Three recruitment notices of the Railway Recruitment Boards together offered about 1.4 lakh posts. Of these, 1,03,769 were posts at Level 1. “Against these employment notifications, more than 2.4 crore candidates have applied,” the Ministry of Railways said in October 2020. That works out to about 170 candidates for each post.
Fakir of the Line
Lakeer ka fakeer. The fakir of the line. The Rekhta dictionary glosses it as “set in old ways.”
Purani lakeer ka fakeer. The fakir of the old line. Rekhta defines it as “a follower of old customs.”
Lakeer par chalna. To walk on the line. Rekhta gives its meaning as walking in the old way.
The Preferred Job
A youth survey by the Lokniti program of CSDS and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung was carried out in 2016. “An overwhelming majority of India’s youth, about 65%, said they would prefer a government job, if given the choice,” The Quint reported. Starting a business came second, at 19 percent. A job in the private sector drew 7 percent.
Pharmacy of the World
In July 2022 India’s health minister said that the country “accounts for 20% of the worldwide supply of generic medicines.” He called India the “Pharmacy of the World.”
Before 2005, India’s Patents Act allowed only process patents for medicines, not patents on the medicine itself.
Away from Rote Learning
India’s National Education Policy of 2020 sets out to move the school curriculum and teaching “away from the culture of rote learning as is largely present today.” On board exams, it speaks of preparation “rather than months of coaching and memorization.”
Fear of Failure
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor measures a fear of failure rate among adults. In India the rate “decreased from 44 per cent in 2015-16 to 37.5 per cent in 2016-17,” Business Standard reported from the India report.
To Please His Father
In the film 3 Idiots (2009), Farhan studies engineering. He “is passionate about wildlife photography but chose to join in order to appease his father,” in the words of Wikipedia’s plot summary.
Later he receives an apprenticeship offer from his favorite photographer, Andre Istvan, and “earns his father’s blessings.”
Level 5
The Capability Maturity Model of Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute rates how mature a company’s software processes are. Level 5 is the highest. In January 2003, Business Today counted 78 companies in the world assessed at Level 5. Fifty-four of them were Indian companies or the Indian operations of multinationals.
In December 2001, CIOL reported that Wipro Technologies was the first company in the world to reach Level 5 of the People CMM, a version of the model for managing people.
Failure-Based Design
In 2019, the lander of Chandrayaan-2 crashed on the Moon. Before Chandrayaan-3 was launched in July 2023, ISRO’s chairman, S. Somanath, explained what had changed. “Instead of a success-based design, we are doing a failure-based design in Chandrayaan-3,” he said. “What all can fail, and how to protect it? This is the approach we have taken.”
Chandrayaan-3 landed near the Moon’s south pole on August 23, 2023.
Essential Repeat
“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.