Vyjayanthi Rao recoil. Rao is an anthropology professor at The New School for Social
Research and codirector of Partners for
Urban Knowledge, Action and Research
(PUKAR), a Mumbai nonprofit and conceptual laboratory for ideas about global-ization and urbanization. “What we are
trying to grapple with is the notion of the
informal,” she said. “It is extremely misleading. One should call it the ‘actually
existing urbanism’ of India, because the
formal doesn’t really exist.” Everything,
she was basically saying, is jugaad.
Alexander Keefe, an American journal-
ist who lives on and o= in India and has
a blog called “Jugaad,” agrees. He sees
Indians negotiating every relationship
they have: with their resources, with each
other, with the state. He expanded on the
word for me: “It’s often used with the verb
karna, to make. Like, make an arrange-
ment, make a quick fix.” It’s all temporary,
and it’s all makeshift. He paused, then
stressed, “What it does not mean is to
come up with a brilliant solution to India’s
energy problems.”
His point is that Indians make do
because they have to make do. If social and
economic systems are functioning, you
don’t need jugaad, at least not everywhere,
all the time. So the question is, do you cel-
ebrate the improvisational world? “Yes,
places like Dharavi are economically clever,”
Keefe said, “but there’s no equity, no envi-
ronmental or labor protections. It’s not
necessarily a world we want to strive for.”
Even Agrawal admits that there is a
“boutique” element to much of the show.
He hangs his head in disappointment,
wishing that the government would make
a bigger commitment. “I visited every proj-
ect in this exhibition, but many of these
e=orts are stifled by corruption and iner-
tia.” The Indian government “should be
using democracy in a more powerful way,”
he said ruefully. Likewise, it remains to be
seen whether India’s fast-rising middle
class is even considering these issues in
its rush into a globalized world economy
and culture.
The Soleckshaw, a solar-powered, motor-assisted cycle
rickshaw, is designed by the central Mechanical Engineering
Research Institute in Durgapur, West bengal.
wanted to see fewer Western names affiliated with the projects in Jugaad Urbanism. And it was disappointing to learn that
there was still no certain plan to have the
exhibit shown in India. This is not for lack
of desire on the part of the organizers,
but simply a question of funding. Which
brings us right back to the root of the problem: resources. Who has them? Where are
they allocated? What is prioritized? If there
is not enough interest on the part of India,
in all its vastness, to even support the dissemination of these creative responses to
the fundamental issue of lack, then how
will these ideas—spinning wheels that
make electricity and thread! smokeless
wood stoves!—ever gain the widespread
traction they need in order to make a substantive change?
The e=orts of the collectives and designers and artists and utopians at work
in the Jugaad Urbanism exhibition might
not yet be transforming the fundamentally
chaotic structure of India, but they are
undoubtedly improving a vast number of
individual lives. And who knows where
that grassroots work may lead? Cairo reminds us that sometimes, when we least
expect it, something fundamental shifts
and ideas that have lurked below the radar
of public life swell up into something unexpected yet long awaited. There is always
a fringe, an underground, a resistance
made up of Margaret Mead’s coven of the
committed. What fortuitous component
makes these human longings for equality, justice, and a voice take root and turn
into a movement—even a revolution?
Answers are elusive, but hope lies in the
fact that it happens. Something rises from
the ranks, emerging from the ground like
cicadas after a long sleep. Another word:
demos, of the people.
Meera Subramanian is a U.S.-based journalist who writes about culture, conservation,
and the environment for newspapers and
magazines around the world.
