Resourcefulness Archives - understand-culture

Not in Our Vocabulary

In January 2021 India beat Australia by three wickets at the Gabba in Brisbane, chasing 328, and won the Test series 2-1. Australia had not lost a Test at the Gabba since 1988. India played without Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Washington Sundar and T. Natarajan had come to Australia as net bowlers. Rishabh Pant made 89 not out.

Earlier in the series India had been all out for 36. “To come here and play the way we have despite having our main bowlers injured, is phenomenal,” the coach, Ravi Shastri, said. “Feeling defeated is one thing but giving up is not in our vocabulary.”

The Pad Machine

Arunachalam Muruganantham built a machine that makes low-cost sanitary pads. “It all started because I wanted to create a good sanitary napkin for my wife,” he told NPR. He tested the pads himself, using a bladder filled with animal blood. NPR compared his machine to a kitchen blender.

Imported machines cost about 3.5 crore rupees. The sources differ on the cost of his. Wikipedia gives 65,000 rupees. NPR gives about $1,500. In 2016 he received the Padma Shri. The 2018 film Pad Man is based on his story.

Hospital Beds on Rails

On March 30, 2020, the Railway Board ordered the conversion of passenger coaches into isolation coaches for Covid-19 patients. It planned 5,000 coaches at first and up to 20,000 in all. Only sleeper coaches without air conditioning were to be used.

In each cabin, both middle berths were to be removed. A toilet was to be turned into a bathing room. “Approximately 6500 hospital beds are being made ready,” The Tribune reported.

A Bolero in Exchange

Dattatraya Lohar, a fabricator from Devrashtre in Sangli district, Maharashtra, built a four-wheeler from scrap and two-wheeler parts. In December 2021 the industrialist Anand Mahindra wrote about it on Twitter: “This clearly doesn’t meet with any of the regulations but I will never cease to admire the ingenuity.” He added: “I’ll personally offer him a Bolero in exchange.”

After the exchange, Mahindra wrote of Lohar’s vehicle: “It will be part of our collection of cars of all types at our Research Valley & should inspire us to be resourceful.”

Ice Stupas

In Ladakh, the engineer Sonam Wangchuk built ice stupas, “conical ice mounds that behave like mini-glaciers, slowly releasing water for the growing season.” For the first one, “water was piped from upstream by gravity, without using electricity or machinery.” He told The Indian Express: “It is ninth-standard science put to use.”

On November 15, 2016, Wangchuk received a Rolex Award for Enterprise for the ice stupas. The Tribune reported it under the headline “Award for engineer behind 3 Idiots.”

The Rat-Hole Miners

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.

Jugaad

In rural Punjab, a jugaad is a vehicle built from what is at hand. One kind bolts a farm trailer to a diesel engine of the kind that drives water pumps. Another, in Moga, fixes a 10 horsepower irrigation pump engine to the front of a wooden cart. It carries about 40 people.

The word means a workaround. In 2017 the Oxford English Dictionary added it: “A flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.”

Cheaper Than a Movie

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan, was launched on November 5, 2013. It entered orbit around Mars on September 24, 2014, on its first attempt.

The mission was known for its low budget. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that it had cost less than the Hollywood film Gravity.

A Rocket on a Bicycle

On November 21, 1963, India launched its first rocket, an American-made Nike-Apache, from Thumba, a coastal village in Kerala. The scientists worked out of a church. Its prayer hall became the first laboratory, and the bishop’s house became the office.

Rocket parts and payloads were carried to the launch pad by bullock cart and by bicycle.

The Vacuum Cleaner

In 3 Idiots (2009), a storm floods the city and cuts the power, and Mona goes into labor. The engineering students rig up a power supply and turn a vacuum cleaner into a suction device to deliver the baby. They are guided over a webcam.