For India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, ISRO’s larger GSLV rocket was not available. “The GSLV failed twice in 2010 and still had issues with its cryogenic engine.” ISRO launched the spacecraft on the smaller PSLV instead. The PSLV could not send it directly toward Mars.
So the spacecraft stayed in orbit around Earth and fired its engine six times to raise its orbit. At the end of November 2013 it left Earth’s orbit for Mars.
An ordinance is a temporary law. A governor can issue one when the state legislature is not in session. D.C. Wadhwa researched the practice and found that the Governor of Bihar issued 256 ordinances between 1967 and 1981. Some were “kept alive for periods ranging between one to 14 years by re-promulgation from time to time.”
On January 2, 2017, a bench of seven judges of the Supreme Court decided Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar. It held that “re-promulgation of ordinances is a fraud on the Constitution and a subversion of democratic legislative processes.”
Sunil Batra, a prisoner, wrote a letter to a judge of the Supreme Court. The court’s judgment of December 20, 1979, records that the case “originated, epistolary fashion in a letter by a prisoner, Batra, to a Judge of this Court.” The letter “was posted on the Bench to be metamorphosed into a habeas proceeding.”
Delhi has 1,731 unauthorized colonies, home to “more than 40 lakh people.” In October 2019 the Union Cabinet approved a proposal “to confer or recognise the rights of ownership or transfer or mortgage of property” in them. By July 16, 2024, 23,811 people had received ownership rights under the scheme, PM-UDAY.
In Karnataka a scheme called Akrama-Sakrama lets owners pay to regularize building violations. “It involves paying a one-time penalty to regularise deviations of up to 50% in residential buildings,” The News Minute reported. The Supreme Court stayed the scheme in January 2017.
On July 11, 2006, bombs on Mumbai’s suburban trains killed 209 people. Western Railway restored services the same night. The next morning, “Mumbai woke up to suburban trains running as usual,” The Free Press Journal later recalled.
After a stampede at Elphinstone Road station in 2017, DNA wrote that the spirit of Mumbai, the city’s famed resilience, “unfortunately has become a cliche to justify official apathy.”
On February 19, 2020, the Ministry of Finance ruled that “disruption of supply chains due to spread of Coronavirus will be covered” under the force majeure clause of government contracts. On May 13 it went further. For contractors not already in default, dates for obligations falling due from February 20 “shall stand extended for a period not less than three months and not more than six months,” without “any cost or penalty on the contractor/concessionaire.”
The same day, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs asked the states to “treat the pandemic COVID-19 as ‘force majeure'” under the real estate law and to “automatically extend registration of all real estate projects registered under RERA by 6 months.”
Ho jayega. It will get done. HP India built an advertising campaign for small businesses around the phrase. The trade site BestMediaInfo called it “that typical Indian expression.” HP India’s chief marketing officer, Prashant Jain, described the campaign as “a celebration of the dependability of the Indian small business owner.”
On November 12, 2023, part of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand collapsed. Forty-one workers were trapped behind the rubble. An American auger machine drilled toward them, then ran into obstacles and stopped.
A company involved in the rescue approached Wakeel Hassan, who leads a team of rat-hole miners. Twelve men who specialized in rat-hole mining were flown in from Delhi. They cleared the last stretch by hand. All 41 workers were rescued on November 28.
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.”
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.”