Tushar Gupta shares his view point on a recent Nielsen study on LED bulbs available in the Indian markets.
A Nielsen study has found out that out of the total LED bulbs available in the Indian markets, almost 76 per cent are spurious. In addition, the report also states that 48 per cent the LED bulb brands had no manufacturers’ addresses and 31 per cent had no manufacturers’ names, both mandatory legal requirements in the country.
The Indian lighting industry has been consistently cautioning against low quality imports into the country. Most of these are Chinese imports which do not meet any applicable standards, cause a huge loss to the exchequer and the organized industry.
“Today, the Bureau of Indian Standards focuses on safety standards, but the compliance process is very weak.”
The report also found that a majority of the LED brands available in the market, do not meet the norms of BIS and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Today, BIS focuses on safety standards, but the compliance process is very weak. There are no performance standards that are mandatory and this could turn out to be the Achilles heel of the most energy efficient lighting source. We firmly believe that the time has come to strengthen the safety and performance standards of BIS and make them mandatory. In addition, the compliance standards should call for punitive damages, if not adhered to. The maturity of an industry is also witnessed from the strong standards that it adheres to and this is needed in our case too.
The Government should take strict action against low quality products that do not adhere to safety standards prescribed by BIS and systems should be put in place so that distributors and retailers are not allowed to sell them. Any potential mishaps due to these LED bulbs have the potential to derail the Energy efficiency campaign run by the Government and do massive damage to the industry per se.
The staggering numbers are also a blot of the PM’s Make in India campaign, since most of these are low quality Chinese imports. In order to ensure that only quality products are available in the market, the Government should immediately ensure that the procurement for EESL and Government bodies is from Indian manufacturing only.
We think that time has come, when some sort of anti-dumping duty should also be imposed on these imports so that the Indian consumer does not suffer.
