Indians are natural leaders in innovation, imbued as they are with the ‘jugaad’ system of developing makeshift but workable solutions from limited resources
By Shashi Tharoor | Special to Gulf News- Published: July 16, 2012
India’s sliding economy has inspired gloom and doom far and wide, but increasingly bearish sentiment is misplaced. India still offers hope, but, to understand why, you have to leave macroeconomic indicators aside and go micro. To take one example: Google the phrase “frugal innovation,” and the first 20 search results all relate to India.
Indian companies have long recognised the opportunities in
meeting previously overlooked demand at the “bottom of the pyramid.” Shampoo
sachets originated in India more than two decades ago, creating a market for a
product that the poor had never before been able to afford. Indians without the
space or money to buy a whole bottle of shampoo for Rs100 (Dh6.66) could spend
five for a sachet that they would use once or twice.
But India’s leadership in “frugal innovation” goes beyond
downsizing: It involves starting with the needs of poor consumers — itself a
novel term (who knew the poor could be consumers?) — and working backwards.
Instead of complicating or refining their products, Indian innovators strip
them down to their bare essentials, making them affordable, accessible, durable
and effective.
Indians are natural leaders in frugal innovation, imbued as
they are with the ‘jugaad’ system of developing makeshift but workable
solutions from limited resources. ‘Jugaad’ essentially conveys a way of life, a
world view that embodies the quality of making do with what you have to meet
your needs.
But ‘jugaad’ is not about pirating products or making cheap
imitations of global brands. It is about innovation — finding inexpensive
solutions, often improvised on the fly, within the constraints of a
resource-starved developing country full of poor people. An Indian villager
constructs a makeshift vehicle to transport his livestock and goods by rigging
a wooden cart with an irrigation hand pump that serves as an engine. That’s
‘jugaad’.
Common machines and household objects are reincarnated in
ways that their original manufacturers never intended. Everything is reusable
or reimaginable. If you cannot afford your mobile phone bills, you invent the
concept of the “missed call” — a brief ring that is not answered, but that
signals your need to speak to the recipient.
Indian ingenuity has produced a startling number of
world-beating innovations, none more impressive than the Tata Nano, which, at
$2,000 (Dh7,356), costs roughly the same as a high-end DVD player in a western
luxury car. Of course, there’s no DVD player in the Nano (and no radio, either,
in the basic model); but its innovations (which have garnered 34 patents) are
not merely the result of doing away with frills (including power brakes, air
conditioning and side-view mirrors). Reducing the use of steel by inventing an
aluminium engine; increasing space by moving the wheels to the edge of the
chassis and relying on a modular design that enables the car to be assembled
from kits proved conclusively that you could do more with less.
Then there’s the GE MAC 400, a hand-held electrocardiogram
(ECG) device that costs $800 (the cheapest alternative costs more than $2,000),
and the Tata Swachh, a $24 water purifier (ten times cheaper than its nearest
competitor). The GE MAC 400 uses just four buttons, rather than the usual
dozen, and a tiny portable printer, making it small enough to fit into a
satchel and even run on batteries; it has reduced the cost of an ECG to just $1
per patient. The Swachh uses rice husks (one of India’s most common waste
products) to purify water. Given that some five million Indians die of
cardiovascular diseases every year, more than a quarter of them under 65, and
that about two million die from drinking contaminated water, the value of these
innovations is apparent.
Many other examples of frugal innovation are already in the
market, including a low-cost fuel-efficient mini-truck, an inexpensive
mini-tractor being sold profitably in the US, a battery-powered refrigerator, a
$100 electricity inverter and a $12 solar lamp.
Moreover, medical innovations are widespread. An Indian
company has invented a cheaper Hepatitis B vaccine, bringing down the price
from $15 per injection to less than $0.10. Insulin’s price has fallen by 40 per
cent, thanks to India’s leading biotech firm. A Bangalore company’s diagnostic
tool to test for tuberculosis and infectious diseases costs $200, compared to
$10,000 for comparable equipment in the West.
Late last year, India’s government unveiled a hand-held
computer that costs only Rs2,250 (about $40). Aakash has a resistive seven-inch
touch screen, like Apple’s iPad. It comes in a rugged plastic casing, has two
gigabytes of flash memory, two USB ports, headphone and video output jacks and
Wi-Fi capability.
Aakash uses the Android 2.2 operating system and consumes a
meagre two watts of power, which is supplied by an internal lithium-ion battery
that can be charged using a solar-powered charger. And the government will
subsidise 50 per cent of the cost to students, so a young Indian just has to
pay $20 to have his own tablet. The initial reviews are good.
Even the financial sector has seen innovation. Just three
years ago, there were only 15 million bank accounts in a country of 1.2 billion
people. Indians concluded that if people won’t come to the banks, the banks
should go to the people. The result has been the creation of brigades of
travelling tellers with hand-held devices, who have converted the living rooms
of village homes into makeshift branches, taking deposits as low as a dollar.
More than 50 million new bank accounts have been established, bringing India’s
rural poor into the modern financial system.
Frugal innovation pervades the Indian economy. It is one of
the reasons why there is more dynamism in the Indian economy than those who
look only at the macroeconomic data believe. Sometimes it is important to stop
looking at the forest and focus on the trees.
Project Syndicate
Shashi Tharoor, a former Indian minister of state for external affairs and former UN under-secretary general, is a member of India’s parliament and the author of a dozen books, including India from Midnight to the Millennium and Nehru: the Invention of India.
My comments as follows:
An eye opener to all those who go for highly priced technological gadgets and services, with several options one never uses. Hope this article by Mr. Tharoor serves as a catalyst to promote these micro economic items which normally serves all the required purpose of such knowhow. At times, they even come out with better versions at a limited budget as detailed extensively by him. The basic thought behind these innovation and invention takes us back to our ancestors way of frugal approach and burning their fingers only for what is necessary in their day to day life and future, thus saving for a better tomorrow. As we see this thought process is ridiculed by the new generation who run after gadgets and their upgrades after a very limited usage and with no value for money.
Ramesh Menon, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
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