Pyaas - Philosphy of Jugad !
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
I am reminded from time to time about a joke that my dad used to love cracking whenever he would get a mature government service audience. It was his pet joke. The joke goes like this -
Once some foreign delegation is coming to India to discuss some avenues of collaboration and growth, with state governors. While coming, their car breaks down on the way. There is a roadside mechanic there, so they approach him and ask if he can fix it up. The guy has a good look at the car and says that the tire has lost a nut and bolt and that although he doesn’t have the same but he still can do a 'jugad'. Perplexed the foreigners asked what a jugad was! He tells them not to bother and does it, telling that they can now drive farther till the next 15kms where they will find a bigger shop.
Once some foreign delegation is coming to India to discuss some avenues of collaboration and growth, with state governors. While coming, their car breaks down on the way. There is a roadside mechanic there, so they approach him and ask if he can fix it up. The guy has a good look at the car and says that the tire has lost a nut and bolt and that although he doesn’t have the same but he still can do a 'jugad'. Perplexed the foreigners asked what a jugad was! He tells them not to bother and does it, telling that they can now drive farther till the next 15kms where they will find a bigger shop.
Wondering the crew leaves and reaches the shop. The shop owner says that he needs a nut fastener and that is not available with him, but there is a tools shop after 25kms and he can arrange for a 'jugad' so that they reach there. Foreigners are amazed and want to understand what the hell ‘jugad’ is, but the shop owner smiles back silently and does the work.
After finding the tools shop the foreigners ask him for the fastener, but he says he is out of it. He suggests that they go to a nearby welding shop for a 'pakka jugad'. One of the foreigners by now akin to such talk asks if he can do a jugad so that they can reach this new guy, to which the shop owner agrees leaving the full delegation in awe!
As they reach the welding guy, they pester him to tell about the 'jugad', but to no avail. he just fixes the car and tells he has done a 'pakka jugad'
When the delegation reaches to governors meet, they give just one proposal - Give us the 'jugad' that you use to make everything work so miraculously in return for 3 trillion USD. To this a governor replies, "How can we give that to you? This whole country is running on jugad itself only sir!!!"But so so true it is, we Asians infact have mastered this art of jugad and we tend to find ways out from any situation, we are street smart as they say. If a scooter wont start, bend at 30degree and start; don’t have buckets large enough and state is giving condoms for free? use condoms to fetch water or use to fine select silk while making sarees; the motherboard is off the case? use chewing gum to stick it at place till repair (was done in IBM); want to get better price for your old cow? dye them black using hair dye (UP gave Godrej a shock by this resulting in abnormal sales)... the list is infinitely long. Whole point is whatever is wrong; it can be most probably fixed, though temporarily.
But lets look at the problem in this, take a normal algebraic equation y=f(x). y here is an output or symptom or effect and x is an input or cause of the problem. Jugad is an excellent way of changing your output value to adjust it to desired state. Hence effectively the function f is redefined. But the problem was in or as x, which leave alone touching, is not even realized. So what do we get? a system which is other than desired, but still serving the same desired result, although unpredictably. Any time the system may crash.
Look at our efforts, in ITES also we are so good at maintenance and rebuilding; but where are all the Asian nations when it comes to developing? We don’t have that troubleshooting approach, how many times do we sit and think what the problem is instead of just giving the solutions.
After talking with many of my MBA friends, I have realized that most of them started giving solutions in first week itself. Where was the patience or mindset to spend a month understanding problem? If you haven't defined the problem, how can you give a solution?! (Think about the DMAIC - Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control)
The reason that I can find is that all these Asian geographies were highly fertile and hence had higher densities of population, leading to resource crunch. This has led to very different philosophy and lifestyle. Capital with a person is low and fight is higher in life, no doubt 'jugads' rule the life!
Note (edited) : There has been an article on Jugad-ism in HT too few days back, although this article was written entirely in absence of knowledge of this HT article, still the link has been added here to allay any Plagiarism attempt fears! A look a the article though will tell you how much different the articles are but then some people had the doubts...
Labels: Philosophy
posted by Jas @ 11:14 PM,
3 Comments:
-
At August 29, 2007 6:55 PM,
said...
-
this is plagiarism... an article ws published in Hindustan times on this.. by the name :Espirit De Jugaad"
-
At August 29, 2007 7:19 PM,
Jas said...
-
Plagiarism!! i wonder if I should laugh or laugh mockingly. The story is a well known and jugad too is a commoner term. Have edited post to account for the article too.
Plagiarism!! ha! -
At August 27, 2008 7:26 AM,
said...
-
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow power leveling
wow power leveling
wow power leveling
World of Warcraft gold
power leveling
powerleveling
power leveling
