1. Understanding Jugaad: ICTD and the Tensions of Appropriation, Innovation and Utility
Nimmi Rangaswamy ● IIT Hyderabad ●
Melissa Densmore ● Microsoft Research ●
Context perspective:
Cultural and vocational face of global competition framed by an organic Indian-ness and nurtured by tradition
Old tires being used as a tow chain. Bangalore, India.
Photo Credit: Densmore
Business perspective:
Jugaad innovation replaces premium pricing and abundance with affordability and sustainability disrupting business models and modifying organizational capabilities
Everyday Jugaad:
The one cent for a one-minute telephone call or a day’s worth mobile internet, the missed call, the expansive gray markets, the ICT repair shops and the rotating mobile phone
The Jugaad Ethos: Systemic risk. Bricolage of jury-rigged, self-repaired, cost-effective solution
Everyday Jugaad includes innovative mobile pricing models, the missed call, and ICT repair shops
ICTD perspective: Frugal innovation, context driven and bottom up workable functional infrastructures
Instantiation of Jugaad practices:
Pirate modernity referring to an intricately networked pirate conduits for digital media consumption and a more robust and skill-building ecologies of repair
Everyday ICTD4J: Ground up locally functional and impactful technologies
A range of artifacts and skill ranging from the original Jugaadi tractors in Punjab, to the Chukudus in Congo, imaginative camera use in rural South Africa, Photoshopping pictures for local tastes in the Indian down markets, Cyber café business models in Mumbai or mobile and PC repair and maintenance.
ICTD projects like the Digital Green, Story Bank, Avaaj Otalo embody the spirit of Jugaad by valuing the needs, priorities, and interests of the target communities.
The huge success of m-Pesa, introduced as a means of transferring money, was locally subverted as a savings repository for its unbanked clients.
The BOP perspective: A working alternative to survive infrastructural glitches, state apathy
Jugaad favors local tastes in photoshopped images
A typical jugaad vehicle being pieced together from local spare parts. Photo Credit:
Tension Questions & Concerns in an ICTD perspective of Jugaad:
Jugaad appears to suggest leap-frogging from grassroots to systematic
innovation while evidence point to localized responses to poverty
How much is a risk economy and servicing acceptable in the light of developing countries and the accompanying instability of resource infrastructures?
Do these lead to entrenching a culture of repair rather than innovation?
Is Jugaad just an approach to local use?
Does rendering existing technologies practical and usable in a local context mean innovative breakthroughs?
The chukudu: a wooden bicycle commonly used for goods transport in D R Congo