Jugaad Inc. !!

Hai kya koi Jugaad ?

Arrey yaar tum to bade jugaadu nikaley !

Are daro mat, mere pass bahut jugaad hai !!

Jugaad is everywhere, on Wikis, Harvard Business, Wall Street Journals and ofcourse in the hearts and souls of every Indian. What exactly is Jugaad - a solution to overcome a problem, somehow, anyhow, in the fastest possible manner, by spending least amount of time and energy ! Sounds some heavenly insane stuff, isn't it !

Is Jugaad our biggest asset or the liability ? Have we reached so far because of jugaad or we havent reached where could have because of jugaad. Is jugaad a solution or a full blown problem in itself...

The Birth of Jugaad -due to lack of time or resources or both or due to lack of understanding of the situation at hand, sometimes due to simple arrogance and sometimes out of innocence We the Indians have developed the concept of Jugad (ad-hoc arrangement). We dont want to face the problems today or at least now or we don't want to think about the solution because it might be too expensive today or we might have to work bit hard to resolve the real issue, so in order to save time, money, energy, resources 'today' we think of Jugaad.

The Jugaad usually delivers immediate results, makes the person who carried out the Jugaad a real cool dood in front of his rest of the fellow men, everybody appreciates him/her for presence of mind and for solving the problem instantly without much kharcha (expenditure)  and sardard (headache i.e. hardwork). Slowly the Jugaadu ( the ad-hoc problem solver) becomes the talk of the town and every kid in the town, wants to be like him.

Over a period of time, several centers of Jugaad crops up in every town. Sadhu-baba (holy man) becomes the main Jugaad (back door entry in this case) to the highest court of law. A seemingly innocent Panwala, Chaiwala, popular Bhaiya ji, a not so popular defeated politician, bus-conductor a TC/TT in the great Indian train becomes synonymous to Jugaad. From your first to last ritual the Pandits will recommend some jugaad for everything depending on your convenience and budget. Likewise from getting a birth certificate to import machinery without paying duties, the Babus are well verse of the jugaad to get things done. Looking at the current heads (2 Ps) of our democratically elected government, one can realize how high one can reach with Jugaad and bit of luck, even sky is within reach !

Foreign media, several renown business journals etc have openly endorsed the great India Jugaad. No matter what the government in the center wants us to believe, but the facts are we are world's largest democracy but we are not most successful one, we may become top 3 economy by 2025, but I dont think even by 2100 (yes, you read is correctly, 88 years from hence) we will be in top 30 nations in the world on the basis of Per capita GDP. We tend to believe that we are super kool in mathematics, accounting and economics but our koolness is mostly confined to calculating aXb or tallying the accounts the fastest, unfortunately not much beyond that. We are no doubt one of the most hardworking people in the world, but certainly not the most creative of the lot. We are great at cooking the books of a company to raise money form the market but we are yet to create companies which can change the rules of the market. 

Lets talk about world's most innovative companies, most rapidly growing companies, most respected universities in the field of arts, science, technology or business and we are almost sure of not finding any Indian entity. The reason is simple, we are still searching for the appropriate Jugaaad to make it and to break it into the league :) !

If not for the business Jugaad of Outsourcing, how else could American and European corporations would have made so much more money despite recession ! The value proposition in this Outsourcing jugaad is so much that it managed to survive 2 decades, thankfully.

I tend to believe that God has not created this Earth and its all some great cosmological accident, a.k.a the Big Bang after which it all began. But then I wonder if not for God, how else this massive, beautiful country of ours has survived all these years. Now that's what I call the ultimate Jugaad, Bhagwaan Bharose !!

Bhaktjan - Hey Prabhu is baar kuch jugaad lagwa de, agli baar se dhyaan rakhoonga !

Bhagwan - Oh no, Not Again !!