Resourcefulness Archives - understand-culture

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.”

Dangerously Modified

On September 28, 2022, the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered the authorities in Haryana to act against jugaad vehicles plying in violation of the Motor Vehicles Act. The order included impounding them. The Tribune reported it as action against “illegal and dangerously modified” vehicles.

In 2025 the same court heard an accident claim involving “a ‘jugaad’ vehicle (car without registration),” LiveLaw reported.

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.”

Jugaad Innovation

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.

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.