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Talk Title: “How have Indian courts dealt with consumer finance disputes? "

This paper studies the role of courts in consumer nance disputes in India. It describes the structure of the courts that consumers can access, such as the consumer courts established under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (and now 2019), High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. It finds that in the case of banking disputes, courts have generally sided with the consumer when banks behaved contrary to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circulars. In the case of insurance, courts have taken a pro-industry contractual compliance stance. Hence, consumers did not get a remedy in cases where the contracts had unfair terms. The paper also finds that courts tend to award low compensation, take a long time for adjudication, do not have systems for class action suits, and generally lack specialization to deal with consumer finance issues. All of these are important issues that must be addressed for courts to become more effective in providing relief regarding consumer finance (and other) disputes.

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