A tap begins to leak. The fault is a small shaped washer, but the washer isn’t sold separately. You must replace the entire mixer cartridge even though the cartridge still works. The discarded object is larger, costlier, and more complex than the failed part.
If this feels wasteful, your instinct is sound. It also points to a practical choice. You can treat repairability as something to examine before buying, preserve after buying, and demand from the companies and institutions that shape India’s market.
A small failure should not condemn the whole object
The useful life of a product is often determined by its least accessible component. A durable metal body offers little value if a worn seal is unavailable. A sound electronic device becomes disposable when its battery, switch, or connector cannot be replaced without damaging the enclosure. What appears to be product failure is frequently a failure of design, documentation, or parts supply.
This gives you a better definition of durability. A durable product is not merely difficult to break. It belongs to a serviceable system: it can be opened without destruction, the likely wear parts can be obtained, a technician can diagnose it, and the manufacturer has not made an inexpensive repair needlessly difficult.
Repair, reuse, repurposing, and recycling are also different stages. Repair restores the original function. Reuse places the working object with another user. Repurposing gives it a different function. Recycling recovers material after the object’s useful form has been lost. Keeping an object at the highest workable stage usually preserves more of the labour, skill, and material already invested in it.
That doesn’t mean every object must be saved. A repair that leaves unsafe wiring, a weakened pressure-bearing part, or a structurally unsound component in service is false economy. Work involving mains electricity, gas, pressurised equipment, structural loads, or damaged batteries belongs with a properly qualified technician. The useful principle is not repair at any cost. It is replacement only when repair is unavailable, unsafe, or no longer sensible.
What India’s repair traditions actually teach
Indian households have long extended the lives of cloth, tools, vessels, wood, and other useful materials. Worn textiles could be patched, embellished, or dyed before becoming quilts or rugs. Metal and wooden objects could be restored or modified instead of being abandoned at the first defect. Agricultural residues and animal dung could return as fuel or building material. The forms varied by place and circumstance, but the governing intelligence was consistent: extract the remaining usefulness before calling something waste.
Kabaad se jugaad captures part of this intelligence. Scrap is not always an endpoint; it can be an input. Yet we should not romanticise deprivation or confuse clever improvisation with good industrial design. A household workaround may rescue a product once. It should not excuse a manufacturer that withholds an ordinary spare part or seals a repairable assembly.
The stronger lesson is a sequence of care:
- Maintain before failure. Clean, protect, sharpen, lubricate, or service an object in the manner its maker specifies. Maintenance usually preserves more value than reconstruction after serious damage.
- Repair the smallest failed unit. Replace the washer rather than the cartridge, the cartridge rather than the tap, and the tap rather than the entire fitting whenever safety and actual construction permit.
- Adapt when the original use has ended. A sound material may remain useful even when the original object no longer is.
- Recover parts before raw material. A working component normally has more immediate utility than the undifferentiated material inside it.
- Recycle what cannot safely remain in use. Recycling matters, but it should not become an excuse for products designed to be discarded prematurely.
This sequence is more demanding than keeping clutter. It asks you to decide what still has a function, what needs skilled attention, and what has genuinely reached the end of its life. A broken object should become a repair candidate, a parts donor, or material for responsible recovery. It should not sit indefinitely in a cupboard merely because throwing it away feels wrong.
Within Hindu ethical thought, this habit has a deeper foundation. Dharma turns ownership into responsibility: what you possess should be used and cared for conscientiously. Karma keeps consequences attached to ordinary choices, including the resources consumed and waste created by repeated replacement. Ahimsa asks us to reduce avoidable harm. Reverence for the Earth as Bhumi Devi makes nature more than an inventory of inputs.
Moderation and contentment, also present in the ethical world of the Bhagavad Gita, do not forbid invention, trade, or material comfort. They challenge the restless assumption that newer is automatically better. Applied to possessions, the question changes from whether you can replace an object to whether replacement is actually warranted.
Use a repairability test before you spend
The best time to discover that a battery, seal, switch, or cable is unavailable is before the purchase. Product descriptions rarely volunteer the full answer, so use the following questions when comparing appliances, electronics, tools, plumbing fixtures, furniture, or other durable goods.
- What is likely to wear first? Identify the battery, seal, blade, filter, cord, hinge, switch, bearing, or other part that receives regular stress. A long warranty on the outer body says little about this component.
- Is that part sold separately? Search by the exact model number. Ask the seller to show you a part listing rather than accepting a verbal assurance that the product is serviceable.
- Can the product be opened without destroying it? Screws and accessible fasteners generally make future work clearer. Permanent adhesive, welded enclosures, and hidden clips can turn a simple fault into replacement of a large assembly.
- Are ordinary tools enough? A product need not be safe for every owner to repair, but an independent technician should not require an obscure tool merely to reach a common wear part.
- Are instructions and diagnostics available? A manual, parts diagram, error-code explanation, or service procedure can separate diagnosis from guesswork. Electronics that require specialised equipment should at least be supported by technicians who can obtain the necessary information.
- How long will parts and service remain available? Ask the maker for its stated period. An unspecified promise of support is weaker than a clear commitment you can retain with the receipt.
- Can a local repairer work on it? A theoretically replaceable component is of limited use when only a distant authorised centre can obtain it. Check local capability and likely transport before treating serviceability as settled.
You don’t need a universal score. Compare competing products by their answers, and give extra weight to the part most likely to fail. One decisive no matters more than several cosmetic yeses. If routine wear forces replacement of the whole product, you are being offered disposability in a durable-looking shell.
Price should be judged the same way. Add the purchase cost, required maintenance, likely repairs, unavailable consumables, and the consequence of a single non-replaceable part. A cheaper product can be expensive when its first ordinary failure ends its life. A higher price is not proof of repairability either; verify the construction and support rather than inferring them from branding.
After purchase, preserve the information a future repair depends on. Keep the receipt, exact model identifier, manual, parts diagram, and service records together. Photograph cable routes and component positions before disassembly. Label removed fasteners. Stop if opening the product exposes a hazard or requires a procedure you do not understand. Watching a repair video can help you recognise the job, but it does not create the training needed to perform hazardous work safely.
When a product fails, describe the fault precisely. Ask which component failed, whether that component is separately available, and whether an equivalent certified part exists. Request separate estimates for repair and assembly replacement. These questions make it harder for the smallest fault to disappear inside an unexplained recommendation to buy new.
India can turn a household instinct into a design capability
Consumers can reward serviceable products, but they cannot create spare parts, diagrams, or modular construction on their own. Repairability has to be designed into the product and supported through its working life. This is where an Indian cultural instinct can become an industrial advantage.
A serious repairable-product programme would require manufacturers to address the whole system:
- Sell common wear parts separately instead of bundling them into large, expensive assemblies.
- Use non-destructive disassembly where safety permits, with fasteners that trained repairers can access.
- Publish model-specific parts diagrams, diagnostic information, and service procedures.
- State how long essential parts, software support, and qualified servicing will be available.
- Design related models around replaceable modules where this does not compromise safety or performance.
- Train and supply independent repair businesses as well as authorised service centres.
- Make end-of-life recovery possible when another repair is no longer responsible.
Right to repair is sometimes misunderstood as an instruction for every owner to open every machine. Its practical purpose is access: owners and competent technicians need parts, information, and suitable tools so that repair remains a real option. European repairability initiatives demonstrate how public rules can push manufacturers to account for a product beyond the day of sale. India can shape its own approach around local repair capacity, affordability, safety, and material conditions.
Public procurement could help by evaluating service life, parts access, and maintainability alongside purchase price. Large buyers create a market for products that can be supported rather than repeatedly replaced. Clear repairability information would also let ordinary buyers compare products without dismantling them in a shop.
The economic opportunity extends beyond factories. Repairable goods need diagnostics, maintenance, refurbishment, parts distribution, and skilled local service. Product-as-a-service and leasing models can also give manufacturers a reason to extend working life because the provider remains responsible for the asset. Such models deserve scrutiny, however: repair duties, access costs, ownership terms, and end-of-life handling must be clear rather than hidden in a contract.
New technology can assist without replacing sound design. Connected diagnostics can identify a failing module, and 3D printing can sometimes reproduce an unavailable non-critical part. Neither solves deliberate sealing, absent documentation, or unsafe specifications. A printed cosmetic clip is one matter; an improvised component carrying electrical, structural, thermal, or pressure loads is another. Safety-critical replacements require the correct material, tolerances, and certification.
India need not compete only through a lower initial price. It can build a reputation for products whose bodies open cleanly, whose common parts remain available, and whose service networks create useful work. Long-lasting, repairable, and reusable could become a recognisable Indian design ethic, but only if it is measurable in the product rather than invoked as cultural branding.
Key takeaways
- Durability includes access to parts, instructions, tools, and competent service; a strong outer shell is not enough.
- Follow the value-preserving order: maintain, repair the smallest unit, reuse or adapt, recover working parts, and recycle what remains.
- Before buying, identify the likely wear component and verify that it can actually be obtained and replaced.
- Do not let the language of jugaad excuse products that transfer the burden of bad design to households and technicians.
- Reserve hazardous repairs for qualified professionals; repairability is access to safe repair, not pressure to attempt every job yourself.
- India can make repairability an industrial strength through modular design, parts availability, documentation, skilled service, and procurement that rewards long working life.
Start with the next object that fails. Identify the smallest failed component, ask for it separately, and record whether the manufacturer supports the repair. Then carry that answer into your next purchase. Repeated across households, that simple refusal to discard a working whole for one unavailable part can move repair from a memory of Indian life to a demand placed on Indian design.
References
- DharmaRenaissance Blog — The Indian Way : Long-lasting, repairable and reusable products?
