Jugaad (Hindi: trika Punjabi jugaad) are locally-made motor vehicles that are used mostly in small villages as a means of low cost transportation in rural India. Jugaad (also sometimes jugard) literally means an improvised arrangement or work-around, which has to be used because of lack of resources. This is a Hindi term widely used by people speaking other Indian languages, and by people of Indian origin around the world. The same term is still used for a type of vehicle, found in rural India, made by carpenters by fitting a diesel engine on a cart.
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Jugaad vehicles cost around Rs. 85,000 (less than US$ 2000). They are known for having poor brakes, and can not go faster than about 60 km/h (37 mph). They are powered by diesel engines which were intended for running agricultural irrigation pumps. The vehicle is used to carry more than 20 people at a time in remote locations and poor road conditions. Today, a jugaad is one of the most cost effective transportation solutions for rural Indians.
Though no statistical data is available, it is often the case that the brakes of these vehicles fail, requiring one of the passengers to jump down and manually apply a wooden block as a brake. These vehicles do not have any vehicle registration plate as they are not registered with the Regional Transport Office (RTO). Hence, they end up not paying any road tax.
Jugaad are not officially recognized as road-worthy, and despite a few proposals to regulate them, vote-bank politics have time and again trumped any safety concerns. The improvised vehicles have now become rather popular as a means to transport all manner of burdens, from lumber to steel rods to school children.[1]
A South Indian (Tamil) variant of this is called the Meen Body Vandi — i.e. "fish bed vehicle" because they originated among Tamil fishermen who needed a quick and cheap transport system to transport fish. It is a motorized tri-wheeler (derived from the non-motorized variant)[2] with a heavy-duty suspension and a motorcycle engine — typically recycled from the Czech Yezdi or Enfield bullet vehicles. Its origins are typical of other Jugaadu innovations — dead fish are typically considered unhygienic, and vehicles that carry them won't or can't be typically used to carry anything else, hence the need for a cheap single-purpose transport vehicle.
There are similar vehicles to be found in much of Southeast Asia.[3]
Jugaad is also a colloquial Hindi word that can mean an innovative fix or a simple work-around, sometimes pejoratively used for solutions that bend rules, or a resource that can be used as such, or a person who can solve a vexatious issue. It is used as much to describe enterprising street mechanics as for political fixers. In essence, it is a tribute to Indian genius, and holistic thinking. The jugaad type of vehicles are not always known by this name in all over India. But the colloquial meaning of the same word is abundantly used, usually signifying the creativity of the Indian people to make existing things work or to create new things with meagre resources.
The jugaad concept can be contrasted with the Western (originally American) concept of a hack or kludge. Although in its general meaning "hack" is very similar to "jugaad", a jugaad can be thought of more as a survival tactic, whereas a hack, especially nowadays, is seen an intellectual art form. Both concepts express a need to do what needs to be done, without regard to what is conventionally supposed to be possible.
Jugaad is increasingly being recognized all over the world as an acceptable form of frugal engineering pioneered in India. Companies in India are adopting Jugaad as a practise to reduce R & D costs and development costs. Jugaad is now an acceptable management technique of Indian origin. Jugaad also applies to any kind of creative and out of the box thinking which maximizes resources for a company and its stakeholders.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/think_like_an_indian_entrepren.html#.TuJWHKOr2Qw.facebook
