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.”
In 2012 Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja published Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth. The book took the everyday Hindi word for an improvised solution and offered it to managers as a method.
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.
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.
In 1968 the sculptor Ram Chandra Sharma met the orthopedic surgeon P.K. Sethi. Together they reworked an existing Western artificial foot with local materials such as vulcanized rubber. Early versions cost less than five dollars to make.
The organization that fits the Jaipur Foot, founded in 1975, has since rehabilitated more than 2.3 million people, mostly free of charge.
After the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, the potter Mansukhbhai Prajapati read a newspaper caption: Garibi ka fridge tut gaya. The fridge of the poor has broken.
He built a refrigerator out of clay. Called MittiCool, it needs no electricity and costs nothing to run.
In January 2008, at the Auto Expo in New Delhi, Tata Motors unveiled the Nano. It was priced at one lakh rupees, about 2,500 dollars.
Ratan Tata later said the car had been hurt by its label as a cheap car. In 2019 Tata Motors produced no Nanos and sold one.
Cricket played in a lane or a park, gully cricket, has its own rules. A wall or a small tree serves as the stumps. One rule is called one tip, one hand, also known as one bounce, one hand.
In many gully games, hitting the ball over the boundary is out. In a house game the rule is ball ghar se bahar jaayegi to out. If the ball leaves the house, the batter is out.
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.
Chalta hai. It goes. It will do. Said of a half-baked solution that is accepted anyway.
Chaltaa kaam. A makeshift or temporary arrangement, according to the Rekhta dictionary.
Zara add-just karo. Adjust a little. A columnist in The Week described the habit of adjusting as “our accommodative spirit towards a less-than-perfect solution.”