Hacker News Reader

Comment by xmonkee | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions "jugaad" as the Indian way of doing things inexpensively. It roughly means a "hack", and it really is very fundamental to the Indian engineering brain. I once read a list of interesting words in foreign languages and Portuguese had something similar. I think all engineering teams should have at least one jugaadu person on it.

View on HN

The book "fortune at the bottom of the pyramid"[1] has several interesting case studies on building businesses on budget for the needy. Some of them like "Jaipur foot"[2], "Aaravind Eye Care"[3] are excellent examples of how "jugaad" works in India. It doesn't have to be a kluge as someone stated below. Ofcourse the word is liberally used to indicate ways to circumvent the "official" or "ethical" way. So, it depends on the case at hand ! If used in a positive way, "hacker" is a good english substitute for it.

I think "jugaad" gets ingrained naturally when you are on a budget and don't have access to all the cool tools but have a desire to build something.

[1] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_th...

[2] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaipur_leg

[3] : http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/142526263/india-eye-care-cente...

I once read a list of interesting words in foreign languages and Portuguese had something similar.

Yeap: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desenrascanço

I'd say it's both a source of national pride and shame for us, in the sense that we can find ingenious solutions, but often those are only required because we didn't do it right in the first place.

More often than not it's "couldn't due to resource constraints".

That's mostly why I kind of feel like I want to wait and see if the spacecraft actually manages to do what it's designed to.

If you have to send multiple 70+ million dollar missions because the hacks keep failing the cost benefit is not all that good compare to the more expensive 300 million dollar mission.

I'm talking about the Portuguese term, not the Hindi.

In Brazil it's called "gambiarra", and the same mixed pride/shame feelings also apply.

From what I know, jugaad's meaning crosses the boundaries of ethics freely. In the business community, unethical practices also get the same title. I am not a native Hindi speaker, so would be good if someone can elaborate.

This is correct. The 'unethical' connotations bears a close resemblance to the same in the word 'hacker'. So it makes for an apt synonym.

(Another person in this thread ties it more closely to 'kludge' -- this would be correct too. More correct would be innovative or tricky kludge.)

Q&D

jugaad in many places would be better described as a kluge.

A similar Chinese term might be "shanzhai": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai

"Jugaad" is more make-do/being (very) resourceful in situations where there aren't other options. "Hack" has a more playful, irreverent connotation whereas jugaad is resourcefulness forced of circumstances, in places/situations where if you aren't inventive, you are left behind. In Hindi, "jugaad" also means to gather/manage/take care of.

We have a saying called "Jerry rigged" in the South that we use. I think it is very similar to jugaad and can be thought of has using what you have available to hack something into a working state again (or something new made from different parts).

It appears that "Jerry rigged" comes from the nautical term "jury rigged" which itself comes from the the French jour for "a day":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rig

I found this out when wondering if "jerry rigged" shared anything with "jerry can" which came from British troops admiring the quality of the liquid containers the Wehrmacht had in WW2 "jerry == German":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan

Funny to see this about jerrycans, as that reminds me of how on Kerguelen island, which is in places littered with various empty oil drums mostly put there between WWI and the 1950's by US, French and German ships, one could easily recognize the German ones from the others.

The German barrels are for the most part still in good shape, some with almost no trace of rust, while the others are all crumbling into rust (on the other hand, they're also much heavier and unwieldy).

Yes I have also heard of Jury rigged (and a couple other unsavory terms). I was always confused how the term could relate to a court's "jury." It makes a lot of sense now that I now it actually comes from a French word. Very interesting thanks for the reply.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com