On April 11, 2016, ten railway wagons carrying five lakh liters of water left Miraj Junction for Latur, in the drought-hit Marathwada region of Maharashtra. Later in April a train of 50 wagons, the Jaldoot, brought 25 lakh liters in a single run.
In July 2019 a train of 50 tank wagons carried 25 lakh liters of water to Chennai from Jolarpettai, 217 kilometers away.
On May 28, 2019, the National Green Tribunal told the Environment Ministry to prohibit reverse osmosis water purifiers in areas where the water contains less than 500 milligrams of dissolved solids per liter.
The tribunal also ordered that purifiers recover at least 60 percent of the water they treat. Under the earlier standard, the required recovery had been only 20 percent.
When the power fails, many Indian homes switch to an inverter, a battery that keeps the lights and fans running. In an online survey by LocalCircles, released in May 2022, 41 percent of respondents said they had an inverter or a similar device and used it during outages. Twelve percent said they had no backup and simply lived with the outage.
The respondents chose to take part, so the figures are not a national count.
In 1964 Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri visited Anand, in Gujarat, where farmers owned the Amul dairy cooperative. He spent a night in a village in Kaira district as a farmer’s guest. Afterward he wrote to the Chief Ministers: “We envisage a large programme of co-operative dairies during the Fourth Plan.”
In 1965 the government created the National Dairy Development Board. Shastri asked Verghese Kurien of Amul to lead it. Kurien later recalled that Shastri wanted to “transplant the spirit of Anand in many other places.”
In early 1984 the engineer Sam Pitroda presented his plan for Indian telecommunications to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Her son Rajiv was in the room. In Pitroda’s account, published in Open magazine, Rajiv said: “Mom, listen to this. This guy has ideas.” She gave Pitroda an hour.
Later that year Pitroda founded the Centre for Development of Telematics, C-DOT, with Rajiv Gandhi’s backing. According to Pitroda’s website, it began in five rooms of a run-down government hotel.
In August 1964 the agriculture minister, C. Subramaniam, approved M.S. Swaminathan’s national demonstration program for Mexican semi-dwarf wheat. He overruled objections from skeptical officials. For the winter crop of 1966-67, India planted about 18,000 tonnes of imported seed. The Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay gives 18,200 tonnes.
Subramaniam also won over Prime Minister Shastri. ThePrint reports that in 1966 he had the garden of his house in Delhi dug up to plant the new wheat.
Satyajit Ray began shooting his first film, Pather Panchali, with a producer who later went bankrupt. Ray pawned his wife’s jewelry and sold rare books and records, and the money was still not enough. He then approached Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal.
The state government part financed the film. LatestLY reports that it was “part financed by the West Bengal Roads Department.” Swarajya reports that Roy asked for a happier ending, and that Ray refused.
When Ashutosh Gowariker first told Aamir Khan the idea for Lagaan, Khan turned it down within five minutes as “a strange story.” Gowariker came back three months later with a full script. Khan loved it, but he said: “I am scared to say yes. I can’t do it.”
Gowariker then told the story to Khan’s parents. “They were crying throughout,” Khan recalled. “Mother said you should do this and it gave me confidence.” Lagaan was released in 2001.
In 1944 the physicist Homi Bhabha wrote to the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. He asked for funds to create “a school of physics comparable to the best anywhere in the world.” J.R.D. Tata had suggested that he write to the trust’s chairman, and Tata backed the proposal. The funds were sanctioned at once.
The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research began work on June 1, 1945.
In January 2019 two members of the National Statistical Commission resigned. They were the acting chairperson, P.C. Mohanan, and J.V. Meenakshi. They disagreed with the government over the delay in releasing a new survey of employment.
The Ministry of Statistics replied: “These concerns were not expressed by the members in any of the meetings of the Commission in the last few months.”