Government to bring more products under mandatory quality norm: Piyush Goyal

Piyush Goyal, India’s Consumer Affairs Minister, has notified that the government will issue more mandatory product quality standards. While speaking online at the 77th Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) foundation day on January 6, he stated the importance of high quality standards to realise India’s dream of becoming a developed nation by 2047. He proposed that BIS should be a quality standard bearer, inventing new standards rather than just conforming to existing ones. Ideally, these would be on a par with international standards. Goyal cited lifts, air filters and medical devices as potential examples where India could lead worldwide standard setting. He called for close cooperation among stakeholders, promoting the need for stringent quality testing labs, and added that the government will use Quality Control Orders (QCO) to enforce mandatory compliance for a wider variety of products. Currently, 156 QCOs have been implemented across 672 products, a considerable increase from 14 covering 106 products in 2014. Goyal expressed a long-term commitment to quality, noting that future QCOs may extend to between 2,000 and 2,500 products. The aim is to achieve higher quality standards across all goods and services in India. Goyal highlighted the national shift towards autonomous quality standards, shrugging off reliance on foreign criteria. He pointed to the transformations brought about by recent initiatives, such as the mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery and the enforcement of quality compliance for toys. Nowadays, over 4.15 lakh articles are hallmarked daily, with 90-95% of consumers purchasing hallmarked jewellery. Similarly, toy imports have dropped by 52%, replaced by safe, quality local products, thanks to rigorous quality control. Goyal reaffirmed that high quality is non-negotiable and does not necessarily make a product more expensive. He urged the market to actively participate in creating quality standards and to promote transparency in quality testing.