
Jugaad, an Indian Delivery Methodology - ggeorgovassilis
https://blog.georgovassilis.com/2020/09/13/draft-jugaad-takes-agile-to-the-extreme/
======
DanBC
This is a good article that talks about the reality of jugaad.

Here are some radio programmes about Jugaad from a while ago:

India's quick fix solutions:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ng09d](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ng09d)

Innovators - the secret of jugaad:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cstydc](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cstydc)

There's been a bit of discussion on HN about jugaad before.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1597509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1597509)

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systemvoltage
Having audited over 200 suppliers in China, I feel like the Chinese have
mastered the art of "Jugaad". Absolutely brilliant, wreckless and dangerous
violations/innovations I've ever witnessed in my life.

Commonly known in the west as Redneck Engineering and Jerry-rigging. I think
every culture has some sort of a "Jugaad", this isn't something specific to
India besides the etymology.

~~~
rramadass
This is exactly right! What the author has done is to distill some principles
from practice so as to build a possible "methodology".

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Ballu
I used to be a fan of Jugaad concepts, but ended up (opposite end of spectrum)
critique. The reason was, the concept was used by corporations as well as SME
domain for cost cutting and throttling the innovation. The reason they become
successful in doing this, too much focus on cheap labor. Hopefully, the
concept of using the technology what we have (basic foundation of ITIL v4) to
start the project, work iteratively with improvement in cycle with core focus
on achieving the targets (again, core philosophy of ITIL v4) and get the
product whats the need of hour. There is core similarity of JUGAAD mind set
and Agile as well as modern dev-ops. Hopefully, world will take Jugaad what it
was.

Brief history of Jugaad (as one mentioned, means life hack): With explosive
growth in '90s (and before that, controlled production of commercial vehicles
in India), local mechanics started using small diesel engines or totalled
vehicles engines/front body and attaching that with locally available carts.
Haryana roads were full of these vehicles (before that there used to be 3
wheel tempo, which was called Jugaad as people were using that for people
movement instead of freight), This thread has some good examples of Jugaads :)

[https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/commercial-
vehicles/117066-ju...](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/commercial-
vehicles/117066-jugaad.html)

------
clumsysmurf
The first time I heard of Jugaad was in Katherine Eban's "Bottle of Lies". The
book goes into the ethically dubious shortcuts taken by companies like Rambaxy
to make profits, in the name of Jugaad. The broader question was whether it
was just one company, or this was a cultural thing involving multiple
companies.

Podcast if you would like to learn more
[https://peterattiamd.com/katherineeban/](https://peterattiamd.com/katherineeban/)

~~~
tacon
That was also my first contact with the concept. That podcast episode is
infuriating, shocking, outrageous, riveting, and in certain parts so funny I
laughed out loud. Highly recommended.

By the way, near the end of the (long) episode, they discuss how a generic
drug consumer might mitigate the worst effects of the Indian (and Chinese)
drug companies. I thought that would be an interesting startup, to track the
scandals and reputations of every drug company and map to each drug they
manufacture. Apparently this is a DIY endeavor at the moment. This information
has recently become even more useful as the worldwide pharma industry ramps up
for COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, etc.

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macropusmacro
Wasn't it Boeing's jugaad that ultimately killed 600+ people? Wasn't it
ultimately due to jugaad that security breaches occur because the company
wasn't willing to pay extra for good quality software? Isn't my (non-Indian)
manager doing jugaad when he asks me to do the bare minimum to get the work
done, so that he can complete maximum number of features so that he can get
his yearly bonus?

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jagannathtech
Realistically, most of the time everything ends up in frustration and sub-
standard

I really wish we Indians embrace professionalism esp. in services as we are
not very resource constrained as before.

~~~
nirav72
yep. the whole "chalta hein" attitude needs to die.

~~~
OJFord
चलता है? (Not a native speaker, learning, just curious) as in walk/do/operate
something? The attitude being (having read जुगाड़ means lifehack/bodge) just
do it quick and dirty, don't worry if it's 'right'/high-quality sort of thing?

(I don't mean any offence, please don't take it that way, just trying to
understand the terms and attitude ypu refer to.)

~~~
quadrifoliate
Directly translated, it means "It walks", or "it'll walk" – a rough
translation of the _meaning_ into English would be "Eh, it'll work".

In fact, I could swear I've heard the phrase "I'm gonna let this walk for now"
as in "I'm gonna let this infraction pass unpunished" in American English in a
movie or something, but Google doesn't seem to be throwing up too many
references for that. But you could imagine it in the same way too, as "let it
walk".

~~~
aptwebapps
"I'm going to let this slide" is the closest thing that springs to mind, but I
wouldn't be surprised if some regional dialect somewhere uses "walk" like
that.

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rramadass
A lot of the comments here are unnecessarily negative. The author has actually
worked with Teams employing "Jugaad" strategy for a decade and knows what he
is talking about. I will wager that most people commenting here do not have
that experience.

"Jugaad" is a great concept and strategy to adopt in real-life scenarios where
you have to make do with what you have got. In these scenarios almost
everything is lacking; not enough money, resources (human and capital),
education nor Time. "Quality" is always a function of "Cost" which is a
function of the above mentioned variables and thus the outcomes will vary
based on the project/customer etc. Looked at in this vein, "Jugaad" makes
perfect sense. Your expectations have to match reality. The trouble only
happens when this mindset is perverted and you start cutting corners
everywhere to the detriment of the end result.

~~~
riantogo
I have employed “Jugaad” for multiple decades. And the comments here are
correctly negative. Jugaad is what good people have to do to work a shit
system. It leads to utterly unprofessional environments and is a tremendous
drag on the overall system.

~~~
rramadass
I disagree. That is a perversion of the principles and not true "Jugaad". As
an example see the success of the "Generic Drug" pharmaceutical industry and
how it came to be.

[https://blogs.deloitte.co.uk/health/2020/03/the-indian-
pharm...](https://blogs.deloitte.co.uk/health/2020/03/the-indian-
pharmaceutical-industry-the-pharmacy-of-the-world.html)

~~~
riantogo
Huh?? So government overreach and manipulation of free market and global trade
is your example of “jugaad”?

~~~
rramadass
I knew my example would be misunderstood. Please follow the plentiful links
from the above article for a more informed view.

------
kang
Jugaad is just hindi for hack.

------
Brajeshwar
I like Jugaad as the quick prototypical research tool. Cliché but it has its
place as the pirates' way. It is a means (not an end) that needs to graduate
to the ways of the Navy. I also love to leverage the straight-forwardness of
the west, and the finesse, artistry, and craft of the Japanese culture.

Here is a book about the slow rise and success of Bigbasket[1] in India -
Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of Bigbasket[2].

1\. [https://www.bigbasket.com](https://www.bigbasket.com)

2\. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52560378-saying-no-to-
ju...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52560378-saying-no-to-jugaad)

------
ggeorgovassilis
Jugaad is an attitude towards delivery which originated in India and consists
of three simple tenets:

    
    
        Humility: use whatever works without prejudice
        Openness: keep your options open
        Frugality: small expenses keep regrets small

~~~
Scapeghost
I'm from a country where "jugaad" is the dominant mentality and frankly, it
results in a hell for anyone who wants shit to be done right or things to work
long term.

In practice, it actually becomes:

    
    
        Impatience: Don't waste time trying to follow best practices 
        Dishonesty: Milk the customer for as much as you can
        Cutting Corners: Small expenses result in bigger ones down the road
    

Which ends up with everything from light bubls to street transformers and
vehicles and even medical implants blowing up, breaking down or falling apart
at least a few times every year.

Diluting milk with water is a common idiom for dishonesty here and such minor
instances of corruption are rife at the grassroots level.

~~~
karmakaze
That's interesting as I was reading the "system that generates, stores and
sends receipts via email to customers" example, the jugaad solution looked
like tech debt from day 1. It doesn't 'store' the receipts anything lost in
email is simply lost.

~~~
p1necone
That depends on the email system you use doesn't it? Sure if you're just using
a gmail account you're playing with fire. But if you back up the inbox then
it's no more likely to get "lost" than a database.

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OJFord
Not helped by the vehicle analogy in the opening paragraphs, I at first
thought we were talking about physical goods delivery!

It seems it's जुगाड़ (IAST jugāṛ) meaning 'lifehack'.

~~~
Arnavion
जुगाड़ is just "kludge" / "hack" / "cobbled-together solution" / "half-baked
method" in general, not "lifehack" specifically.

The submission makes it out to be some amazing cultural thing, but I've more
commonly heard it used with a negative connotation.

~~~
OJFord
धन्यवाद, I'm learning Hindi and was just curious about what it actually meant.
'Makes it out to be some amazing cultural thing' is I suppose quite common (or
substitute 'amazing' for anything broad) - 'curry' is an obvious example, it
presumably comes from कढ़ी, in turn from the leaf/herb, which is one very
specific (very delicious, IMO) dish, yet used over here like it just means
(Indian) food.

I digress. I can see why it's useful to cling to a term to discuss a
phenomenon or even a non-unique idea in the context of a particular place, but
really, imagine (as a non-Indian) reading this with <country> in place for
'India', and Agile (or something) for 'jugaad'. Egh. I'm all for intercultural
learning or whatever, but as part of that we surely have to look at what's 'a
thing' to learn and what isn't.

~~~
kranner
Curry and कढ़ी are false cognates, AFAIK.

According to Wikipedia [1]: "Curry is an anglicised form of the Tamil word
kaṟi meaning 'sauce' or 'relish for rice' that uses the leaves of the curry
tree (Murraya koenigii). The word kari is also used in other Dravidian
languages, namely in Malayalam, Kannada and Kodava with the meaning of
"vegetables (or meat) of any kind (raw or boiled), curry". Kaṟi is described
in a mid-17th century Portuguese cookbook by members of the British East India
Company, who were trading with Tamil merchants along the Coromandel Coast of
southeast India, becoming known as a "spice blend ... called kari podi or
curry powder". The first known appearance in its anglicised form (spelled
currey) appears in a 1747 book of recipes published by Hannah Glasse."

Another theory suggests the same root, but a longer journey via Portuguese
settlers: Tamil 'kaṟi' -> Portuguese 'carel' -> English 'curry'

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry#Etymology)

~~~
vram22
Yep. Kari in Tamil also means meat, I'm not sure if it is of a specific animal
(maybe mutton - which is goat meat in India), or a generic term. But AFAIK
when used in that sense, it does not include chicken, fish, etc.

~~~
rusticpenn
Kari basically comes from Coal/wood ( which is also called kari), probably
from wood stoves used for cooking.

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Karupan
The jugaad mentality may help coming up with innovative, low cost solutions to
problems, but isn’t the best way to actually deliver it to a mass market.

------
ponker
Well look at the development outcomes for India and Germany and jugaad doesn’t
seem so great.

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kjsingh
Jugaad == patchwork?

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quadrifoliate
The less widely known and palatable truth is that jugaad is simply a way of
adapting to a few hundred years of colonial exploitation [1]. Indians have
built precisely engineered monuments like the Taj Mahal [2] and the Konark Sun
Temple [3] in eras before India was engineered to be a vast source of raw
material for the British Empire, designed for optimum extraction.

Bygones are bygones, and we need to move on. However, I would urge all people
who identify as Indian to reject this sense of "jugaad" as a uniquely Indian
thing – it unnecessarily paints a picture of us as consistently turning out
shoddy and half-baked work that will fall apart eventually.

\--------------

[1] [http://www.nilejournal.net/politics/britain-exploited-
india](http://www.nilejournal.net/politics/britain-exploited-india)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konark_Sun_Temple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konark_Sun_Temple)

~~~
jojobas
Oh come on, half of the world (US included) was colonized and optimized for
resource extraction, mostly because of how far ahead British manufacturing was
at the time.

India as been independent for a while now, just own the half-bakedness
already.

~~~
abalaji
I would posit that the level of exploitation of the Indian population paled in
comparison to the colonies. [citation needed] But, you are right in a sense.

~~~
felipelemos
Everything south of United States had the same or if not worse level of
exploitation as a European colony.

I sort of agree with parent poster, specially because most of these countries
are independent for a bit longer and maybe because of that they tend to blame
less the colonization (but blame still), but also because keep blaming the
past (even when it is true) holds you to look forward.

~~~
renewiltord
Interestingly, don't most poor parts of the world have some such stereotype?
Like, if you Google any of the following you'll get exactly what you expect
from any of these (they clearly espouse identical beliefs):

* [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=jugaad%20enginee...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=jugaad%20engineering)

* [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=hillbilly%20engi...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=hillbilly%20engineering)

* [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=mexican%20engine...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=mexican%20engineering)

Though I couldn't find an equivalent 'Brazilian' or 'Somali' so I wonder what
the terms are in those places or if they have no such terms, what they do
instead.

I think it's just what you get when you constrain resources but tooling gives
you a great boost and safety is less costly.

~~~
jojobas
There are kludges everywhere, but few companies make kludges part of their
core values, except Jugaad apparently.

