Necessity is the mother of invention, goes the old adage. Nowhere is this truer than in India. A paucity of resources and the can-do spirit of a lot of inventive brains have managed to create solutions for tricky problems. These inventive, cheap but workable solutions are typically low-tech – jugaad that we think of as essentially Indian. Anand Mahindra shared a video of one such inventive ‘jugaad’ solution that used a traditional Indian string cot instead of the bucket attachment.
It appears to be a regular farm tractor with a home fabricated boom and dipper; with a string cot attached at the end instead of the bucket to scoop up items – a ‘Khatiya-vator’ as Mahindra puts it.
As a Twitter personality with a huge following, Mahindra's tweet quickly gained traction and the video he shared became viral.
Maybe people will now think of other uses for the string cot or khatiya – other than for sleeping or relaxing upon.
This string cot has also been put to good use: balanced upon the seat of a two-wheeler, it accommodates at least one person and two very large bundles of what appears to be cattle feed.
A heatwave is a yearly occurrence. And in the old days, dampened sheets of khus placed over doors and windows of the home acted as cooling curtains. Maybe it works the same way placed on top of a car?
We have to wait at traffic intersections in the blinding sun. Why not make things a little better?
In this instance, rodents likely gnawed away at some pipes. This inventive fellow used ear plugs to ‘plug’ the problem.
This simple but innovative device uses a bicycle to collect litter on the streets. This could save up a day’s work of sweeping, gathering and removal.
A motorcycle will do perfectly well, apparently!
So what if they don’t have stumps. Anything vaguely resembling them will do.
It can be a tool to cook as well… provided there is electrical supply, that is.
There may be no bed available. So, one has to make do with a bench, a small table and a plank.
Perhaps there needs to be a jugaad class in schools as well? After all, jugaad is an essentially Indian quality – shouldn’t kids’ creativity be channelled?
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