“Super dense crush load” is a term coined by railway officials for Mumbai’s suburban trains. It describes the moment when 14 to 16 standing passengers fill one square meter of floor space. The recommended level is four.
A nine-car train has a recommended capacity of 1,700 people. At peak hours it carries about 4,700. Open magazine puts the number of daily commuters on the city’s three suburban networks at 7.5 million.
In 2019 the Delhi government ran 1,027 schools in double shifts from about 700 buildings. One school used a building in the morning. Another, usually a boys’ school, used the same building in the evening.
That year the government reportedly wanted to end the two-shift system. The education department later announced that around 90 more schools would be converted to a single general shift.
India has about 13 million kirana stores, small neighborhood shops. As delivery apps spread, many kiranas are trying to keep their regular customers by offering home delivery. “We can’t go fully online so we have started taking orders on WhatsApp Business,” one shopkeeper told Outlook Business. They also keep the khata, the credit account for regular customers, which the apps cannot match.
Not every store survives. A distributors’ federation reported that 200,000 kirana stores closed in a single year.
Samjhauta: compromise, understanding, pact, accord, agreement, in the Rekhta dictionary.
Nibhaana: to accommodate, adjust, adapt. Rekhta also gives “to maintain relations” and “to bear, suffer, endure.”
In Dharavi, Mumbai, houses grow with the families inside them. A study by the research group URBZ describes one house with a ground floor and one upper floor that “must be incrementally expanded” to a second upper floor “as a result of growing family needs.” The owner of another house “wishes to add another floor to his house for when his son is married and the family grows.”
For Diwali and Chhath in 2025, Indian Railways planned more than 12,000 special trains, All India Radio reported. Around 4,000 of them ran in the first 19 days of October. They carried over one crore passengers, ten million people.
On February 19, 2020, the Ministry of Finance ruled that “disruption of supply chains due to spread of Coronavirus will be covered” under the force majeure clause of government contracts. On May 13 it went further. For contractors not already in default, dates for obligations falling due from February 20 “shall stand extended for a period not less than three months and not more than six months,” without “any cost or penalty on the contractor/concessionaire.”
The same day, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs asked the states to “treat the pandemic COVID-19 as ‘force majeure'” under the real estate law and to “automatically extend registration of all real estate projects registered under RERA by 6 months.”
On Indian Railways, a passenger may hold an RAC ticket, Reservation Against Cancellation. “At the time of booking, RAC passengers are assigned a side lower berth, which is shared with another RAC traveller,” Zee Business explains.
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.”
The Constitution of India came into force on January 26, 1950. On September 28, 2023, the Ministry of Law and Justice notified the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, which provides for reserving seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies.
It was the 106th amendment in 73 years.