Beyond Insurance: How We Traded Community for Contracts

Insurance, they say, is a subject matter of solicitation. But more than that, it’s about survival in a nuclear, displaced world severed from the communities that formed the backbone of human civilization for millennia. The tragic assassination of the United HealthCare CEO, Brian Thompson, has jolted the world into asking uncomfortable questions. How did a murder come to be eulogized, and the murderer hailed as a hero? Is it Ethical fading or a deep malice that plagues the world that we live in today. One of displacement, displeasure, distancing and disease. A world packed with insecurities and insurances.

One life lost is a tragedy , and millions lost for lack of basic healthcare is statistics. How has the world’s greatest power—capable of breaching gravity with rockets—fallen to a point where accessing a clinical couch feels like an impossible mission?

Outside of his Comedy gigs, Trevor Noah is one of my favorite modern thinkers. In a podcast with Simon Sinek, he observed that choice is both a gift and a curse. He delved deeper, pointing out that the choice to leave one’s community often brings the burden of selecting neighborhoods where you can live isolated lives, unbothered and unconnected. Nowhere is this truer than in the United States, where people build metaphorical moats around their lives, protecting their privacy but also cutting themselves off from the solace of human connection.

Back in a village, Life is not as serious as we make it. Walk into an Indian village, and you’ll see a world where insurance is an alien concept. Communities gather on front porches, watching over each other and their children. No, it isn’t utopia—there are differences and constraints—but they’ve learned to coexist within these bounds, bound by the threads of mutual reliance.

As we peel away from our roots in the pursuit of livelihoods, we find ourselves alone, and insurance becomes not just a necessity but a crutch. The insurance companies, too, are chained to reinsurers in a vast hierarchy of contracts—a web of obligations devoid of trust.

Contrast this with life in a small Indian village. Weddings, for instance, are community events. Families cook together, pitch tents, and share the joy. The bride and groom often belong to the same locality. There’s no pomp to flaunt or hide—just simplicity, solemnity, and shared happiness. The entire event is underwritten by reciprocity, not credit. Borrowed utensils, locally sourced food, and a barter economy drive the celebrations. Here, the “50-mile food concept” is not a trend but a way of life. Insurance, in such places, is redundant because life itself is the insurance—a cradle-to-grave network of shared responsibility. The yarn weaves through the community in a neat overlap of give and take to create the fabric called life.

It reminds me of that beautiful song:

When I was a little bitty baby

My mama would rock me in the cradle

In them old cotton fields back home.

 As Marshall McLuhan aptly put it, “The global village is a world of arduous interfaces and abrasive situations.” These interfaces are contracts, these abrasions the deals we strike. Modernity, at its core, is a deal: humans give up meaning in exchange for power.

I remember the day when I was on a plane full of Bangladeshi laborers returning to Dhaka. When the plane landed, they cried out in unison: "Etai prithibir shobcheye shundor jayga." “This is the most beautiful place on Earth”. Imagine the joy of coming home—the release from the trauma of displacement. Back to a place where you didn’t choose your community; you simply belonged.

Perhaps it’s time to rewrite that old song:

When I was a little bitty baby

Community rocked me in its cradle

In that old village back home.

And when them cotton boll gets rotten,

you still can get some cotton

In that old village, my home. 

What we’ve traded for modernity may not be worth the price. In a world of insurance contracts and reinsurance hierarchies, the warmth of shared humanity feels more distant than ever. If insurance is a subject matter of solicitation, then life is a subject matter of connection—threads woven through relationships, community, and shared experiences that no contract can replace.