Engineering India’s Engineers
Engineering
India’s Engineers
Absorbed in unrivalled decadence and
internecine warfare, medieval Indian elites slept through the Newtonian dawn of
science. Bypassed by the industrial revolution, India became easy prey for western
colonial masters. It soon lost the entirety of its traditional industry, in
return gaining the dubious title of the crown jewel of British Empire. Founders of the modern Indian republic
therefore, saw technological pursuit as an essential tool preserving
independence and asserting self-respect. This resulted in an early emphasis on
establishing federal technical universities such as the Indian Institutes of
Technology (modeled after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), vast
network of scientific research and nuclear laboratories, and a state led
industrial development model based on mathematically conceived Soviet style five-year
plans. The stage was all set for India to “step out from the old to the new,” led
by the ‘bridge builders’ and ‘commanding-height’ technocrats.
Instead, India slid into a prolonged period of
anemic growth rates lasting decades, finally culminating in a financial
catastrophe soon after the end of cold war. Much more was shattered than
financial pride. The great technological salvation did not come to fruition. Public
sector engineering and production firms produced shoddy goods no one wanted to
buy. Critical weapons were hurriedly imported. Infrastructure was medieval and most
cities were paralyzed by waves of rural migration. More tellingly, in the midst
of this faltering economic climate, the ‘bridge builders’ and technocrats were
fleeing to western countries at the first opportunity.
India today is far cry from that disastrous
era. Aided by steady reforms in the wake
of the near-death experience of early 90s, propelled by advancements in
telecommunications and cheered by globalization, India seems to have found its
footing. Today, several startups, often younger than a decade are household
brands attracting funds from top global venture firms. These ‘unicorns’ are
complemented by rapid uptake of consumer technology by the broader masses. A
recent opinion piece appearing in a venerable American magazine even claimed
that India has beaten the west in the game of technology [1]!
It is easy to be carried away by this triumphalism,
remembering the past fiasco only as a nightmare that has passed. Unfortunately,
evidence is to the contrary. Even today, a vast number of India’s engineers are
unemployable [2]. Many end up no better at the end of their undergraduate
education than when they started. Poor quality technical workforce has ensured
that, Indian exports are limited, even mundane technical projects require
foreign assistance, and a vast majority of India’s military hardware have to be
imported. Even more alarmingly, although management, banking, software
engineering, sales and bureaucratic appointments draw the top graduating
engineers, India is not a leader in innovation in even these areas. There are
other less obvious consequences of poor technical knowledge - endless debates
on public issues without any appeal to technical feasibilities and bottlenecks.
Inevitably, a regressive culture of jugaad [3] is created with no visible long-term
solution. This eventually leads to calling of ‘foreign’ expertise, contributing
to a perennial servile attitude in science and technology.
Demonstrably, the root of the
problem lies with India’s antiquated technical education system. This has the
most deleterious impact on the elite colleges, which admit the very best and corner
most of government resources. Their strictly regimented curriculum, originally built
for rationing limited resources and conceived well before the invention of internet
and the smartphone, has long outlived its utility. It needs reimagining to better
serve contemporary India and some of the unique challenges of modern scientific
and technological landscape. Unfortunately, time is limited. The demographic
dividend is fleeting and technology is increasingly weaponized and cartelized
as soon as they mature out of labs. Therefore, any proposed changes must be quick,
disruptive, and not incremental.
One simple change can have this
disruptive and long-term beneficial impact on technical education. That would
entail abolishing the current practice of allocating specialized branches (e.g.
electrical, computer science, mechanical etc.) before the students even
formally begin their classes. Instead of allocating a branch at the very
outset, the specialization must have a significant component of student choice
and should come later in their engineering curricula. This single step can dramatically
accelerate both quantity and quality of India’s technological capacity.
Millions of students endure years of grueling
preparations to enter elite engineering colleges. Sadly, as soon as they enter
the university system, they find themselves locked into a specialization stream
that does not suit their talents, abilities or ambitions. The realization that
they have to face four or five years of education in fields that lack personal
relevance or satisfaction can be extremely demoralizing, sometimes fatally [4].
It is thus not a surprise that students desperately rush to finish their
studies with as little personal and intellectual investment as possible. They are not engaged in what they are
learning and, often, there is some element of shame for not being in their
desired specialization. This creates a
chain reaction of apathy, self-loathing and poor morale in the ensuing years, ending
with a vast majority of departments emptying their graduates into unrelated areas
of work. Even in elite engineering schools like IITs, a significant proportion
of non-computer science students never work in their primary areas of training.
It would serve India’s best interests to
embrace a new system of comprehensive undergraduate branch entrance (CUBE). Under
CUBE, students will join the institutions of their choice, waiting at least two
years before selecting specialization. During their first two years, they will
study advanced sciences, manufacturing and design, economics, applied
mathematics, coding and other most essential engineering subjects. During this
period, various departments will continue to give presentation classes
explaining clearly what their discipline seeks to discover, projects currently
pursued by students in the department, industrial partnerships and the general outlook
of the department. Active participation
of senior students and young faculty will add to the vigor. This period will
end with students beginning to take a semester of electives in their potential
areas of interest. This will provide them with an opportunity to
recognize their areas of interest and personal fulfillment. After this stage,
departments will begin admitting student based on their own admittance criteria,
publicized well in advance. This could be a combination of rank, college level performance,
personal interviews and project presentations against student choice. Once
accepted into a stream of their choice, students will continue to study for an additional two or
three years (depending on BTech or Dual Degree BTech/MTech program) to further
specialize and deepen their knowledge in their chosen discipline. Those
departments, which require minimal physical infrastructures, such as computer
science, economics and mathematics should be especially discouraged from
artificially limiting their intake. Additional overhead money, faculty hiring
lines and graduate student support should be allocated to departments depending
on student strength to incentivize the recruitment process.
Any criticism that a select few departments
will be ‘flooded’ is unfounded. This type of thinking betrays a static and scarcity
mindset. In the current set up, vast majority of students, anyway end up doing
software, banking, analytics and services jobs. There is no reason for creating
hurdles in their way, especially when physical infrastructure needed to train
these graduate in these fields is nowhere near prohibitive. It would be of greater benefit to the
students and the country to allow them to pursue and prepare for a career path
of their choice. As departments adapt to this new system with their own set of
incentives, a dynamic equilibrium will set. The overall outcome would be higher
student morale and better technical absorption leading to better job
candidates, future graduate students, project quality and a large number of
useful startups.
Several departments may initially
experience some contraction in student enrollment. This is not necessarily bad,
since many departments may well be functioning at unsustainable levels. Eventually,
subject matter relevance, demand and supply of jobs, resources and research money
will find a balance with student enrollment. Interdisciplinary curriculum will
organically arise as departments will dynamically alter curricula to stay
relevant and interesting.
Existing teaching methods would also change
radically to retain the best students. Currently, teaching can be extremely abstract
and dry which will undergo innovative changes with more real world and relevant
mini-experiments. The ongoing experiments with ‘tinkering labs’ will likely
deepen. Depending on recruiting strategy, a broad narrative may emerge on their
functioning. Currently, due to the lack of such a grand narrative, most
student-driven initiatives either ape foreign tech initiatives or keep
tinkering with the same experiments year after year, decade after decade.
Technical prowess is sine qua non for a nation that seeks rebirth and metamorphosis.
However, for that to happen, India must find a way to align its best and the
brightest with their inherent strengths and aspirations. Not impede them with
bureaucratic shackles in a prison of timidity and myopia. These young minds
must be set free. It is only when this freedom is realized, can the country
awake.
Notes:
[4]https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/decision-to-end-my-life-purely-logical-iit-student-before-jumping-off-hostel-building-1445628-2019-02-03
Disclaimer: The article expresses the personal opinion of the
authors.
About the authors: Dr. Ranajay Ghosh is currently an Assistant Professor at
University of Central Florida (USA). He tweets at @ranajayghosh
Dr. Aloke Kumar is currently an Assistant Professor at
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He tweets at @aalokelab
Update: An version of this essay was published by Swarajya Magazine on March 5th, 2019https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/engineering-indias-engineers-setting-free-young-minds
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