Kautilya's Maxims
19
Contracts For Labor
(ArS 3/14:6-9)

[Previous Discussion]: Enforcement of agreements concerning work for wages.

The Teachers: If the employer fails to provide work when the laborer has presented himself, the work shall be considered as done.

Kautilya: No. A wage is for work done, not for work not done. But if the employer allows even a little work to be done, and then forbids more, the whole shall be considered as done.

A contract is an offer, and not a situation in being. Thus, an agreement to provide work is not operative until the work has begun. It is with the acceptance of the offer (the provision of work for the laborer who shows up pursuant to the contract) that the contract comes alive. But once alive, the contract has full force, even if the employer then attempts to arrest or limit the agreed work. The laborer has fulfilled his obligation as far as he was able to. Kautilya is saying that one party cannot rewrite a contract once it is in effect. There is also the implication that the contract binds both parties, even though they may be of different castes. It creates functional equivalance before the law. We may have here a faint precursor of some of the social policies of the later Maurya ruler Ashoka.

 

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