'Higher Fines May Not Solve Dark Pattern Issue'

Nidhi Khare, consumer affairs secretary, says companies will be trusted to do right by consumers, but under watchful eyes

- By HIMANI KOTHARI

INDIA IS A GROWING COUNTRY with a budding ecommerce market and the government would like to trust the companies to respect consumer rights on their own, says Nidhi Khare, secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs. That trust, though, has limits and action will be taken when it is violated. In an interview with Forbes India, Khare argues that fines for dark patterns are kept modest because higher penalties only push companies into long court battles, slowing down real action. Even so, she’s keeping an eye on how platforms behave. Her attention is also turning to influencers, especially those offering financial or health advice without the expertise to back it up. Excerpts:

Q It has been two months since GST 2.0 was implemented. Initially, there were some issues with GST cuts not being passed on. How is it going now?

When this transition happened, consumer complaints were high on the first day. But when we started analysing, we found out that a lot of these complaints were inquiries. A complaint that prominently figured was, why hasn’t milk become cheaper? But milk was never under GST. So, a lot of people were curious.

In collaboration with the Department of Revenue and CBIC, our call agents were able to satisfactorily answer many of these queries. In a week, the GST-related complaints started falling.

Q So, you're happy with the implementation?