You are a Consumer to the Core

As a human being, from your childhood days to the stage of adulthood, you have different roles to play in your life. In the process, at each stage of your life, you enjoy specific rights. As a child, you have a right to education. However, being a minor, you have no right to vote or contest in an election. However, when you attain a specific age, say 18, you become major and a full-fledged citizen.You have the right to vote and other political rights. Similarly, when you attain a particular age, you retire from your job. When you become a senior citizen, you are entitled to avail the special concessions offered by the government, like travel concessions in the train, a hike in the interest rates, when you deposit any amount in a bank etc.

However, irrespective of your age, you are always a consumer. From the moment you are born in this world, until your last breath, you consume something in this world. Your needs are unlimited. When you are a baby, you are mother-fed along with artificial baby foods like Farex and Cerelac etc. Irrespective of your age, you require the basic needs like food, dress and shelter. Your needs have proliferated with the growth of modern culture and civilization.

As you grow your needs also grow and as your interests vary, your needs also vary and multiplied. When you are a school boy, you require the gadgets for your school. When you go to college, especially for a professional education like medicine and engineering, you require even more modern gadgets. When you enter the real life, your requirements in your job and your requirements as a family man are innumerable. Even when you are in the lap of your mother as a baby or when you are very active and a quick moving bloke or when you are very sick and remain in a bed as a nonagenarian, you consume something and so you are a consumer. Once you enter into this world, whether from your mother’s womb or as a test tube baby or even as a clone, you are a consumer. When you begin to consume things in this world, you may be aware or unaware of it, still you are a consumer.Once you become a consumer, you are always a consumer.

In the legal parlance, to become a consumer you must have fulfilled the following conditions:

1. You must be consuming something;
2. You must have purchased, what you are consuming, for a valuable consideration.
3. You must have purchased any material thing or object for value or you must have availed any service either from the government or from the individual professionals for value.

Therefore, if you get anything freely or avail any free service, you may not be a consumer.

However, the law has been magnanimous enough to spread its tentacles even more enabling you to become a consumer from a wider perspective. Suppose, you receive something else as a gift, say a washing machine from your friend, even though you may not have paid anything for the said washing machine, still you are a beneficiary of a thing purchased for value and so you are a consumer. If you receive a money order very belatedly from your friend, you are still a consumer since you are a beneficiary. You are rendered free medical service in a Government hospital, still you are a consumer, since the Government is paying for you or bearing your expenses.

The things that you consume or the service that you avail also enable you to vent and agitate your grievances as a consumer, if the things that you consume are defective or the services rendered to you are negligent and deficient.

The tag of a consumer sticks with you wherever you go; Therefore, once you become a consumer, you are always a consumer; In short, in this world, you are a consumer to the core!