Inventors by default

Usually, when a group of Indians get together to share a meal, India bashing is one of our favourite pastimes. You will find that happening in coffee houses across the length and breadth of the country.

People just sip tea or coffee and sit for a couple of hours, giving vent to their angst.

Traffic, politics, poverty, corruption, farmer suicides, crime... every topic under the sun is raked up, the country maligned and there is a general lament about how the country is going to the dogs, a few shrugging of shoulders, shaking of heads and after that people say their goodbyes and get on with the business of living their lives. This is an everyday practice in most cities.

But the tables turn when you are away from your country and all that bitterness changes to nostalgia and people turn India bashing into India glorifying.

That is the kind of vibrant experience I had over the weekend when I had the occasion to meet up with a handful of very lively and sincere people from the coveted Indian Administrative Services (IAS) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) the absolute crème de la crème of the intellectual Diaspora in our country.

The party was swinging from the word go as the entire group got along very well. There was a shared sense of camaraderie as some very intelligent discussion on literature, classics, Indian talent pool etc began.

Like true Indians, we were critical and merciless about certain trends in politics and corruption but we all agreed that most Indians were very inventive and resourceful and tried to make the most of the situation they were in.

The gentleman from the Indian Administrative Services narrated an anecdote from his days in Agra. He told us how the illiterate farmers had managed to alter their bullock carts using a simple water pump.

The diesel-run water pump used in to water the fields is now being crudely fitted onto bullock carts that are powered by this pump and easily travel about 15 km per hour!

Great achievement

That is a great achievement for a farmer whose traditional bullock-run cart does not go beyond 3 or 4 km per hour!

So now on Agra-Jaipur highway it is not common to see a quirky water pump generated cart loaded with all and sundry people doing a fairly decent speed. Instead of a steering wheel, the farmer has a long pole like contraption that he steers horizontally!

It might be a peculiar sight, but given the conditions and the economics, it's more eco-friendly than an auto rickshaw and what's more it is an innovative adaptation that originated purely on need! And do you know what it is called? It has been aptly titled - Jugad.

The term literally translated means being resourceful. That is what these inspired innovators are!

Elsewhere in the world, such a need-based contraption would have earned some sort of an award for its low fuel consumption and better performance and would be on its way to being patented.

But in India, as numerous Jugads run on the roads transporting several thousand villagers to and from their farms, nobody cares a damn, except the poor farmer.

So many years after independence, we may not exactly have created the world's fastest automobile, but our farmers have managed to invent a motorised bullock cart at least!