Jugaad is a word that can be translated as life-hack, but in my experience, I've seen it used more as a cheap improvised repair. The idea is that as long as something is working, there is no need to upgrade or change anything. For example, when your computer isn't starting and you bang on it and it turns on. For some people, this would be a red alert to get the computer checked out, but for others this means that the computer works fine, it just needs a little push. That push is called jugaad.
The car pictured above is a perfect example of jugaad. Just looking at the car, you can picture how many times the owner was told to get rid of the car and how many problems he must have had to jugaad his way through to get to this point.
During my time in Pakistan, Jugaad usually had a negative connotation associated with it. However, I'd argue that the jugaad mentality is something we in the states are in desperate need of. Jugaad gives one a better sense of the bigger picture and makes one resourceful.
1. Bigger Picture
In the states we have become so specialized in our specific fields that we rarely can do any work outside of our field. For example, if one's toilet is not flushing properly the first action anyone takes is calling the plumber. Oftentimes, people don't even have a basic understanding of how the toilet actually works. All they know is that they push the little lever and everything disappears.
Having a Jugaad mentality forces you to understand the bigger picture. It forces you to understand what role each part plays in the whole. If your car's engine breaks down and you want to perform a jugaad, you need to understand what each part in the engine does and what is going wrong. Only when you have a firm understanding of what each piece does and what you need each piece to do, can you jugaad your way through.
2. Resourcefulness
What we see in the American market is that companies are making goods that are built to only last a certain period of time- planned obsolescence. Producers have recognized that consumers will dispose of their product at the first sign of trouble, and they have capitalized on this. Every year we see the same product with a slightly different design being sold to the same people. The emptiness that the consumer feels in their soul while in this cycle of buying and disposing has been captured so wonderfully in the film fight club, but that is a topic for another day. Actually movies nowadays have also been caught up in the planned obsolescence cycle. For example, the next 5 years of superhero movies already announced. Rather then being a good standalone movie, each movie turns out to be just a buildup to the next movie. Batman vs. Superman is an excellent example of this.
Back to the point. The Jugaad mentality forces you to look at what you have and make the most out of it. If you have don't have a rope, you tear a piece of your shirt and tie it like a rope. If you don't have a metal rod, you use a stick.
If we want tomorrow to be better then today for humanity as a whole, then we all need to learn to jugaad our way through some things. The idea is not to totally leave material progress behind and just make do with what you have for the rest of your life, but we should never lose the ability to see the bigger picture and to make the most out of what we have.