On Linking Road in Bandra, Mumbai, the street stalls sell sandals and other goods at prices that are open to bargaining. “You bargain, you pout, you make an offer and casually stroll away, hoping to be called back,” Business Standard described it in 2012. One shopper brought a pair of sandals down from 100 rupees to 75.
“It’s a game, and both sides know it.”
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.
On July 1, 2019, the new government of Andhra Pradesh issued an order to “review, negotiate and bring down the high wind and solar energy purchase prices” in agreements already signed. It set up a High Level Negotiation Committee. The Union power minister, R.K. Singh, asked the state to honor the agreements.
The High Court stayed the order on July 26, 2019. In September “the court struck down a government order, which had appointed a three-member expert committee to renegotiate the deals.”
In March 2018 the government invited bids for 76 percent of Air India. In May it announced: “No bids received for Air India.” In January 2020 it tried again, this time for the whole airline. Later that year it eased the terms. As the Free Press Journal put it, the government “gives flexibility to investors to decide on the amount of Air India debt.”
In October 2021 the Tata group made the winning bid, 18,000 crore rupees.
“Last price kya hai, bhaiya?” What is the last price, brother? The Indian news site The Quint lists the question among the things every Indian says to a shopkeeper. Its caption sums up the scene: “Indians = BARGAINING!”
On September 29, 2017, a stampede at Elphinstone Road station in Mumbai killed at least 23 people. Western Railway’s chief spokesman, Ravinder Bhaker, gave its finding: “The incident was caused due to panic and confusion created on the bridge coupled with rains.” He added: “No one can be held responsible for the incident.”
On August 7, 2020, Air India Express Flight 1344 skidded off the end of the tabletop runway at Kozhikode. The crew had aborted two earlier landing attempts because of heavy rain and tailwind. Both pilots and 19 passengers died. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau published its final report in September 2021. It found that the first officer “did not offer the required corrective inputs and displayed a meek and unassertive demeanour.”
The report pointed to “the prevailing cockpit gradient in Air India Express leading to poor Crew Resource Management.” It also described “The stiff and closed work environment, where hierarchy and seniority work to the detriment of the airline.”
Saajhe ki handiyaan chauraahe par phootti hain. Jointly owned pots break at the crossroads. The Rekhta dictionary explains it in Hindi: a shared business does not succeed, and shared work always ends in quarrels.
Saajhe ki haandi, the jointly owned pot, is used on its own. Rekhta gives “a joint venture (which does not flourish).”
In April 2009, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission summed up its findings in its Fifteenth Report. “The tendency to have large number of on-file consultations, often unnecessary, leads to diffused accountability,” it wrote. It also found “diffusion of responsibility and accountability among the large number of functionaries.”
It recommended: “The number of levels through which a file should pass for a decision should not exceed three.”
Rule 4 of the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules, 1961, deals with consultation between ministries: “When the subject of a case concerns more than one department, no decision be taken or order issued until all such departments have concurred, or, failing such concurrence, a decision thereon has been taken by or under the authority of the Cabinet.”