Engineering in India

I wrote this article to be published in RENESA. Some how to the guy who was to select this said it was a "CRIBATHON". This can be expected in India. So finally  i am posting it on my blog.

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Consider these facts

India produces the largest number of engineers in the world.

 and

India is the largest arms importer.

Whom would you blame for this? The government, the Institutes or engineers like you and me or our inefficient growing population?

Now have a look at another piece of information which I have taken from my elective book of Personnel Management.

“According to Asia-Pacific head of Kelly Services, the world’s fourth largest recruitment company, people efficiency in India in 2007 was barely 50-60% against a global average of 80-90%. Only one fifth of 2 million graduates churned out by Indian universities every year are employable. Of these only 30% of IT graduates, 25% of engineering graduates, 15% finance and accounting professionals and 10% of other professionals are suitable to be employed in multinational companies. This they say is knowledge and skill set gaps.”

Some how all this points to our educational system and the amount of instability that we face. In this country with 1.4 billion population we desire for a well settled job as quickly as possible and that inhibits many talented people from going into research. But the root of the problem is much as a result of our past. Even after having high educational standards prior to the British advent we raced for western education. Western education became important as it provided good job and a secure future in those vulnerable times. What is insightful is that it was not aimed at producing great innovators or thinkers but clerks who could faithfully reproduce without questioning and the education system was designed and oriented keeping this in mind by the Britishers. This is possibly one of the reasons why we haven’t seen adequate number of Nobel laureates from our country that constitutes one fifth of the world’s population. We do not have a single institute that has a policy on plagiarism in India. Research may be a big word but practically it means copying from many resources.

Engineering designs are not prepared in India. For example Maruti Suzuki cars are not designed in India. They are designed in Japan and finally the design is sent to India for mass production. That’s the same that happens with the reactors that are made in L&T plant in Hazira for nuclear reactors in America. We just make lakhs and lakhs of copies of it and export it and say that are economy is growing  at 10% p.a.

It is understandable that labour has to be cheap but that should not label as just manufacturers. We should as engineers not let our country down. Our farmers helped attain self-reliance for India in terms of grain production. It’s time that we take responsibility and make our country self-reliant in its efforts towards having a secure place to live and if possible attain the status of being a superpower.