Opening Positions 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.

Maximum Retail Price

Packaged goods in India must carry a printed maximum retail price, the MRP. The government made it mandatory in 1990. Under Rule 18(2) of the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, a seller may not charge more than the printed price. A seller may charge less.

“Retailers also enjoy the legal freedom to underprice a product, the government having fixed only the upper limit,” Outlook explained in 2022. Companies began quoting a lower market operating price as well, because “customers have always bargained on MRP and sought discounts.”