Celebrating Jugaar

The basti kids in front of my mother’s house have become avid snooker players, except the table is a cloth placed over a bit of wood with sides made of stretched tape wrapped around nails. With 6 pockets, the cues are simple sticks and the balls are marbles.  The whole fragile contraption is placed on a couple of plastic boxes well below waist level even for a child. But each player has focused concentration for the next shot and a silent audience surrounds the table. Every so often photographs of innovative low cost solutions do the social media rounds: the missing numbers of a broken clock written on the wall, a shower made of a pierced empty plastic coke bottle.

These are what we would call jugaar. A jugaar is an innovative low cost fix or solution in response to a need. Almost every culture has an equivalent: gambiarra in Brazil, zizhu chuangxin in China, jua kali in Kenya, system D in France, trick 17 in Switzerland, chindogu in Japan.  

Jugaar often has a negative connotation. It is seen as a lazy or substandard short cut.  If we called it DIY or R & D (research and development) , it would be a respected innovation process. In fact jugaar is earning its own respectability. China has established an “Indigenous Innovation Policy” based on zizhu chuangxin, believing that without this support for local innovation, Chinese companies will be limited to imitation and replication - considering that China gave the world many inventions including the compass, paper, gunpowder, woodblock printing, silk, tea and noodles.   

Simple tactics can grow into big ideas. In 2011 a Gujrati village potter, Mansukh Prajapati, developed the Mitticool refrigerator made of clay that required no electricity. Encouraged by positive feedback, he industrialized his process by training women in his village, earning him Forbes title of most influential rural entrepreneur.

The Kenyan Safari Seat, a low cost all-terrain wheelchair made of bicycle parts, durable wheels and propelled with levers, has been so successful that it is soon going to production. The South African Hippo Roller is a rolling barrel with a long handle that allows women to bring more volume of water from long distances. Dr Sayeba Akhtar, a Bangladeshi doctor at Dhaka Medical College Hospital invented a 99 cent jugaar using a condom filled with saline and a catheter to stop post-partum bleeding, potentially saving the lives of countless women.  

Pakistanis use jugaars on a daily basis, from kunda connections to the young mithai vendor at a bus stop who had attached a cloth on a rod that spun with a battery to keep off the flies. Edhi’s turning a Suzuki high roof into an ambulance was one of the more successful jugaars. The “missed call” system with cell phones is used on both sides of the border to communicate without payment, trucks in villages with impossible looking hessian structures designed to transport hay.  One could fill a book with the many ingenious solutions Pakistanis come up with in villages and backstreets of cities, many worthy of attention and replication.  When a jugaar is mass produced, it becomes a product. Even some international companies, such as Best Buy USA, hold jugaar workshops to come up with new products or services that can be added easily and inexpensively to generate more sales.

Innovation has always been a part of human development, some stumbled upon by accident hilariously explained by Peter Cook in his 1964 comic sketch “The Man who Invented the Wheel” which, he says, could easily have been called a “bandanbladisdiddle”.Others are the result of formal brainstorming. Popular Mechanics, published for a steady fan base from 1902 emerged at a time in USA of growing prosperity when there was finally leisure time, and the possibility of an enhanced standard of living. It became a platform for sharing eccentric or pragmatic ideas for new products. The spirit of modernity was all over the western world - new designs for motor cars despite only 10 miles of paved roads in USA, telephones, wireless telegraphy, the first international telephone call and the first escalator.

Soon companies introduced in-house research and development departments, feeding into a burgeoning race for new competitive products and greater financial rewards. Innovation has become big business. A jugaar on the other hand is rarely for economic gain and is more a response to adversity or an immediate need. It is being resourceful, improvising solutions with simple means.  

In their book “Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth”, authors Radjou, Prabhu and Ahuja present a new approach to innovation that is fuelling growth in both emerging and developed markets. Jugaar works best in economies and societies that lack resources – doing more with less, in contrast to R & D departments of big companies where more is considered more – more funds, more technology and more expertise. However, high end innovations are expensive and inaccessible to most. The authors propose that vast countries with large populations that cannot be accessed by expensive innovations, benefit from the jugaar formula which comes from and serves marginal underserved customers.

Jugaar has entered the lexicon and is gaining interest in international companies including Renault-Nissan, 3M and Google. The Centre for Frugal Innovation in Germany was established to find affordable and sustainable innovations inspired by jugaar solutions. The innovation incubators in Pakistan may also be better served by scouting for jugaars rather than simply tapping engineering and design students.  

Durriya Kazi

January 22, 2018