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Each month we are spotlighting recently published research from one of the Society’s leading international journals: Area, The Geographical Journal, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and Geo: Geography and Environment. This piece, from Geo: Geography and Environment, explores infrastructure as both a material and social concept.

Versatility and improvisation: the case of solar lamps

Infrastructure is much more than the material structures of railway tracks, sewerage pipes and electricity cables. It is also a term that captures the interactions between these objects and society, as people negotiate and improvise infrastructure to best suit their needs.

Over the past decade, Dr Ankit Kumar has researched these interactions, focusing on people’s improvisation of infrastructure in India. His work explores solar lamps, small devices that capture the sun’s energy to provide electricity in rural homes.

During his fieldwork, Ankit repeatedly observed how people harness the versatility of these lamps to use them for a range of purposes, from sewing lamps and bicycle headlights to phone chargers. Many companies selling these lamps are mindful of a need for versatility in their products and design them to promote these purposes.

To capture these improvisational acts, Ankit’s new paper proposes the idea of jugaad infrastructure. In northern India, jugaad is an everyday word used in a wide range of situations. It describes a capacity for improvisation.

Many geographers and anthropologists understand infrastructure as a coming together of material arrangements with social arrangements. That's why I mentioned this idea of jugaad, because it embodies the idea of bringing together material and social arrangements to improvise so that outcomes are beneficial to you.Dr Kumar

Jugaad infrastructure from India to the UK

Ankit’s paper investigates the design, uses and repair of solar lamps in India. Designs of solar lamps impact their versatility, with different designs adopting jugaad to varying degrees. Certain solar lamps are provided with stands, which people repurpose so that the lamp can be used in multiple ways. For example, in regions where bicycles are a central form of transport, people place these stands around their necks to create bicycle headlights. Other solar lamps, designed without these stands, are not so versatile. Not all infrastructure enables jugaad.

The design of solar lamps is not only central to enabling versatile uses, but also versatile repair. While certain lamps are designed to be repaired or replaced only by expert, authorised centres, others can be opened and maintained by users. Solar lamps demonstrate how infrastructure can either enable or block acts of jugaad which empower people to adjust objects to better fit their daily lives.

Infrastructure of solar lamps in India.
© Ankit Kumar

Both the case of solar lamps and the idea of jugaad infrastructure emerge from the Global South. Yet, Ankit believes that jugaad is relevant in the Global North, where austerity measures are reviving ‘make do and mend’ attitudes. In the UK, this attitude has been seen to emerge as people adjust to the cost-of-living crisis or become more mindful of the environmental impacts of conspicuous consumption.

For example, shops have reported increasing sales of dressmaking and darning materials as people seek to spend less through mending their clothes. The existence of this attitude demonstrates the relevance of jugaad across the globe.

If you look around yourself [in the UK], you will see people using improvisational practices to create situations that might benefit them. The word jugaad might not be used, but those practices may exist. This idea of infrastructure can help us capture and understand those practices and be more mindful of what they mean.Dr Kumar

Jugaad infrastructure and empowerment?

If jugaad infrastructure is likely to exist across the globe, what does this mean for people’s daily lives? Ankit’s exploration of solar lamps demonstrates how jugaad infrastructure can empower people, enabling them to improvise infrastructure to better suit their lives, rather than buying more products.

Alongside this hopeful story of empowerment, Ankit shares a note of caution. If the onus is placed entirely on the individual to repurpose and repair infrastructure, what is the role of the state? Is the state no longer responsible for maintaining, providing, and developing infrastructure?

There is a risk that [jugaad] lets off the state from its own responsibility of providing infrastructure services. It can say that ‘Okay, we are creating conditions to empower people to do things themselves’. But then what is the responsibility of the state?Dr Kumar

Geographers can help us to answer these important questions by appreciating the significance of both big and small infrastructures. From huge mega-dams to small solar lamps, geographers can deepen our understandings of the implications of jugaad infrastructure in a range of contexts across the globe.

Next steps

Research of jugaad infrastructure is only just beginning. As well as his recently published paper, Ankit is continuing his research in this field. One project he is currently planning explores how the maintenance of infrastructure is perceived in today’s world as well as its environmental implications.

You can read the paper explored in this blog and learn more about jugaad infrastructure.

This research spotlight article was written by Safia Bailey (Cardiff University).

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