In July 2022, before the monsoon session, the Lok Sabha secretariat issued a booklet of words that may be expunged from the record as unparliamentary. The list included “ashamed,” “betrayed,” “corrupt,” “drama” and jumlajeevi.
The Speaker, Om Birla, said that no words had been banned. The opposition MP Derek O’Brien wrote: “I will use all these words. Suspend me.”
“From 2020, CBSE has replaced the term FAIL with ESSENTIAL REPEAT.” This is from the frequently asked questions of the Central Board of Secondary Education, which sets school-leaving exams for much of India.
A student who fails the theory paper now receives RT, Repeat in Theory, instead of FT, Fail in Theory.
In August 2014 the BJP dropped L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee from its Parliamentary Board, the party’s top decision-making body. The three senior leaders were placed in a new Margdarshak Mandal, a guidance board, with an advisory role.
The Congress called it “an old age home.” In 2019 a commentary on the site Counterview wrote that “the mandal never met formally” in five years.
On February 25, 2022, the UN Security Council voted on a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. India abstained, together with China and the United Arab Emirates.
India’s ambassador, T.S. Tirumurti, explained: “It is a matter of regret that the path of diplomacy was given up. We must return to it.” He added: “For all these reasons, India has chosen to abstain on this resolution.”
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 Rajasthan, a host presses food on a guest again and again. The custom is called manvar, from the Marwari word for “to request.”
Guests know the rules. “It is customary to decline what you are offered – the first time,” a report from Udaipur notes.
In his book The Power of Saying No, the author Ashutosh Garg writes that in India subordinates “may find it particularly difficult to say no to superiors.” In collectivist cultures, he adds, “saying no directly is often avoided to preserve harmony and maintain relationships.”
Instead of refusing, he writes, an Indian may say sochte hain, “we will think about it.” Governance Now published an excerpt in February 2026.
In a column in The Tribune, Lakhinder Jit Singh Vohra wrote: “Instead of saying no, we are taught to nod our head and take it.”
In India, he wrote, “everything is a yes, even when everything is meant to be a no.” A refusal arrives as an assurance, such as “200 per cent it will be taken care of.”