I read somewhere that India had over three thousand engineering colleges - three times that of the United States. There are over 1.5 million men and women graduating, every year, from these institutes! These are astounding statistics.
But what do these engineering graduates come out and do?
Here is a somewhat sobering fact based on a recent admission by the Indian HRD ministry. It said that only 7-8% of the Indian engineers graduating every year are employable.
Assuming that the number is legit, it doesn't entirely surprise me. If you have a system that churns out engineers predominantly on mechanical, electrical, and civil disciplines and then you push them into coding and testing on Java, of course, they will be unemployable. (Wait a minute! Did I just sound like RaGa there, talking about the "system" and all?).
So, Mr. HRD Minister or whoever it is that cited the statistic; rather than release press statements, how about you generate jobs to make the other 92% employable? What? Oh, that is not your department? OK.
Anyways, why do we have so many engineering colleges in India?
The first REC's were instituted in the 1950's, through the Indian government's Soviet-style five-year plan, close on the heels of the IIT's. It was to realize Nehru's grand vision of an Industrial India, manned (yeah, and womaned) by home-grown engineers. The REC's were expected to fill an anticipated shortfall of about two thousand engineers.
Even when we had graduated from college back in the 90's, India was still producing less than two hundred thousand engineers. I am inclined to believe that it must be something about people like me graduating that made a million more, take this up as a career option!
"I don't know about you but I create such revolutions!" my friend, Seshu, had once joked, in another context.
A more legitimate reason, for the sudden spurt in numbers, had to be the liberalization policy of the 90's, architected by the "silent jodi", PV Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh.
This led to India breaking out of the "Hindu rate of growth", into something that was more..."Christian"! Lays came in sixteen flavors, pizzas were introduced with embedded paneer, there were suddenly six hundred TV channels with saas-bahu mega serials,...and other national necessities were fulfilled just like that. OK, I am being unbelievably truculent here. I know it has brought in more useful things - like, Foster's beer and Fashion TV.
Oh, it also led to the advent of that much-despised species - the call center specialists and software engineers; or as Indians (the jealous ones) call them, the tech coolies.
Engineering became a misnomer and a minimum barrier for entry for college education, especially to those that sought a serious job after graduation, leading to the exponential growth of engineering colleges.
Whether it was to pour hot metal into a ladle, sell a cake of soap, make a bhel puri, or reverentially turn on an IBM mainframe computer, engineering became the passageway to future prosperity. (Now, there are exceptions. If you aspired to inherit your dad's business and run it to the ground, be a hamming actor, head the Khap panchayat, or pursue seditious activities, you could always go to JNU!).
So, that explains the supply of 1.5 million - led by chips, call centers, and corrupt politicians (my boss used to say, "there has to be a 'three C's' for everything").
Coming back to the question, do we need these many engineers? Why should students learn "Fluid Mechanics" and "Applied Geology" to eventually code in Java or test programs written by our grandfathers in COBOL? Should we orient their education more towards what they are going to be doing in the future, thereby making them more "employable"?
Someone told me that would be missing the point. The whole idea of engineering education was to teach us logic, problem solving, working as a team, and good things like that, the person said. This would have been such a brilliant explanation, if only it had been true. I don't remember a single course in college, where we were taught to do things like that (If they had, "Three Idiots" wouldn't have been such a big hit, you know),
So, that is the question our policy-makers and people at HRD need to solve for the nation. Not issue press statements.
Let me end this essay with another passionate subject among faculty, parents, and grandmothers; which is the ratings of colleges.
My grandma, for a sub-matriculate, had possessed sagacious knowledge of Indian and US universities, armed with which, she provided critical input for a million matches, till her last breath.
"That fellow has a 'saada' engineering degree. Look at him walk away with that beautiful girl...and here you are plucking flowers!" she said, exhorting her daughters to be more competitive in the marriage market.
Recently, someone sent a congratulatory note, saying we have been rated as the twelfth in the nation, by UGC. I told my juniors, "hang your heads in shame...we were already 'top 10' twenty five years ago". Kids these days...
So do you think we have too many engineering colleges in India? What is the alternative? Are fresh engineers of today ready to face the real world?
(I will feed all your answers back to the HRD ministry and get you coupons for engineering colleges...I promise).
Friends, if you are trying to comment on the blog, copy (CTRL+C, I meant) your comments before publishing / logging in...just in case the comments get lost out. Anonymous commenting is an option now, but it is still not working on certain devices. Sorry!
Interested in reading my other blogs?
How about my ode to old Hindi film music? Which is here --> THE GOLDEN AGE OF HINDI FILM MUSIC.
The first episode is HERE.
Or my eulogy to one of the greatest playback singers of India? SP BALASUBRAHMANYAM.
