Jugaad (n.)
A Hindi term that describes a resourceful and frugal approach to problem-solving, often involving creative workarounds and innovative solutions using limited resources. It's a mindset and a practice deeply ingrained in Indian culture, representing the ability to adapt and create solutions when facing constraints.
As a toddler, my first memory of creative expression was of a purple-stemmed, orange rose on the walls of my childhood home. Luckily, my mother did not care about my ruining the pastel walls, instead often joined me in my endeavours. She believed art knows no bounds; even simple bounds like paper and colouring tools, weren’t strong enough to hold the weight of creativity. I remember this one time when I had run out of watercolours and couldn’t stop crying, my mom, while cooking a homemade meal, mixed some food colouring into the roti dough, and handed the little make-shift clay to me. Looking back to that moment right now, I realise how innately creative Indians are, and most of our “jugaads” are the outcome of what is available around us at that moment. What could be a better example of creativity than that?
Years later, as a communication design student, I started noticing how intertwined we are with design in our lives without knowing it. In the agricultural context, Farmers developed ingenious irrigation systems using repurposed plastic bottles and other materials to conserve water and optimize crop production; In engineering, The Tata Nano, a very affordable car, became an example of how jugaad principles can be applied to large-scale production. In Architecture, step-wells of the arid regions of West India stored and harvested rainwater, all the while becoming an integral part of communal life. No access to resources and capital didn’t stop us from innovating or improvising locally and, in most cases, what is available just around us.
Then why is it so, that Indian Design, with this unique character, is still fighting for a reputable position in the modern design scene? I ponder over this question quite often. Are the doors so tightly shut with Anglo-European perspectives, that there is no room for other points of view? Does design always need Western Approval as proof of its functionality? Or can it become a lifestyle, a way of living, of underconsumption?
“Frugal innovation”—a term explored by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, and Simone Ahuja in their book Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, argues that such creativity emerges not from scarcity alone, but from a fundamentally different way of thinking—one that is flexible, inclusive, and deeply responsive to local needs. Unlike linear models of Western industrial design, jugaad celebrates lateral thinking, social intuition, and agility. In that sense, it is not a workaround, but a worldview. And yet, despite its ingenuity and cultural root, jugaad is often sidelined in formal design education, viewed as unsystematic, poor or even unserious. Maybe it's time to redefine it into a methodology that doesn’t conform to rigid grids or imported standards, but one that breathes, bends, and responds to the changes of the world.
If Indian design is to find a place in the global conversation, it must do so not by imitation, but by assertion - of our tools, our practices, our painful histories and our stories. Jugaad is more than a trick of survival. It is a design ethos born of constraint, creativity, and care. And perhaps, in a world riddled with the ‘excess’, that is exactly the kind of design the future needs.
Maybe that’s the real beginning of Indian Design.
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