In an address to the nation on March 19, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Indians to observe a “Janta Curfew” on Sunday, March 22, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. He also asked them to stand in doorways and on balconies at 5 p.m. and clap or ring bells for five minutes to salute health workers.
On the day, people in the Chandigarh area clapped and banged plates and pans with spoons, The Tribune reported. “For several enthusiasts, the clapping started way before 5 pm.”
On October 2, 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Clean India campaign, Swachh Bharat, by taking up a broom himself. He swept a small area of Valmiki Colony in New Delhi “with party colleagues and residents,” Business Standard reported. He then named nine people to carry the campaign forward, among them Sachin Tendulkar and Priyanka Chopra.
On January 16, 2021, India began vaccinating against Covid-19. Randeep Guleria, the director of AIIMS in New Delhi, received a dose that day, shown on live television. Two days later he said: “I have no side-effects. I am feeling perfectly alright.”
On March 1, 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took his first dose of Covaxin at AIIMS. Guleria said: “It will go a long way in getting over vaccine hesitancy.”
On March 27, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the “Give It Up” campaign. It asked consumers to surrender their subsidy on cooking gas voluntarily. By April 2016, 1,00,06,303 consumers, just over one crore, had stopped using subsidized cooking gas, Deccan Chronicle reported.
In October 2014, on his radio program Mann Ki Baat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked listeners to buy khadi, hand-spun cloth. On November 2 he said: “I was told that khadi sales increased by almost 125 percent.” The Khadi Bhandar in Connaught Place, New Delhi, reportedly began registering daily sales of around 50 lakh rupees.
The size of the effect is disputed. The fact-checking site FactChecker found that khadi sales for the whole of 2014-15 rose by only 5.91 percent.
On May 22, 2010, Air India Express Flight 812 crashed while landing at Mangalore. The cockpit recorder had “co-pilot Captain HS Ahluwalia” “telling Captain Glusica thrice to go around,” the Deccan Herald reported.
The investigation noted: “Although company SOP empowered the first officer to assume control and discontinue the approach, he did not do so.”
On March 24, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation at 8 p.m. He announced a lockdown of the whole country for 21 days, beginning at midnight. The legal order followed about 30 minutes after his speech.
According to Scroll, the Union government had not discussed the lockdown with the states.
The Arthashastra, the ancient treatise on statecraft attributed to Kautilya, sets rules for the king’s officers in Book 2, chapter 9. They are not to act without first bringing the matter to the knowledge of their master. In the English translation: “they shall undertake nothing except remedial measures against imminent dangers.”
On December 24, 1999, hijackers took over Indian Airlines flight IC-814 and brought it down at Amritsar. The plane stood there for about 45 minutes, according to Sarabjit Singh, then the head of the Punjab Police. Other accounts give 40 or 74 minutes. Then it took off again, and the hijackers flew on.
In Delhi, the government’s Crisis Management Group was deciding what to do. “No one was willing to take a decision and in that confusion no instructions were passed on to Punjab Police,” A.S. Dulat later said. According to ThePrint, officials in the Amritsar control room waited for instructions from Delhi that never came.
In the Kishkindha Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, the monkey army reaches the sea. Someone must leap across to Lanka. The old Jambavan turns to Hanuman, tells him of his birth and his strength, and says: Uttishtha harishardula, langhayasva maharnavam. Rise, tiger among monkeys, leap across the great ocean. He adds that the whole monkey army wishes to see his strength.
Only then does Hanuman enlarge his body. Valmiki describes him as jambavata prachoditah, urged on by Jambavan.