Making hay with buzzwords

Rohit WAS DEPRESSED: “I signed up for a bank loan; don’t know what I signed.”

“You mean you went to a private-sector bank, and signed on the dotted line,” Anjum said half-teasingly. “But that’s the whole idea---to word it all in language that makes no sense to anyone. It’s meant to hoodwink you into believing the bank’s doing you a great favour, when it’s doing just what any money-lender does. Which clauses do you find difficult?”

”Almost everything,” said Rohit. “It’s all in tiny letters, and begins by telling me the bank can do anything ‘at its absolute discretion, notwithstanding any of the provisions of the Indian Contract Act, 1872’. But aren’t all contracts bound by the Act?”

“Of course they are,” Anjum said. “Any court would annul that stupid clause.”

“What in hell’s a bank’s ‘absolute discretion’? Does law recognize various degrees of discretion? And why the sly, tiny letters?”

“Because,” said Anjum, “people don’t drag them to courts. If they did, courts would force banks to mend their ways---pronto. The banks plonk all kinds of invalid clauses. They trick you into signing them, then tell you your signature means you’ve accepted them.”

“The entire tone of the document is insulting,” Rohit continued. “Almost every clause in tiny letters says the borrower has no rights, and that the bank has ‘absolute authority’ to do everything ‘at the borrower’s risk and cost’. But I thought the Reserve Bank of India governs all banks. Who or what arms a bank with ‘absolute authority’ over anything?”

Anjum tried to soothe Rohit: “I just told you: it’s to trick you into signing what’s invalid. These private-sector banks puff up through lending money and guzzling interest, but hire goons to beat up or intimidate borrowers. The papers reported that goons confiscated at gun-point the scooter a borrower had bought with a loan from a big bank. The report said the borrower had paid all but the last of his EMI.”

“What happened then?” asked Rohit.

“The man went to court,” said Anjum. “The court ordered the bank to return the scooter to the borrower.”

Rohit was disgusted: “What if an ordinary money-lender threatened a borrower at gun-point? Would he be let off as lightly? Police’d confiscate the revolver; he’d have to prove he’d a gun licence; then he’d have to prove in court he’d drawn his revolver in self-defence. There’d have been no end to it. But corporate money-lenders’ goons whip out revolvers at the drop of a hat, and we hear only a mild rebuke.”

“True,” Anjum said. “That’s why Indians need to gang up on these corporate money-lenders.”

Rohit went on: “Then the document defines default in paying my dues. It winds up a long list of clauses with ‘The decision of . . . the Bank as to whether or not an Event of Default has occurred shall be final and binding’. But if a bank’s only got to cry ‘default’ and presto---it becomes default, why bother to define it? Beats the triple ‘talaq’!”

“Quite,” said Anjum.

“Nor is that all,” said Rohit. “It also says the bank ‘has the absolute discretion to amend or supplement any of the Loan Terms at any time.’ But how can the bank change any term unilaterally after drawing up a bilateral agreement?”

“They’ll next say they have the power of life or death over the borrower,” said Anjum. “What d’you say, Deb?”

Deb had obviously been listening: “That’s drafted by lawyers who know neither the law, nor English. The bank’s lawyers probably rehashed a loan document some semi-literate gooks drafted for a zamindar or money-lender during the British Raj, and merely substituted the word ‘Bank’ where the original had the zamindar’s name.”

“Or maybe,” Anjum said, “those lawyers went to one of those ramshackle law colleges we have in India, or perhaps bought bogus degrees, or bribed their way into getting recruited by the bank.”

“The problem is, we stick to our feudal ways,” Deb said. “Had democratic ideas prevailed, such documents would’ve had to be transparent. And they’d have to be printed in readable type, not tiny letters. The entire western world is changing over to plain English in law.”

Rohit was enthused: “Why isn’t India, then?”

“Because,” said Deb, “to translate the complexities of law into plain language, you’ve first got to understand it thoroughly. Remember what Albert Einstein said: ‘If you can't explain something simply, you do not understand it well’.

“Also, lawyers have a vested interest: if a draft’s incomprehensible, you’ll need lawyers to interpret it. That, our lawyers think, keeps them in business. And so they keep repeating stupid buzzwords and phrases like mantras: whereas, hereinbefore, absolute authority, whatsoever, unless there is anything repugnant to the subject or context thereof, and what have you.

“Lawyers in countries where customer contracts are worded in plain English understand that the simpler the language, the less likely a document will invite litigation. They believe it’s unethical to draft a document a client can’t understand. They believe in offering client service.

“To achieve that in India, you’d need sincere lawyers with good grasp of the law, and the skill of clarity in rendering law into simple language. But how many Indian lawyers are better than semi-literate charlatans? Only a few.
“All those draconian terms in your loan document are bad in law. They’d be struck down in any court of law. But the higher-ups in the bank prod their lawyers to word it that way to trap borrowers. These private sector banks hoodwink and fleece clients; the average borrower doesn’t know his rights, and so, third-rate lawyers and bank officers make hay.”