Far from the days of Japanese terms of management philosophy and production and intensive post "dot-com bubble" jargon, if there is one more word which cas captured the fascination of industry majors, it has to be the word Jugaad. ‘Jugaad’, which is a colloquial Hindi word, has gained significant traction these days in the business and management parlance. The word, which literally means a "hack", is generally used to represent an ingenious fix or a simple work-around in situations that would warrant strict adherence to existing norms or practices.

This method of solving a complicated issue with out-of-the-box thought processes is often used to signify creativity wherein a conventional mindset or approach is shunned to make existing things work without significant expenditure; or to create new things with meager resources. The Indian-originated practice of Jugaad engineering is widely accepted as a effective form of frugal engineering across the world. ISRO which successfully managed to achieve the title of being “the first country in the world to place a probe in orbit around Mars on the very first attempt” itself attributed its enormous success to process of Jugaad inspired frugal engineering where the attitude of “make do with what you have” is embraced. This practice of “form follows function” is actually what drove the cost economics behind TATA’s Nano Car or the endless models of sub-INR 10000 smartphones that are available in the market today.

Interestingly, the concept of Jugaad in itself has never been approved or acknowledged by the mainstream education system in the country. Infact, it could even be considered that the Jugaad actually thrives due to immense satisfaction caused by it being able to bend around the existing framework and come up with a decent work around. In a scenario like a faulty desktop, conventional wisdom would advise the user to find a qualified tech support and reach out for authentic spares; while a Jugaad mindset would advise the user to develop a cheaper workaround by himself.

This form of resourcefulness, which does not conform to existing ethos, has never been promoted by the education system as it views this as a “hack” culture fraught with un-usefulness. On the contrary, this system promotes anything but un-usefulness. It is a system wherein the user can be creative only if he is well versed with the technical knowhow of the given process or product. A jugaad mindset would actually motivate a student to be technically sound in order to be able to achieve the desired workaround.

We at Kidobotikz aim to bring these hitherto marginalized concepts into the learning scheme of things for our students and make the ‘Jugaad’ way of learning as a part of mainstream education. We promote core philosophies of frugality in learning through our kits where kids understand the face value of every component and tinker with designs to achieve high optimum performance as against cosmetic appearance. This will not only make the process of learning fun and fulfilling, but will also make the society a better place as such life hacks go a long way in driving contentment in an increasingly capitalist society.

Happy Roboting !

Kidobotikz is a leading EdTech startup offering Robotics Courses for students. Moving from a Robotics training Institute which conducted Robotics classes to a “Learn Robotics Online”, Kidobotikz today has 4 levels of Kits which offer Robotics for Kids. If the question on your mind is “How to learn robotics”, then the answer is Kidobotikz.