From The Economist, an inspiring story of inspiration and perspiration.
SANTOSH OSTWAL, husband and father of two, lost his apartment in 2001 after quitting his job in Pune to solve an engineering problem he’d been thinking about for twenty years. Today his solution – a mobile-phone adaptation that triggers irrigation pumps remotely – is saving water in India and helping more than 10,000 farmers avoid several taxing, dangerous long walks a day.
[Mrs Ostwal employed] the Indian concept of jugaad, an inspired kind of duct-taped ingenuity that employs only the tools at hand.
In 1981 Mr Ostwal, then an adolescent, visited his family’s village near Pune during his summer vacation. Every midnight, his 82-year-old grandfather (who had lost a leg to gangrene and walked with a stick) would walk a mile to switch on the water-pump to ensure that his oranges were ready to ship the next morning. Since the water and electric supply were erratic (and allocated to the industrial belt during the daytime), he would make up to ten such trips a night. Mr Ostwal felt a deep desire to help his grandfather, but couldn’t do anything about it as a student.
Seven years later, after completing his engineering degree, he visited the village again. The problem had not gone away. He suggested to the farmers that a remotely controlled switch might make their lives easier, and was surprised to hear their reactions.
'I will tell you one wonderful thing. Farmers were not accepting this as a problem of theirs. They would tell me that this is routine work for us and our sons. Why do you worry so much? Walking a couple of miles daily is no big deal. What other work do we and our sons have? Let them work hard and appreciate the food that they get at the end of each day!'
He was aghast with the explanation but let it pass, since he had a far more measurable problem to deal with. He did a back-of-the-envelope calculation.
'There are 3.1 million official connections of water pump sets in Maharashtra alone. The all-India figure is more than 1 billion. While farmers didn’t mind too much with the drill of walking up to the farm to switch on their motor pump sets and then head back home, I found that there was a strong resistance to walk back all the way to the farm to switch off their pump sets. A lot of water and electricity would be wasted. A 5 HP motor which wastes 4 to 5 hours of water daily not only consumes upto 1000 litres per day, but also results in soil erosion which decreases the yield… And then in that 15 day period for me, I decided, ‘Yes. This is my career and I am going to make my career in irrigation automation. That’s all.’ This was in 1991.'
He started with a $2 alarm clock.
OS will rely upon you to read the story from there.
Mr. (and Mrs.) Ostwal not only overcame an engineering quandry, but a cultural one as well. They never gave up, and they did it for love of family and country. He still hasn't made any big bucks off it, but he will, or he will from the next brilliant solution. He by-golly deserves to, and to not be taxed into extinction for his pains!!
If OS may be now permitted to translate into his local dialect:
Ya'll, we need to be importing some of that jugaad from India, instead of our shirts and pants. Any wonder why our companies want to hire those folks over there, ya'll? We used to do this sort of stuff all the time! Now we act like we can't get anything done without the permission of ten committees and an Act of Congress!
Hell's-bells, ya'll, the spot I'm sitting in was howling wilderness 200 years ago, barely settled 100 years ago, and wasn't reached by electricity or phone until well into the 20th century! And I'm sitting here running my businesses off a laptop while I drink my coffee!
Send the Mexicans home, ya'll. Let's go to India and recruit us some engineers to remind us how to do that jugaad thang!
Whoooweeee! Give that couple The Green Shoots Award!
No comments:
Post a Comment