substandard products.

www.brandsandfakes.com is one such initiative which wishes to fight for the consumer rights & rights of the complying brands and have created a eco-system to address these issues.