Tradition of sorts in India, engineering has always attracted a large number of aspirants. And while it all began with civil engineering, it later branched out into mechanical and electrical engineering. These three continue to be the ‘mother’ engineering departments. All others, according to M Balakrishnan, dean, postgraduate studies and research. IIT-Delhi, are either derivatives of these disciplines as applied to specific industry domains or derivatives by amalgam with basic science discipline. What started off as a set of skills with well-defined norms, aesthetics, values and beliefs, has now graduated to application of scientific principles focused on certain well defined objectives. The beliefs, in engineering as a mean to improve quality of life, provide security and comfort, protect health and maximize human potential is quite contemporary, research and development, IIT-Kanpur. In this sense, engineering usually seen as an activity, is decentralized and has become ‘all-pervasive’ in society.
Opportunities in engineering available in the last two decades, with computer science and information technology making way into the market, engineering graduates have been finding high paying job more attractive. But with business process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) operation now spilling over in to other disciplines as well, things are looking different. A number of companies have started shifting their R&D base, especially at the lower end of the R&D chain, to India. The reason for this shift is exactly same as the shift of IT service, it is manpower-intensive and Indian has trained English-speaking postgraduates and PhDs. This has suddenly opened up career opportunities for postgraduates as well as doctoral candidates as they no longer have to confine themselves to academics, which continues to be relatively a low-paying profession. However, points out that the future of engineering in India is not very bright.
India is an economically backward country with outstanding technological expertise. But since no effort is being made to develop in house technology, application in real-life production research and development is falling short. Apart from the brain-drain to the US almost all the good students are diverted to low-level industrial jobs offering fat pay packages. Unless drastic economic changes are introduced technology development and engineering in India will suffer. On an optimistic note though, India and South-East Asia have the advantage for high intellectual capability of a large population. The future looks very bright both in manufacturing as well as the service sector industry. Indian engineers have always been on global demand. But cashing in on the opportunity calls for proper planning and quality consciousness at every level, including education.