Indian banks used to ask anyone opening an account for an introduction from an existing customer of the bank. Someone the bank already knew had to vouch for the newcomer.
In December 2012 the Reserve Bank of India told banks to stop insisting on it. The requirement, it said, was not mandatory under any of its rules.
In rural Punjab, a jugaad is a vehicle built from what is at hand. One kind bolts a farm trailer to a diesel engine of the kind that drives water pumps. Another, in Moga, fixes a 10 horsepower irrigation pump engine to the front of a wooden cart. It carries about 40 people.
The word means a workaround. In 2017 the Oxford English Dictionary added it: “A flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.”
Chalta hai. It goes. It will do. Said of a half-baked solution that is accepted anyway.
Chaltaa kaam. A makeshift or temporary arrangement, according to the Rekhta dictionary.
Zara add-just karo. Adjust a little. A columnist in The Week described the habit of adjusting as “our accommodative spirit towards a less-than-perfect solution.”
In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena and the BJP campaigned on a promise to push Enron’s Dabhol power project “into the Arabian Sea.” After winning the 1995 state election, their government halted construction on August 3, 1995.
In 1996 the state electricity board and Enron renegotiated the contract. Enron cut its power costs by 20 percent, and the board agreed to buy more electricity.
In 2025 Mint and the job site Shine surveyed 254 senior executives about hiring. For 22 percent of the companies, candidates who accept a job offer and then do not join were “the biggest hiring challenge” in the June quarter.
In the Mahabharata, the young archer Ekalavya outshines Arjuna, a student of the teacher Drona. Arjuna complains. Drona then asks Ekalavya for his right thumb as gurudakshina, the fee owed to a teacher. Ekalavya gives it willingly, and his archery is weakened.
Jaan-pehchaan means knowing people and being known by them. A study by Berger, Barnes, Konwar, Singh and colleagues surveyed managers at more than 300 companies in India.
It describes three parts of the practice: pehchaan, recognition, len-den, give and take, and bharosa, trust. Together they shaped how satisfied companies were with their business relationships and how long they planned to keep them.
In the Ramcharitmanas, Tulsidas’s retelling of the Ramayana, King Dasharatha has promised Queen Kaikeyi two boons. She asks that her son Bharat be crowned and that Rama be sent into exile for fourteen years. Dasharatha is broken by grief, but he keeps his word.
The poem explains it in one line: Raghukul reet sada chali aayi, pran jaye par bachan na jaai. It has always been the rule in the house of Raghu. Life may go, but a promise may not.
“Ek baar jo maine commitment kar di, fir main apne aap ki bhi nahi sunta.” Once I have made a commitment, I do not even listen to myself. Salman Khan says it as Radhe in Wanted (2009).
The film site Filmibeat lists it among the 16 most famous Hindi film dialogues. The wording varies slightly between sources.
Zabaan is the Hindi and Urdu word for tongue. It also means a promise. The Rekhta dictionary gives vachan and vaada, both meaning promise, among its senses. Zabaan dena, to give one’s tongue, means to give one’s word.