What is the web of unspoken contracts in your everyday life?
A slew of marriages are the silver lining in pandemic darkness faced by humanity as they bring more hope to one’s life. At the same time, unfortunately these bonds were tested in lockdown period too. The domestic abuse is in phenomenal rise during this covid-19 times shows an interesting facet of the one life.
How many of you read the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 or the Special Marriage Act, 1954 before marriage or after marriage?
I neither saw nor heard a person of doing that too but still we are obliged legally to all the parts of it? It is not the only unknowing contract you had signed in your life, even a rupee is contract between the RBI and you. Every ritual, relation, possession, position you have does comes under a legal contract. To understand more, let’s dive into just basic definition of “contract” from THE INDIAN CONTRACT ACT, 1872.
A legal contract is an agreement between two parties that creates mutual, legally enforceable obligations. Seven essential elements must be present before a contract is binding: the offer, acceptance, mutual assent (also known as “meeting of the minds”), consideration, capacity, and legality. (Indian Laws will takes precedence)
In simple words, two or more persons are said to consent when they agree upon the same thing in the same sense. That means none of us never read or made sense of any contract that we are obliged by law. It’s just like, you born after signing on white blank papers. Indeed, you have no idea of any of the seven essential elements of contract.
I respect Indian laws as they are the pillars of democracy but the advent of the technology and superfluous growth requires a new way of building consensus among the diverse groups.
As stepping stone, we need to start creating the basic social and financial contracts for humanity relevant to the 2020 and beyond. We may not know the all answers now but we do know the few problems.
- Currency: the promise of paying the rupee/currency by any central bank is not enough but it has to guarantee “what rupee/currency can buy for you?”
- Marriage or parenthood: One has to understand the responsibilities, abilities, challenges of a social contract. A women or man is not allowed to even drive a car before they get license. Why the law does overlooks the major social contracts of its practitioners?
- Education: In the times of google search, Education need to have absolute purpose. Why do you need to by-heart 500 pages to just get an accreditation which you don’t use at all?
- Political manifesto/oath: Do I need to say anything?
I am strong believer that new age social sciences with the use of large data handling capacities will give us a new ways of seeing these problems along with the revolutionary solutions. Please share the unspoken contracts you want to redefine for the society/yourself.
