Jugaad are locally-made motor vehicles that are used mostly in small villages as a means of low cost transportation in rural India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Jugaad (also sometimes jugard) literally means an improvised arrangement or work-around, which has to be used because of lack of resources. This is a Hindi term widely used by people speaking other Indian languages, and by people of Indian origin around the world. The same term is still used for a type of vehicle, found in rural India, made by carpenters by fitting a diesel engine on a cart.

Low-cost vehicle

Jugaad vehicles cost around Rs. 85,000 (less than US$ 2000). They are known for having poor brakes, and can not go faster than about 60 km/h (37 mph). They are powered by diesel engines which were intended for running agricultural irrigation

Irrigation

Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...

 pumps. The vehicle is used to carry more than 20 people at a time in remote locations and poor road conditions. Today, a jugaad is one of the most cost effective transportation solutions for rural Indians.

Though no statistical data is available, it is often the case that the brakes of these vehicles fail, requiring one of the passengers to jump down and manually apply a wooden block as a brake. These vehicles do not have any vehicle registration plate

Vehicle registration plate

A vehicle registration plate is a metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies the vehicle within the issuing region's database...

 as they are not registered with the Regional Transport Office

Regional Transport Office

Regional Transport Office is an Indian government bureau which is responsible for the registration of vehicles and the issue of Driver's Licences in India....

 (RTO

RTO

RTO may refer to:* The Really Terrible Orchestra* Recovery time objective, the time for a business process to be restored after a disruption* Regenerative thermal oxidizer, in off-gas treatment...

). Hence, they end up not paying any road tax

Road tax

Road tax, known by various names around the world, is a tax which has to be paid on a motor vehicle before using it on a public road.-Australia:...

.

Jugaad are not officially recognized as road-worthy, and despite a few proposals to regulate them, vote-bank politics have time and again trumped any safety concerns. The improvised vehicles have now become rather popular as a means to transport all manner of burdens, from lumber to steel rods to school children.

Vehicle variants

A South Indian (Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

) variant of this is called the Meen Body Vandi — i.e. "fish bed vehicle" because they originated among Tamil fishermen who needed a quick and cheap transport system to transport fish. It is a motorized tri-wheeler (derived from the non-motorized variant) with a heavy-duty suspension and a motorcycle engine — typically recycled from the Czech Yezdi or Enfield bullet

Royal Enfield Bullet

The Royal Enfield Bullet was originally a British overhead valve single cylinder 4-stroke motorcycle made by Royal Enfield in Redditch, West Midlands, but now produced by Royal Enfield Motors, the successor to the British company, at Chennai , Tamil Nadu in India...

 vehicles. Its origins are typical of other Jugaadu innovations — dead fish are typically considered unhygienic, and vehicles that carry them won't or can't be typically used to carry anything else, hence the need for a cheap single-purpose transport vehicle.

There are similar vehicles to be found in much of Southeast Asia.

Jugaad as a concept

Jugaad is also a colloquial Hindi word that can mean an innovative fix or a simple work-around, sometimes pejoratively used for solutions that bend rules, or a resource that can be used as such, or a person who can solve a vexatious issue. It is used as much to describe enterprising street mechanics as for political fixers. In essence, it is a tribute to Indian genius, and holistic thinking. The jugaad type of vehicles are not always known by this name in all over India. But the colloquial meaning of the same word is abundantly used, usually signifying the creativity of the Indian people to make existing things work or to create new things with meagre resources.

The jugaad concept can be contrasted with the Western (originally American) concept of a hack or kludge

Kludge

A kludge is a workaround, a quick-and-dirty solution, a clumsy or inelegant, yet effective, solution to a problem, typically using parts that are cobbled together...

. Although in its general meaning "hack" is very similar to "jugaad", a jugaad can be thought of more as a survival tactic, whereas a hack, especially nowadays, is seen an intellectual art form. Both concepts express a need to do what needs to be done, without regard to what is conventionally supposed to be possible.

Jugaad is increasingly being recognized all over the world as an acceptable form of frugal engineering pioneered in India. Companies in India are adopting Jugaad as a practise to reduce R & D costs and development costs. Jugaad is now an acceptable management technique of Indian origin. Jugaad also applies to any kind of creative and out of the box thinking which maximizes resources for a company and its stakeholders.