THE ENGINEER'S IDENTITY CRISIS

The 18th and the 19th centuries can be identified as the English era and the early 20th century as the German era and the late 20th century as we all know belonged to the USA. And now we are at the advent of the Indian era. Today India has become a prominent player in the world economy and the world is sitting up and taking notice. We as Indians have earned a respectable position in the world, our companies are competing globally and many have become MNCs. India has produced many globally respected leaders like L.N.MITTAL, N.R.NARAYANAMURTHY, AZIM PREMJI and many more. Indian shores are awash with jobs, while the western world accuses us of taking away their jobs. Though this is mainly because of the availability of cheap skilled labor, there are other reasons that can be attributed to these favorable winds. For one- post-independence India, though slowly, got more and more literate and was well equipped to take full advantage of the advent of the IT/BPO revolution. India had missed the industrial revolution but dint miss the computer revolution as a result today we have built companies like Infosys, Wipro and TCS which are today capable of competing with the bigies like IBM, Accenture etc. Having said that, i now want to bring to your kind attention the often underplayed potentials of the other industry sectors. One should not forget that we also have companies like TATA,BIRLA, L&T, RELIANCE etc. which have stood the test of time and made progress for decades. IT alone cannot pillar the entire economy of this huge nation, if these companies can match the growth rate that the IT companies have achieved, our economic position can only be further strengthened. God forbid, but if some day the tables turn and we lose the advantage that the IT sector has today, we should have something to fall back upon. The IT and the BPO industry today employs thousands of employees helping the vast pool of the unemployed earn a living which in turn promoted consumerism in india, consequently uplifting the overall economy of the country. It would be wrong to give all the credit to these sectors but nonetheless their contribution is greater and today India is looked at as more of a services destination than anything else.
Another important reason is the availability of a vast talent pool, for example Bangalore boasts of having the largest number of engineering colleges in the world. India being a developing and a poor country, this huge talent pool was available at a low costs. And in India the demand for jobs was always higher than the supply, consequently the educated almost had no choice but to take up these jobs in order to earn bread. Hence we saw an exodus of engineers from all branches into the IT/BPO sector in search of lucrative careers caring little for the field of their expertise. For example I have met architects from IIT working as software engineers in a leading IT firm on a banking software. I call it betrayal. They have deprived this country of potential renowned architects, considering the opportunities and the facilities they had as IITians. This is more prevalent outside the IITs. The IT sector has recruited about 700000 engineers so far and the figure is expected to reach 1.5 million in another 5 years. If this is the rate at which the engineers are getting absorbed in this sector, one can imagine how much of a loss the other sectors are suffering in terms of intellectual capital.
Now let us delve into the ramifications of this phenomenon.
Indian engineers have ended up becoming work horses and not creators or inventors or designers. We have all become easily replaceable clones. As a result we do not have Einsteins , Edisons, Newtons coming out of India. We do not have many patents or inventions from our country. There can be multiple reasons to this as well- for one, a majority of the population is still poor and the standard of living is still very low and therefore the priority is to earn a living, support self and kin and not to indulge in often expensive higher education (post graduation, research etc) or take up initiatives to actually create and invent. Engineers from all fields of study are aborting the specialization they acquired over 4 years. This will stymie the growth and development of the other industry sectors as a result we may never be able to over take china in the manufacturing sector or other countries in other sectors.
It is very imperative that we start thinking along the lines of the overall development of ‘corporate India’ and not just IT. One of the ways that this can be done is that the larger organizations (both private and public) encourage research and development in their respective fields of operation and make sure that substantial technological breakthroughs happen on Indian soil which may lead to potential revolutions in their respective fields. It is also important for them to take necessary measures to attract and retain talent and not lose them to the IT sector. Also I urge the student community to indulge in esoteric issues of long term enlightenment and not just mere money making ones. I also want to remind them that the very narayana murthys we admire today are the ones who chose to take the less trodden path and stayed loyal to their fields of expertise. I urge them to aim higher and try to immortalize their names in their respective fields of study as it is the only way they can truly honor the subject they chose to study. let us put in combined and concentrated efforts towards a holistic development of the indian industries and not just the IT industry. It is time we uphold the "diversity" we have always been associated with.

- sampreet