Why is PhonePe swearing on mothers to sell health insurance?

Seeing the names of several mothers printed on the front page of The Times of India, followed by PhonePe swearing on them to promise the lowest health insurance premiums, hardly inspires confidence.

Maa Kasam is one of the most potent informal oaths in India, a society that simultaneously venerates mothers and casually drags the word into everyday profanity.

To swear on one’s mother means staking personal honour on the truth. Break it, and it is the individual’s credibility that collapses, not the mother’s well-being. The penalty is social and moral, not metaphysical.

That’s precisely what makes PhonePe’s use of this oath around something as fraught as health insurance feel uneasy. India’s health infrastructure is fragile, medical inflation is climbing, and families often buy insurance out of fear rather than foresight. In that context, invoking mothers to push a pricing claim feels unnecessary at best and tone-deaf at worst.

Of course, hypocrisy rests with people too. Indians deploy Maa Kasam without thinking, and in the same breath hurl or exchange mother-related abuses as insults or terms of affection. The emotional sanctity of the mother is invoked and violated in equal measure; brands are simply borrowing from this cultural inconsistency.

But PhonePe’s timing is not accidental. With the government removing GST on health and life insurance premiums, price-sensitive consumers are re-evaluating their policies. Insurers and marketplaces like PhonePe are responding with aggressive signalling. Promising the lowest premium is compelling; swearing on mothers is a shortcut to trust.

As always, there is a catch. PhonePe will refund the difference if a user finds a cheaper premium elsewhere. And to sell that reassurance, it swears on mothers again.