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.
On March 30, 2020, the Railway Board ordered the conversion of passenger coaches into isolation coaches for Covid-19 patients. It planned 5,000 coaches at first and up to 20,000 in all. Only sleeper coaches without air conditioning were to be used.
In each cabin, both middle berths were to be removed. A toilet was to be turned into a bathing room. “Approximately 6500 hospital beds are being made ready,” The Tribune reported.
Chalti ka naam gaadi. What runs is called a car. The saying is the title of a comedy of 1958, directed by Satyen Bose and starring Kishore Kumar. The brothers in the film run a car repair garage. The opening credits introduce one of the stars: “‘Champion’ car, model 1928.”
The Rekhta dictionary explains the saying in Hindi: jab tak kaam theek hai tab tak ka hi naam hai. Roughly, a thing has its name only as long as the work is fine.
On September 28, 2022, the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered the authorities in Haryana to act against jugaad vehicles plying in violation of the Motor Vehicles Act. The order included impounding them. The Tribune reported it as action against “illegal and dangerously modified” vehicles.
In 2025 the same court heard an accident claim involving “a ‘jugaad’ vehicle (car without registration),” LiveLaw reported.
On November 12, 2023, part of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand collapsed. Forty-one workers were trapped behind the rubble. An American auger machine drilled toward them, then ran into obstacles and stopped.
A company involved in the rescue approached Wakeel Hassan, who leads a team of rat-hole miners. Twelve men who specialized in rat-hole mining were flown in from Delhi. They cleared the last stretch by hand. All 41 workers were rescued on November 28.
In rural Punjab, a jugaad is a vehicle built from what is at hand. One kind bolts a farm trailer to a diesel engine of the kind that drives water pumps. Another, in Moga, fixes a 10 horsepower irrigation pump engine to the front of a wooden cart. It carries about 40 people.
The word means a workaround. In 2017 the Oxford English Dictionary added it: “A flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.”
On November 21, 1963, India launched its first rocket, an American-made Nike-Apache, from Thumba, a coastal village in Kerala. The scientists worked out of a church. Its prayer hall became the first laboratory, and the bishop’s house became the office.
Rocket parts and payloads were carried to the launch pad by bullock cart and by bicycle.
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.”