Every Member of Parliament could once recommend 10 children each year for admission to a Kendriya Vidyalaya, one of the central government’s schools.
The Centre scrapped the quota in 2022. Asked later in Parliament, the education ministry said: “There is no proposal at present to resume the quota for MPs.”
Indian banks used to ask anyone opening an account for an introduction from an existing customer of the bank. Someone the bank already knew had to vouch for the newcomer.
In December 2012 the Reserve Bank of India told banks to stop insisting on it. The requirement, it said, was not mandatory under any of its rules.
In rural Punjab, a jugaad is a vehicle built from what is at hand. One kind bolts a farm trailer to a diesel engine of the kind that drives water pumps. Another, in Moga, fixes a 10 horsepower irrigation pump engine to the front of a wooden cart. It carries about 40 people.
The word means a workaround. In 2017 the Oxford English Dictionary added it: “A flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.”
On November 21, 1963, India launched its first rocket, an American-made Nike-Apache, from Thumba, a coastal village in Kerala. The scientists worked out of a church. Its prayer hall became the first laboratory, and the bishop’s house became the office.
Rocket parts and payloads were carried to the launch pad by bullock cart and by bicycle.
In 1968 the sculptor Ram Chandra Sharma met the orthopedic surgeon P.K. Sethi. Together they reworked an existing Western artificial foot with local materials such as vulcanized rubber. Early versions cost less than five dollars to make.
The organization that fits the Jaipur Foot, founded in 1975, has since rehabilitated more than 2.3 million people, mostly free of charge.
After the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, the potter Mansukhbhai Prajapati read a newspaper caption: Garibi ka fridge tut gaya. The fridge of the poor has broken.
He built a refrigerator out of clay. Called MittiCool, it needs no electricity and costs nothing to run.
In 3 Idiots (2009), a storm floods the city and cuts the power, and Mona goes into labor. The engineering students rig up a power supply and turn a vacuum cleaner into a suction device to deliver the baby. They are guided over a webcam.
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.”
The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act of 2016 set up state authorities to hold builders to their delivery dates. Ten years later, a homebuyers’ association, FPCE, estimated that 27.6 lakh families still had money stuck in delayed projects, about 12.44 lakh crore rupees.
FPCE said: “RERA has not failed as a statute. Its enforcement has.”
The most authoritative Hindu scriptures are called shruti, “that which is heard.” Texts of the second rank are smriti, “that which is remembered.” The Vedas are the core of shruti. Traditions of Vedic chant are “often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence.”
UNESCO first proclaimed the tradition of Vedic chanting a masterpiece of oral heritage in 2003. It inscribed it on its list of intangible heritage in 2008.