Talking about jugaad

By LILIANA GIL, 6/18/2016. Two very strong narratives prevail in discussions about jugaad – the colloquial Hindi term for quick fixes, hacks, and workarounds – as an innovation-generating practice. On the one hand, there is the repudiation of these improvised solutions on the basis that they’re not serious enough and only perpetuate corruption and mediocrity. In the gloomy spirit of books like Planet of Slums, this is a perspective that puts emphasis on the reproduction of certain macro structures of inequality, seeing the quick fix as a gesture towards its maintenance. On the other hand, there is the celebration of improvisatory agency as a challenge to established forms of access to goods and infrastructure and even as an opportunity for social mobility. In this perspective, which strongly resonates with the talk on small entrepreneurship that we see in places like The Economist, knowledges and practices implied in jugaad and alike are validated as creative and dynamic, and thus ultimately good. These two narratives are usually pitched against each other. The first is often looked down upon as reductionist and normative, the second as romantic and inconsequential.

But what happens if one resists to borrow these ready-made critiques as points of departure for an investigation of resourcefulness? What other ways are there of talking about poor people being resourceful?