Negotiation Archives - understand-culture

Seat Sharing

Before the 2025 assembly election in Bihar, the parties of the NDA alliance negotiated how to divide the state’s 243 seats. In September, The Week reported that Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) had “kept up the demands for over 40 seats.” On October 12 the alliance announced the result. The BJP and the JD(U) took 101 seats each, and Paswan’s party took 29.

A few days later Paswan said: “We were not fighting for a particular number of seats as such.”

A year earlier in Maharashtra, Zee News reported that the Congress was “staking claim on 110-115 assembly seats.” On October 23, 2024, the opposition alliance settled on 85 seats each for the Congress, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (Sharad Pawar).

Seventy-Four Meetings

India’s negotiating team for 36 Rafale fighter jets “held 74 meetings to discuss the Rafale deal between May, 2015 and April, 2016,” the government told the Supreme Court in 2018. Twenty-six of these meetings were with the French side. According to Swarajya, the French side quoted 8.6 billion euros in January 2016. The contract signed on September 23, 2016, was for 7.878 billion euros.

The size of the saving is disputed. The Comptroller and Auditor General found the deal 2.86 percent cheaper than the one negotiated under the earlier UPA government. Three experts on the negotiating team dissented. In their view, the price had not been shown to be reasonable.

Sarojini Nagar

Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi is a market for cheap clothes. A shopping guide on LBB, a Delhi city site, explains how prices work there: “500s, 350s and 250s quoted by the profiteering shopkeeper can all be brought down to a neatly rounded 150!”

Seventy Percent

In March 2026 the Free Press Journal reported a case from Gurgaon. A startup founder offered a candidate 28 lakh rupees a year, about a third more than the 21 lakh the candidate was earning. The candidate accepted. Two days before joining, the candidate asked for 36 lakh, more than 70 percent above the old salary, and pointed to an offer of 32 lakh from another company.

Uplers, a hiring platform, writes that people who change jobs “routinely expect” raises of 30 to 50 percent.

The Bullet Train Loan

On September 14, 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe laid the foundation stone of the bullet train from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. Japan lent 88,000 crore rupees of the cost of about 1.08 lakh crore. The loan runs for 50 years at an interest rate of 0.1 percent, and repayment begins after 15 years.

“The bullet train is in a way a big gift from Japan to India,” Modi said. “It is in a way a project being constructed for free.”

A Time-Tested Partner

In 2021 Russian crude made up 0.2 percent of India’s oil imports. By April 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, it was about 10 percent, Business Today reported. By 2024 Business Standard put the share at over 35 percent. The oil came at a discount. Reports of its size differ, from “up to US$30 per barrel” in Business Today to a peak of about 15 dollars a barrel in early 2023 in Business Standard.

In Moscow on December 27, 2023, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar described the tie: “For us, Russia is a very valued partner. It’s very time-tested partner.”

No Sorry, No Thank You

“Dosti ka ek usool hai madam: no sorry, no thank you.” Friendship has one rule, madam: no sorry, no thank you. The line comes from the Hindi film Maine Pyar Kiya. The Quint lists it among the best-known dialogues of Salman Khan, who starred in the film.

Howdy, Modi

On September 22, 2019, Narendra Modi and Donald Trump appeared together at the “Howdy, Modi!” rally in NRG Stadium in Houston. There Modi used the slogan Ab ki baar Trump sarkar, this time a Trump government. On February 24, 2020, Modi welcomed Trump at “Namaste Trump,” before a crowd of more than 100,000 in a stadium in Ahmedabad.

In Trump’s second term, an executive order of August 6, 2025, added a tariff of 25 percent on Indian goods to the 25 percent already in place. From August 27, most Indian imports to the United States faced a tariff of 50 percent.

It Will Be Seen

Dekha jayega. It will be seen. The Rekhta dictionary defines it as “will be dealt with later,” said when “right now we don’t care.” Its Hindi entry adds that people say it to put off someone who insists too much.

The Agra Draft

At Agra, from July 14 to 16, 2001, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf. External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh worked out a joint draft with Pakistan’s foreign minister, Abdul Sattar. Vajpayee called in senior cabinet colleagues to read it. They found that it did not say enough about terrorism, and the summit ended without a joint declaration.

In his memoir of 2008, L.K. Advani, then home minister, wrote: “I noticed that there was no reference to cross-border terrorism in the draft.” Musharraf blamed Advani. Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian envoy to Pakistan, writes that the senior ministers shared one view and that the story of Advani stopping the draft alone is a distortion.