Recipe: Take one discarded diesel pump. Add four parts of thrown-away tractor, two parts of a jeep that died in the last world war and mix with liberal helpings of planks from a bullock cart. Bamboo poles, some string and a large canvas cloth add a special flavour. Then plonk on the wheels. Never mind if they’re of slightly different sizes, any four should do nicely. Other accessories, available freely, can be picked up at will. Now jugaad or fit or stick the whole thing into shape. Any shape.

You’re ready to run. In Bhind-Morena (Madhya Pradesh). In Bundelkhand. In parts of Rajasthan, too, but not Haryana.

It’s a monument to Indian technological genius. You wouldn’t believe they could make this run, but it does. I’ve used a jugaad and it works for me. As it does for many, many other Indians. It is a miracle of waste recycling. The ‘diesel engine’ once powered an irrigation pump. The costs of putting it together are low, just a few thousand rupees. Sometimes as low as 20,000. I’ve heard claims of even lower costs. It’s slow, but it gets around. Farmers bring their produce to the market in it. It carts their supplies home, too. People in outlying villages use it to reach the nearest town. School children use it as a bus. For people in Morena (where this picture was shot) it’s a form of public transport. The wheels on this one seem to have come from the waste dump of an air force base.

