In July 2021, Aaj Tak reported, Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised his ministers to be punctual and to be in their offices by 9:30 a.m. PM Modi waqt ke paband hain aur chahte hain ki unke mantri bhi waqt par daftar aayen. PM Modi keeps to time and wants his ministers to come to the office on time too.
On the first day, the same report said, the new Minister of State for Health, Bharti Pravin Pawar, reached her office about an hour and a half late.
In a 2024 interview with Kapil Sibal, the actress Sharmila Tagore spoke about the punctuality of the stars she had worked with. Shashi Kapoor was always on time. Rajesh Khanna was often late. According to Pinkvilla’s report, Amitabh Bachchan “would go a step further, arriving before anyone else, even before the cleaners.”
On July 28, 1961, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru unveiled the first batch of 800 wristwatches from the new HMT watch factory in Bangalore. Hindustan Machine Tools, a company owned by the government, had built the factory with know-how from Citizen of Japan. HMT advertised its watches with the line “timekeepers to the nation.”
Ab pachhtaye kya hot, jab chidiyan chug gayin khet. What use is regret now, when the birds have eaten the field? The Rekhta dictionary lists the saying and gives its English equivalent as “no use crying over spilt milk.”
Indian Railways counts a train as on time if it reaches its last station within 15 minutes of the timetable. Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee examined this in a report presented to the Lok Sabha on February 4, 2026. The Tribune quoted it: “The extra threshold of 15 minutes is too large.”
By that measure, punctuality was 90.48 percent in 2021-22 and 73.62 percent in 2023-24, ThePrint reported. The committee called the method misleading, because punctuality is measured only at the terminating station and delays on the way are not counted.
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.”
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation was set up in 1995, with E. Sreedharan as managing director. Construction began on October 1, 1998. The first phase, a network of 59 stations, was completed in 2006, on budget and almost three years ahead of schedule.
Business Week called it “nothing short of a miracle.”
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.”
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.
On January 22, 2024, the idol of Ram Lalla was consecrated in the new temple at Ayodhya. The auspicious moment lasted 84 seconds, from 12:29:08 to 12:30:32. Pandit Ganeshwar Shastri Dravid of Kashi had fixed it.
Some parents planned births for the same day. At one hospital in Surat, doctors performed more than 22 cesarean deliveries, “all mothers choosing this date for their babies’ arrival.”