84 terms, in plain words

Glossary

“Every term is explained the first time it appears — in plain words, in the sentence itself.” Here they all are in one place.

A2+FL vs C2: Two ways to count a farmer's cost: cash plus family labour, or that plus land rent and capital interest.
Aadhaar: The twelve-digit biometric identity, launched 2009.
Abeyance: On hold — suspended but not torn up.
Agnipath: Four-year army contracts with one in four soldiers retained (2022).
AQR: Asset Quality Review — the RBI's 2015 inspection that forced banks to admit bad loans.
Arhatiya: The mandi commission agent who advances loans and takes his cut at the scale.
Article 370: The constitutional article that recorded Kashmir's special terms; abrogated in 2019.
ASER: Annual Status of Education Report — Pratham's village-by-village reading and maths check since 2005.
ASHA: Accredited Social Health Activist — one of about ten lakh village women health workers.
Basic structure: The 1973 rule that Parliament may amend the Constitution but not destroy its core.
CAA: Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) — fast-track citizenship with a religious filter.
Capacity vs generation: What is installed vs what actually produces electricity. Solar works when the sun does.
CAR-T: A treatment that re-engineers a patient's own immune cells to hunt a tumour.
CDS: Chief of Defence Staff — created 2019.
Cess: An extra charge stacked on top of a tax for a named purpose.
Collateral: Property pledged for a bank to seize if a loan fails.
Collegium: The system in which judges select judges.
Creamy layer: The better-off within a backward group, whom some argue should stop drawing its quota.
Crore: 100 lakh, or ten million. ₹1 lakh crore is one trillion rupees — about $12 billion.
DBT: Direct Benefit Transfer — the state paying a citizen straight into their account.
Deficiency payment: The state pays only the gap between the market price and MSP.
Delimitation: Redrawing Parliament seats by population — frozen on the 1971 census since 1976.
Demonetisation: The cancellation of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes at midnight on 8 November 2016.
Double deflation: A more honest way of stripping price rises out of growth numbers.
Electoral autocracy: V-Dem's label for a system where elections are real but the field between them is tilted.
Electoral bonds: Anonymous bearer bonds for party donations (2018), struck down 5–0 in 2024.
Ethanol blending: Plant-made alcohol mixed into petrol.
Evergreening: Fresh loans quietly paying the interest on dying ones.
EWS: The 10% quota for economically weaker sections among those outside other quotas (2019).
Excess deaths: Deaths above the number normally expected — the way to count a pandemic's true toll.
FCRA: The law licensing every rupee of foreign money an Indian NGO may accept.
Fiscal deficit: The gap between what the government earns and what it spends — the part it borrows.
Formalisation: People and firms moving out of the cash economy into the counted, taxed one.
GeM: Government e-Marketplace (2016) — state purchasing on a public portal.
Gigawatt: Roughly the output of one large power plant.
GST: Goods and Services Tax — one nationwide tax on consumption, from 1 July 2017, replacing seventeen taxes.
Habeas corpus: The ancient right to ask a court why you are being held.
Haircut: The share of a debt creditors accept losing.
IBC: Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (2016): a defaulting company can be taken from its owner and sold.
IMR / MMR: Infant deaths per 1,000 births; maternal deaths per lakh births.
Inflation targeting: The law (2015–16) instructing the RBI to keep consumer inflation at 4%, within 2–6%.
JAM: Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar identity, Mobile phones.
Jugaad: Improvising on the cheap.
Kavach: India's indigenous anti-collision system for trains.
Labharthi: The beneficiary — the citizen as recipient of named schemes.
Lakh: 100,000 — one followed by five zeroes.
Mandi: The regulated market yard where licensed traders bid for produce.
Money bill: A route that cuts the upper house out of the vote.
MSP: Minimum Support Price — the floor price the government announces for 22 crops.
Multidimensional poverty: Poverty measured by living conditions — schooling, sanitation, cooking fuel — not just income.
NEP: National Education Policy 2020.
Net zero: Adding no more carbon to the sky than you remove.
NPA: Non-performing asset — a loan more than ninety days overdue.
NPCI: National Payments Corporation of India — the non-profit utility (2008) that built UPI.
NRC: National Register of Citizens.
Octroi: The old tax on goods entering a town.
ODF: Open-defecation free — a status that was self-certified.
Oil bonds: IOUs the UPA handed oil companies instead of budgeted subsidy — roughly ₹1.3–1.4 lakh crore.
Ordinance: A temporary decree issued without Parliament.
Packaging vs fabrication: Assembling and testing chips made elsewhere vs printing circuits on the wafer.
Panna pramukh: A party worker responsible for one page of the voter list.
Places of Worship Act: The 1991 law freezing every shrine's religious character as at Independence.
PLFS: Periodic Labour Force Survey — the annual jobs survey, now also monthly.
PLI: Production-linked incentives — a bonus paid to a company on every extra unit it makes in India.
PM2.5: The fine dust that lodges deepest in the lungs.
Provisioning: Setting aside profits against expected loan losses.
Quad: India, US, Japan, Australia.
Quintal: 100 kilos.
Recapitalisation bonds: Government sells bonds to banks, then puts the same money back in as capital.
RTI: Right to Information Act (2005) — the citizen's tool for prising records out of the state.
RuPay: India's own card network (2012).
SAARC: The South Asian club of eight neighbours, Afghanistan to Sri Lanka.
SIR: Special Intensive Revision — a house-to-house purge of voter lists.
TEU: Twenty-foot equivalent unit — one twenty-foot shipping box.
Theatre commands: Merging single-service commands into a few integrated ones — still pending.
Transshipment: Moving containers from giant ships to smaller ones at a deep-water hub.
Twin balance sheet: Over-indebted companies on one side, the banks that lent to them on the other, each pretending the other was fine.
UAPA: Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act — the anti-terror law whose design makes bail nearly impossible.
Unicorn: A start-up valued above a billion dollars.
UPI: Unified Payments Interface — lets any phone move money between any two bank accounts, instantly, free.
Usual status: The yearly jobs ruler: were you mostly working or seeking work over the last year?
Viksit Bharat: A developed India by 2047 — the era's dated promise.
Waqf: Property given away permanently for Muslim religious or charitable use.
Weekly status: The weekly jobs ruler: did you work at least a little in the last seven days?