This research challenges industrial design’s colonial-capitalist foundations through “Critical Jugaad”—a decolonial framework rooted in informal, grassroots making practices. It centers how marginalized communities transform waste, trauma, and ancestral knowledge into tools for autonomy and liberation. Through ethnographic engagement, community-based design, and critical exhibition curation, the project documents subversive acts of making—offering alternatives to Western design elitism and novelty obsession. Legacy is reframed not as static heritage but as embodied resistance. This work expands the boundaries of design by valuing epistemic justice, collective creativity, and the radical potential of design as a liberatory cultural practice.