Relationship Archives - understand-culture

Family Arrangement

On January 21, 1976, the Supreme Court decided Kale and Others v. Deputy Director of Consolidation. The judgment set out rules for family arrangements, the settlements that relatives make among themselves. One of them reads: “The family arrangement may be even oral in which case no registration is necessary.”

The Court also described its general approach. “The Courts have, therefore, leaned in favour of upholding a family arrangement instead of disturbing the same on technical or trivial grounds.”

Fifty-Fifty

After the Maharashtra assembly election of 2019, the Shiv Sena and the BJP disagreed about what had been promised. The Sena said that Amit Shah had assured Uddhav Thackeray, at his home Matoshree in Mumbai, that the two parties would share the chief minister’s post. Sanjay Raut of the Sena said: “our only demand is that things should work according to what has been decided earlier.”

On October 29, 2019, Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP said: “The Shiv Sena was not promised CM’s post for two-and-a-half years when the alliance was formalised before the Lok Sabha polls.” Amit Shah later said: “I don’t make promises in closed rooms.”

The Family MoU

In June 2005 Kokilaben Ambani announced a settlement of ownership issues between her sons Mukesh and Anil. When the brothers later fought over gas supplies, the case reached the Supreme Court. In May 2010 the Court found that “the Ambani family MoU dividing the gas was not binding, both legally as well as technically.”

A few weeks later the two groups “cancelled all non-compete agreements” between them. The cancellation, they said, “will provide enhanced operational and financial flexibility.”

Credit at the Corner Shop

At a neighborhood kirana store, regular customers often buy on credit, udhaar. The shopkeeper writes the amount in a ledger, the bahi khata, and the customer pays later. Khatabook, an app founded for “replicating India’s bahi khata, or book of accounts,” reported “over 10 million monthly active users” in 2021.

Business Today asked shopkeepers how they get neighbors to pay their dues. One of them, Sushil Tripathi, explained why he does not press: “They might get offended if we ask them to pay the dues and move to another kirana store.”

Brothers

On April 29, 1954, India and China signed an agreement in Peking. Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai, Indians and Chinese are brothers, “was the catch phrase for India-China diplomacy in the 1950s,” according to the Indian think tank Gateway House.

The relationship later broke down, “ultimately leading to the Sino-Indian war in 1962.”

Rishta and Roka

Rishta. A relation by blood or marriage. The Rekhta dictionary also gives a second meaning: a marriage proposal.

Roka. The ceremony in which two families accept a match. The Indian wedding-wear brand Manyavar describes it as “a pre-wedding ritual that signifies the formal announcement and acceptance of a marriage alliance between two families.”

A Tacit Understanding

In 1972 Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto signed the Simla Agreement. As the Indian scholar A.G. Noorani notes, under the agreement the Line of Control in Kashmir “was not accepted as an international border proper.”

P.N. Dhar, who was present at the talks, later wrote in his book that the two leaders reached an understanding at the last minute. “The tacit understanding, no doubt was that gradually the Line of Control would emerge as an international border. But this remained only a tacit understanding.”

The account is disputed. Abdul Sattar, the other surviving witness to the talks and later Pakistan’s foreign minister, “flatly rejected the claim,” Noorani wrote in Dawn in 2012.

The Oath Before the Fire

In the Valmiki Ramayana, the monkey king Sugriva sees Rama and Lakshmana in the forest and is afraid. He tells his ministers that his brother Vali “must have dispatched them.” His minister Hanuman reports to him about the two brothers.

Hanuman then brings them to Sugriva. Rama and Sugriva “take the oath of friendship before an altar of fire.” Only after this does Sugriva tell Rama that he saw Sita carried off through the sky. He shows him the ornaments she dropped, wrapped in her upper cloth.

Jaan-Pehchaan

Jaan-pehchaan means knowing people and being known by them. A study by Berger, Barnes, Konwar, Singh and colleagues surveyed managers at more than 300 companies in India.

It describes three parts of the practice: pehchaan, recognition, len-den, give and take, and bharosa, trust. Together they shaped how satisfied companies were with their business relationships and how long they planned to keep them.