Exorcising the god of Jugaad: A Train 18 Tale

 

Jugaad—or more expressively, Jugaa.D in Roman Hindi—is a powerful and evocative word.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is a Hindi term referring to an innovative, resourceful, and often unconventional approach to problem-solving, especially in the face of limited resources. It typically implies quick, inexpensive, and improvised solutions using whatever is at hand. More broadly, it encompasses meanings like contrivance, stratagem, intrigue, or any innovative or irregular way of repairing, mending, or solving a problem—a makeshift mechanism or stopgap solution.

But jugaad is more than all this. It can also suggest spontaneity, extemporization, ad-libbing, ad hoc responses, or even the spirit of quest, pursuit, chase, hunt, inquiry, or exploration. In looser associations, it connects with ideas like impromptu, expedient, improviso, autoschediasm, speaking off the cuff, acting on impulse or in the moment, winging it, inquest, intrigue, enterprise, and quarry.

In short, jugaad is a rich, layered word, with multiple meanings and connotations—at once a philosophy, a mindset, a way of life and above all, a cultural signature. Some examples:

Din-rāt netā rahte haiñ apnī jugāḌ meñ

un kī balā se desh chalā jaa.e bhaaḌ meñ

(shaa.ir: Hameed Khandvi. The political leaders remain ever entangled in their intrigues, indifferent even if the nation burns in the oven of misery.)

Din-ba-din ho rahī hai kabaa.D zindagī  

Ban gayī hai ab to jugaa.D zindagī

(shaa.ir: anonymous. Life has become a waste day-after-day, it has now been reduced to daily contrivance for survival.)

But I want to talk about the term in terms of improvisation in craftsmanship and engineering. And why? I came across this insight from my friend, Mr. Akhilesh Agarwal—an engineer not merely by qualification, but by sheer passion. A man so hands-on that, more often than not, he speaks and I listen. A devoted restorer of vintage cars, which he painstakingly rebuilds entirely on his own, he embodies the spirit of true engineering craftsmanship. If anyone understands artisanship, engineering, and manufacturing in their purest form, it is he. I, therefore, reproduce his words verbatim:

I have written on the subject of Indian jugaad, and it's limitations As a hard core hands on engineer, I’ve encountered many Indian craftsmen and seen terrific examples of jugaad. I've also been on the shop floor for about 30 years as a manufacturing manager, so. I would like to summarize my views.

 

Firstly, we have to recognize that the divide between the educated officers/graduates/ engineers and the uneducated craftsmen/ mechanics is much bigger in India than in advanced countries. The reasons are historical, cultural, and social. Indian jugaad is primarily done by the latter.

 

Indian craftsmen/ tradesmen/mechanics suffer from 3 major limitations- lack of education and so lack of access to exposure/ knowledge such as internet and books. The second is lack of equipment. They rarely have all the required equipment, tools and training on how to use them. But that does not mean they do not have skills, they do.

 

On the other hand Indian engineers have bookish knowledge and are not trained to applying their knowledge to actual practical problems. So the craftsmen regard them as theoreticians and with skepticism.

 

So these limitations limit the kind of work which can be done by Indians- they can do relatively simple jobs, but not complex high precision ones which require education, training and equipment.

 

To give you an example: I recently went to a vendor who has a CNC router for a job work. The vendor did not have an educated and trained programmer. The operator was not trained and skilled in operation of his machine. So we found it challenging to do even 2d work, while the machine was capable of even 3d work.

 

Modern manufacturing requires a large number of educated and skilled workers, just a few educated engineers supervising them does not suffice. High precision requires sophisticated equipment. Using them and maintaining them again requires educated and skilled workforce.

 

So while Indians can excel at an individual level by their jugaad, at an organized collective level, which is what modern manufacturing is, jugaad is not sufficient.

 

To give another example, no amount of Indian jugaad will enable India to manufacture jet engines. It requires innovation yes, but Indian jugaad can't send you to the moon.

I could not agree more—jugaad must end where real engineering begins. While the ingenuity behind our jugaad culture is admirable and even inspiring, India cannot aspire to become a global manufacturing hub for high-quality products unless this mindset is consciously reined in. In the realm of manufacturing, jugaad must be completely banished—best reserved for emergency fixes and temporary solutions in the domain of desperate repair and rehab—and never as a substitute for precision, process discipline, and engineering accuracy and excellence.

 

Let me recall an anecdote from my time helming the design and manufacture of Train 18—the Vande Bharat Express—as the GM at the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai, regarding our experience with European consultants, in this case, a well-regarded Polish firm. Working with them had its own charm. They came from a world where railway systems had long since scaled the heights of technology. Without ever being condescending, they radiated a quiet confidence—as if to say, you are near the pits today, but you have got promise, and the only way is up. Our collaboration was not a series of meetings but a flowing continuum, even as ICF's design wheels kept turning at full speed.

 

At one of our early meetings, the head of their delegation made a small speech. They, he said, were acknowledged experts in bogie design—masters of design, analysis, and validation. Their creations were already running successfully across Europe. He went on to note, with a polite touch of pride, that they combined hands-on operational experience with formidable analytical depth; that few others in the consulting world could match their pedigree. “Seventy-five percent of our team,” he added, “are qualified engineers, and ninety percent speak good English.”

 

I smiled and responded, “Come, work alongside my team. They too have built numerous designs, perhaps more than you—yes, over borrowed platforms like Schlieren and LHB—but they have imbibed and innovated with unmatched zeal. Their English may be accented and modest, but they speak one language flawlessly and with one voice: technical audacity—now fully embodied in Train 18. Come, and learn this language from them.”

 

Once, a group from the body design consultants walked into my office, visibly agitated-eyebrows raised, drawings clutched tighter than usual. One of them blurted out, half-exasperated, half-bewildered, “The culture at ICF, it seems, is to produce in abundance. You churn out more coaches in a month than a mid-sized European factory manages in a whole year! But... no two coaches are truly identical. They may look alike, but under the surface, it is all jugaad holding them together. Please, we request you—Train 18 must be a clean slate. Let your team forget jugaad, and together, we shall craft something truly world-class.”

 

Jugaad? I smiled. They had clearly done their homework on Indian engineering quirks. Yes, jugaad—something that evokes images of rope-and-stick fixes-but in our ecosystem, jugaad is more than duct tape and divine luck. It is often the handiwork of gritty, inspired technicians and their supervisors. When crisis strikes—and it frequently does—our shop floor wizards do not panic. They innovate. They conjure solutions out of chaos. The result may fall short of a textbook fix, but it gets the job done.

 

I laughed with them and reassured them earnestly: “Train 18 will be our leap into a new era—jugaad-free, clean, and proud.”

 

Easier said than done. For you see, jugaad is not just a habit—it is a resident deity in our industrial psyche. It thrives in the cracks of our processes. We neglect precision upstream, and when the assembly line starts moaning and groaning, the Jugaad God is summoned. He appears promptly, anointing our sins with temporary blessings. The job at hand is coaxed to life again, and after the obligatory genuflection, we march right back to our merry ways.

 

To capture this cyclical absurdity, I have taken the liberty of hypercorrecting a humorous creation by the poet Amir Ameer. It perfectly distills the spirit of our relationship with jugaad:

 

Ye merī aadat se merī fitrat hī ho chalā hai

Kyā khuub diyā hai mujh ko bigaa.D aise

Hazār minnat hazār minnat hazār mehnat

kucch banāne ko hī to haiñ jugaa.D aise

(From my habit, it is now my nature as it has so nicely spoilt me. A thousand entreaties, so much daring and all this labour of jugaad are employed only to build something.)

 

Though daunting at first, we took it upon ourselves to usher in this change. The mission began with sensitizing our production teams—seasoned hands who had long relied on instinct and improvisation. But more than talk, it needed structural change. We reorganized our workflow to ensure that a dedicated, handpicked team took charge of manufacturing the body shell—the sacred spring from which the rest of the train flows. For if the shell is flawed, it sets off a chain reaction, and pronto, the old Jugaad God is back on his throne.

 

Did we banish him entirely? Perhaps not. But we did push him far from the sanctum. In place of patches and fixes, we laid foundations. And in that quantum leap—from make-do to made right—we found the first heartbeat of a near world-class train. Not perfect, but proud. Not jugaad-born, but engineered in earnest.

 

Train 18/Vande Bharat was not just a train; it was our declaration that India could rise above jugaad—not by simply disowning it, but by outgrowing it in baby steps.

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