Problem-Solving Archives - understand-culture

Emergency Quota

Indian Railways holds back a limited number of berths in many trains as an Emergency Quota. The berths go first to Members of Parliament and other holders of a High Official Requisition traveling themselves. The rest are released on written requests from authorized officers.

In February 2023 the government told the Lok Sabha that requests forwarded by MPs for other travelers “are generally complied with.” In a reply to the Rajya Sabha in August 2024, the railway ministry spoke of “attempts to get accommodation released out of emergency quota on the authority of fake letter heads.”

Groups of Ministers

Under the UPA government, many matters were referred to a Group of Ministers, a GoM, or to an Empowered Group of Ministers, an EGoM. When Pranab Mukherjee became President in 2012, he was heading 24 of the 39 EGoMs and GoMs, ThePrint reported.

On May 31, 2014, the new government of Narendra Modi abolished all nine EGoMs and 21 GoMs. Ministries were to “take appropriate decisions at the level of ministries and departments itself,” Business Standard reported.

In July 2016 the same paper wrote: “Two years into the Modi government, these panels are back.”

Moderation

Under its moderation policy, the Central Board of Secondary Education added marks for difficult papers. Under it, Scroll wrote, students were usually given up to 15 percent extra marks for attempting tough questions. In April 2017 the board and 31 other school boards announced that they would end it.

A parent and a lawyer took the case to the Delhi High Court. In May 2017 the court called the decision “unfair” and “irresponsible.” It ordered the board to follow its policy of 2016, “including the moderation policy,” because “rules of the game cannot be changed after the game has begun.”

The rule that the court protected was the one that raised the marks.

Nirma

In 1969 Karsanbhai Patel began to sell a yellow detergent powder in Ahmedabad. He called it Nirma and sold it door to door from his bicycle. It cost 3.50 rupees per kilogram. Wikipedia gives the price of Hindustan Unilever’s Surf at the time as 13 rupees. The Better India gives 10 to 15 rupees.

“Within a decade, Nirma was the largest-selling detergent in India,” Business Today wrote. Its jingle, Sabki pasand Nirma, everyone’s favorite Nirma, first ran on radio in 1975.

Shampoo in a Sachet

In 1983 C.K. Ranganathan launched Chik shampoo in Tamil Nadu in small sachets. Business Standard gives the price as 50 paise a sachet. Madras Musings gives one rupee. According to Madras Musings, the established brand, Velvette, cost two rupees a sachet.

“Within a couple of years, Chik overtook Velvette and became the top shampoo brand in South India,” Madras Musings wrote.

Ten-Dollar Lenses

In cataract surgery, the clouded lens of the eye is replaced with an artificial one. When doctors at the Aravind eye hospitals of Madurai began to use artificial lenses in the early 1990s, they cost 50 to 100 dollars each. Aravind then began to make its own, through Aurolab. “Aravind’s low costs and efficiencies instantly lowered that price to ten dollars,” PBS NewsHour reported in 2009. By 2009 Aurolab lenses sold for as little as two dollars.

At Aravind, PBS added, “on average one paying customer supports four free.”

The Smog Tower

On August 23, 2021, the Delhi government inaugurated a smog tower at Connaught Place. Reports put its cost at 20 to 23 crore rupees. In November 2023, as the pollution season began, it was shut down. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee told the National Green Tribunal: “Smog towers are ineffective at controlling air pollution.”

Delhi’s winters bring emergency measures. Under the odd-even rule, cars with odd and even number plates drive on alternate days. It ran in January and April 2016 and again in November 2019. ThePrint counted 17 times that the Graded Response Action Plan was imposed between January 2025 and January 2026. In 13 of them, the order came after pollution had already reached the threshold.

Potholes Every Monsoon

Ahead of the 2024 monsoon, Mumbai’s municipal corporation planned to spend 106 crore rupees “for the pothole-free monsoon this year,” the Free Press Journal reported. In 2022 it said it had filled more than 18,000 potholes between April 1 and July 27.

In August 2023 the Bombay High Court heard a contempt plea over its own order on potholes from 2018. “Are five years not enough to remove potholes?” the judges asked. “Is this a regular feature during the monsoon?”

Storm Water Drains

BRIMSTOWAD is the plan to rebuild the storm water drains of Mumbai. Consultants were first appointed in 1989, and a proposal followed in 1993. “The project was not acted upon due to lack of funds till the catastrophic floods in 2005,” Wikipedia notes. On July 26, 2005, catastrophic floods hit the city.

In October 2020 the Free Press Journal reported that 27 of the project’s 58 works had been completed by 2019 and that the cost had crossed 4,000 crore rupees. “It is yet to be completed,” the paper wrote.

The Inverter

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.