Embedding Good Faith in Indian Contract Law from Monsoon Rhythms to Modern Markets : An Economic Value Preservation Framework for a Developed India

For a millennium, Indian commerce ran on an architecture of trust — the guilds, the hundi networks, the merchant ethic inscribed in stone from Nagapattinam to Quanzhou, the Indian Ocean trading economy built under the Cholas. In 1872, colonial codification severed contract law from that inheritance: precise about breach, silent about conduct. The result is a system in which delay is rational, opportunism carries no price, and value is destroyed at the very moments cooperation would have preserved it. The cost compounds, and it is paid by everyone who contracts in India.

This book makes the case for the reform left unaddressed for a century and a half: embedding good faith and value preservation in the substantive law of contract.

Prashant Kumar is a policy economist turned lawyer. An Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and President of the Bar Association of India, he has practised commercial litigation and arbitration for close to three decades. He has held leadership positions in LAWASIA, the BRICS Legal Forum and the International Legal Assistance Consortium, and was instrumental in establishing the biennial New Delhi International Rule of Law Convention, with its focus on economic governance. The argument of this book comes from the vantage of a practitioner conversant with global perspectives and trends, and with India’s own commercial heritage.