ValueNotes, an Indian research firm, gives foreign partners ten tips for doing business with Indians. One of them reads: “In a meeting, we don’t like to contradict the boss, especially if he’s wrong!”
The tip continues: “The flip side is that those in powerful positions expect deference, and consensus.”
In Premchand’s story Panch Parmeshwar (1916), the friends Jumman and Algu each sit in judgment in a case that touches the other. Algu, as head of the village panchayat, rules against his friend. An old woman has told him: Panch ke dil mein khuda basta hai. God lives in the heart of the panch.
Later Jumman, now an enemy, must judge Algu’s case. When he judges fairly, the village cries out: Panch Parmeshwar ki jai! Victory to the panch who is God.
Sam gacchadhvam sam vadadhvam sam vo manamsi janatam. “Assemble, speak together: let your minds be all of one accord.” This is from the last hymn of the Rigveda, in the translation by Ralph Griffith.
The hymn continues: “One and the same be your resolve, and be your minds of one accord.”
In the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the Buddha asks his disciple Ananda about the Vajjis, a confederation of clans. “Do the Vajjis have frequent gatherings, and are their meetings well attended?” Do they “assemble and disperse peacefully and attend to their affairs in concord?”
The Buddha names these among the conditions for their welfare.
On May 14, 2023, the 136 newly elected Congress members of the Karnataka assembly met to choose a chief minister. Two leaders wanted the post. The members “unanimously passed a resolution to authorise All India Congress Committee president Mallikarjun Kharge to choose the new leader of the party.”
In Rajasthan in December 2018 the Congress members had passed a single-line resolution leaving the choice to Rahul Gandhi.
The GST Council brings the central government and the states together to set India’s goods and services tax. The rules allow decisions by weighted vote. Until December 2019, every decision had been unanimous.
That month it voted for the first time, on the tax rate for lotteries. Twenty-one states voted for and seven against.
Judges of the Supreme Court of India are chosen by the collegium: the Chief Justice and the four most senior judges. The system grew out of Supreme Court rulings in 1993 and 1998.
In October 2017 the collegium decided to publish its decisions on the court’s website. For about two years it also gave its reasons.
In May 2025 India carried out Operation Sindoor, military strikes against targets in Pakistan. On May 8 the government called an all-party meeting. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh briefed the leaders on the action already taken.
“This meeting was to evolve a broad political consensus,” said Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs.
In October 2022 Mallikarjun Kharge defeated Shashi Tharoor for the presidency of the Congress party, by 7,897 votes to 1,072. It was the party’s first contested leadership election since 2000.
In the years between, Sonia Gandhi had been chosen again and again without a vote. In 2017 Rahul Gandhi was elected unopposed.