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Cover Story |
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| Title |
Say no to Jugaad! |
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| Abstract |
Nischint was a maverick boy, always involved in doing something new. But, he often did not persist with an idea too long. He would be satisfied with a sub-optimal solution too soon and then move to another idea. His teacher and also the hostel warden, were not very happy with this habit of his. His teacher realised that if Nischint continued with this jugaad mentality of getting around the problem rather getting over them, he will never be able to make a breakthrough.
Nischint once decided to make a drone for flying over crops to detect the pest or disease damage at an early stage for effective and sustainable control. Every day, he tried to assemble a solution. He would try to make it work somehow, even if not in a very durable or consistent way. But when he got up in the morning, he found something had gone wrong with the whole assembly. It didn't work anymore. Day after day, he would try to assemble something but the same story would be repeated the next day. Fortunately he did not give up!
After weeks of struggle, with different designs and concepts, he found his model worked very well. When he showed it to his teacher, the teacher smiled. He was happy that Nischint had, for a change, not insisted on going ahead with a half-baked or suboptimal solution.
The teacher did not tell him that he deliberately used to damage his model after Nischint went to bed because the design approach was defective. The makeshift solution is not what he wanted. He wanted Nischint to learn the art of systematic design by eliminating the suboptimal options one by one. Nischint got over his habit being satisfied with jugaad solutions. After a few years, he got an award from the President of India for his systematic and yet frugal design of the drone. Thousands of farmers benefitted from his innovation as it reduced the need for unnecessary chemicals by taking preventive steps for pest control. |
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee 25(3) 2, 2014 |
