S. Lant

WHAT IS ‘JUGAAD’? - THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF ‘UNCONVENTIONAL PROBLEM-SOLVING’ (EUPHEMISTIC) 🇮🇳 After the concept of ‘Izzat’ went viral a lot of people online began using it as catch-all explanation for much of India’s dysfunctionality. Depending on who you ask, how real ‘Izzat’ is ranges from ‘completely made-up slander’ to ‘a very real always present lived reality’ to ‘a figurative sociological shorthand that captures some importantly real social dynamics’. YMMV. In any case if you want to actually understand ‘why India is like India’ maybe a more important term to know is ‘Jugaad’ Jugaad is a Hindi word that roughly means an improvised solution. In the strictest usage it describes fixing a problem with whatever materials, money or contacts are available, rather than with the proper tool or the official method. The word is believed to come from rural Punjab where it also referred to a homemade vehicle built by attaching a diesel water-pump engine to a wooden cart. In everyday speech Jugaad can describe anything from repairing a broken chair with wire to getting a government form approved through a friend in the office. See attached image for examples of improvised Jugaad contraptions and to get ‘spiritual sense’ of the term Jugaad is then used in two broad ways. One refers to resourcefulness: making do with limited money and unreliable services by finding cheap, practical fixes. Some popular author have used it in this sense to describe "frugal innovation," meaning low-cost products designed for people with little money. The other refers to getting around rules, standards or procedures, often through personal influence or informal payments. Indians use the word in both senses and the meaning usually depends on context The second sense is a part of daily life for many Indians. Common examples include paying a small amount to settle a traffic fine on the spot, asking a relative to help with a school admission, hiring an agent to speed up paperwork, skipping a queue through a contact, using temporary repairs on wiring or plumbing, adding to a building without full approvals etc etc. Because these practices are widespread they are often treated as a normal part of getting things done. The phrase chalta hai, meaning "it will do," is often used alongside jugaad to describe acceptance of work that is temporary or below standard These practices are closely connected to patterns of social trust. When people expect others to work around rules they tend to adjust their own behaviour to match. A driver may not wait at a red light if others are driving through. A person in a queue may try to skip ahead if they assume others are also trying to. Following the formal process can come to be seen as slower or less effective than the informal route This can affect trust in institutions too. If outcomes seem to depend on who you know or what you pay, people may slide into no longer believing that offices, courts or police treat everyone equally. They then rely more on family, caste or community networks to get things done which further weakens formal systems. Trust between strangers can also suffer. Buyers may doubt that products meet standards, tenants may doubt a building is safe, customers may assume a service provider will cut corners. People often spend extra time and money checking, negotiating or arranging their own workarounds Access to jugaad is uneven. People with more money or wider networks generally have more options for informal solutions, while those with fewer resources are more likely to rely on formal systems or go without or perhaps even opt for more low-tech grasping and opportunistic kinds of Jugaad if they absolutely have to. (Similar practices of course exist in many other countries.) In India, the word continues to be used for both inventive problem-solving and rule-bending. While people's attitudes towards its ubiquity vary it has at least been formalised as a well-known term that ‘gets at’ something in the culture