In India, Jugaad is the virtue of the “hack” — bypassing rigid rules to find a clever, often fragile, solution. In defence, this manifests as “Frankenstein” engineering: forcing American software into British hulls with Australian sensors. Effective for keeping a 1980s taxi running in Mumbai, but disastrous for building a high-trust, functional fleet.

This stems from a colonial-era failure where the British offered a bounty for dead cobras. Enterprising locals began breeding cobras to claim the reward. In Canberra, this is “Sovereign Industry Capability”: subsidise contractors to solve a “capability gap” and they will simply find more gaps to prolong the funding — resulting in fewer ships at higher costs.

Izzat is social standing derived from being “above” the rules. In procurement it explains why we cancel perfectly good contracts to chase nuclear-powered dreams. Following a boring, logical plan is “low Izzat.” Making a Captain’s Call that shocks the world — even if it leaves the country without a submarine for 20 years — is “high Izzat.”