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.
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.
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.”
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 March 12, 2024, the Gujarat High Court heard a plea to excuse a delay in filing an affidavit. Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal said from the bench: “Sorry but for High Court you cannot have this ‘chalta hai attitude.'”
On August 15, 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort. He asked the country to give up a habit. His office posted: “We have to leave this ‘Chalta Hai’ attitude. We have to think of ‘Badal Sakta Hai’- this attitude will help us as a nation: PM”
Chalta hai means it will do. Badal sakta hai means it can change.
On September 21, 2010, shortly before the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, a footbridge under construction near the main stadium collapsed. Twenty-three workers were injured. Team Scotland called the athletes’ village “unsafe and unfit for human habitation.” Mike Fennell of the Commonwealth Games Federation said it was “seriously compromised.”
At the close of the Games, Fennell said the organizers had “delivered a truly outstanding event.” He added: “our plan B is Delhi, and Delhi has performed.”
In January 2008, at the Auto Expo in New Delhi, Tata Motors unveiled the Nano. It was priced at one lakh rupees, about 2,500 dollars.
Ratan Tata later said the car had been hurt by its label as a cheap car. In 2019 Tata Motors produced no Nanos and sold one.
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.”