“The most important class of credit Instruments that evolved in India were termed Hundis,” the Reserve Bank of India writes in its history of payment systems. One kind, the sah-jog hundi, was “payable only to a Sah or to his order.”
The RBI explains who that was. “A Sah was a respectable and responsible person, a man of worth and substance who was known in the market.”
In March 2013 Business Today reported that “banks have decided to publish in newspapers photographs and details like names and addresses of wilful loan defaulters.” The State Bank of India acted first, with notices on five defaulters in Delhi.
Bichauliya. The Rekhta dictionary translates it as mediator, arbitrator, go-between and middleman. Its Hindi definitions add a person who mediates to settle a deal, a person who steps in between to get something done, and a person who arranges a marriage or an engagement.
Mol-tol. Bargaining, haggling, valuation, concession, in the Rekhta dictionary.
Mol-bhaav. To bargain, to make a bargain. Rekhta’s Hindi definition adds the talk that settles a deal and the fixing of a price.
A Lok Adalat, a people’s court, settles disputes by compromise. Under the Legal Services Authorities Act of 1987, it arrives “at a compromise or settlement between the parties.” Its award “shall be deemed to be a decree of a Civil Court,” and “no appeal shall lie to any Court against the award.”
Since 2015 National Lok Adalats have been held across India on single days, each disposing of a large number of pending cases.
On April 27 and 28, 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met in Wuhan for an informal summit. There was no agenda and no joint statement. The two leaders walked along East Lake, rode a houseboat and talked over tea. China’s ambassador to India said they spent nine hours together.
The talks between the delegations “went well beyond the budgeted time,” said India’s Foreign Secretary, Vijay Gokhale.
On Poila Boishakh, the first day of the Bengali year, traders close their old ledgers and open new ones. The custom is called haal khata. Customers are invited to settle old debts and start fresh. “Seeking to improve their relationship with customers, traders give sweets, snacks, or gifts to them,” Wikipedia notes. It is kept in West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley of Assam, and in Bangladesh.
In Haridwar, around 2,000 pandas, priests of the holy city, “preserve the lineages of their clients in the ‘Bahi khatas’,” the registers they keep. “The clientele of a particular panda is decided on the basis of the village, district and the state they come from,” DT Next reported in 2021.
Before written records, the pandas “used to memorise the names, clans and places of origin, and pass down the information orally to their next generations.”
The Palanpuri Jains, a historic business community, are prominent in the diamond trade of Antwerp, with networks reaching Mumbai and Surat. Their trade, an article in The Conversation explains, “operates on credit, relies on trust.” It adds: “The diamond industry cannot enforce written contracts.”
The community’s own social controls do that work instead. “In the diamond trade, your name has traditionally been your collateral,” one Indian essay notes.
Sifarish means a recommendation. A person with sifarish has someone who has spoken for them. The Rekhta dictionary gives recommendation and intercession as its first meanings. It notes that the word can also mean “undue favour or influence.”