Indian Jugaad has design lessons for Americans

India’s Jugaad holds an exhibition in New York, teaching the ways of maximum resource utilisation.

NEW YORK: A big window sign in Hindi saying “Jugaad” is pulling everyone, from Indian cabbies to intrigued tourists and urban planners, to a show in New York on how Indians are doing more with less.

“There is a very positive and enthusiastic response and curiosity to know more,” says architect Kanu Agrawal, curator of Jugaad Urbanism: Resourceful Strategies for Indian Cities, exploring what architects, designers, and urban planners can learn from the ‘jugaad’ strategy of ‘making do’.

Besides people walking past a big window sign saying “Jugaad”, tourists and taxi drivers who can read Hindi, architects, urban planners and product designers, have been drawn to the show that will be on till May 21.

“Conceptually, they are very intrigued and interested in how people are making do in a creative manner,” said Agrawal, a Delhi native.

Organised by the Centre for Architecture, the first exhibition “creates a more conscious and sensitive approach to how Indians use their resources more responsibly and also it gives them a window on how cities in India are coping with these things and look at the future more carefully when they are designing for density and all those issues,” said Agrawal.

Besides bringing about a general awareness, the show aims to show architects how small scale creative design solutions by people can influence big environmental and large scale conditions.

The show adopts a two-pronged approach. Firstly, it documents the existing conditions and how people are responding to it, said Agrawal, citing a make-shift toilet or a ‘jugaad’ chandelier made from plastic bottles. Similarly, oil tin cans used for roofing by designers using the ‘jugaad’ strategy.

Agrawal hoped “these ideas percolate into Indian design thinking” even as urban planners cope with the different forces that are at play, including strong market forces, political forces and aspects of corruption.

For the first time in the US, changes seen to be happening, added Agrawal. It’s sort of generating a lot of interest in this area, especially in regard to Indian cities.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2011.