Making jugaad a global success

Frugal innovation is the new concept that companies are adopting to take technology to developing countries

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JUGAAD IS a quintessential Indian approach to life. When resources are limited, we learn to tackle problems by improvising solutions that are inexpensive and use whatever local materials are available. Jugaad is a term that is commonly used in north India, where everyone knows what the colloquial Hindi word means—a way to fix a difficulty not through conventional measures, but through the cheapest possible means. The concept, however, is ubiquitous throughout the country where adversity and the daunting cost of high technology have forced people to find ingenious solutions.

The origin of jugaad starts with the early years of an independent India, when it was short of everything possible but a keen desire to get ahead. In those years of struggle, farmers in remote areas of Punjab were desperately in need of mechanised transport. Since there was nothing cheap they could buy, they devised an improvised tractor by assembling a strange contraption. They mounted a diesel pump on the chassis of a trolley, attached wheels and a steering rod to it, and presto, a motor vehicle was born! It was called a jugaad. There was no patent on it—no one thought of such things then—so anyone who had the means copied this contraption, made their own "improvements" to it and made the jugaad a life-saver for many.

That example of grassroots innovation was repeated in many ways and in other systems, too, although it was most prevalent in the transport sector. And if you thought it was just the rural folk who opted for