The enigma of Indian engineering

Dinesh_Kumar

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Do-It-Yourself culture prevalent in the US and the West, but still needs to improve in India. Situation is better today, with many college kids building Robots, Go-Karts, etc
. I think that Design Skills needs time to be built up, that is why Indian Engineering is still an enigma, especially wrt original work.
Probably, India can do very well in Application Engineering - the Marketing Department captures the Customer Requirements, while Engineering puts together the product taking components from an existing parts bin.Testing of product for intended use takes place (short duration - matter of months at most). Documentation is done and shared , if required, with Service Centers, Customers, Marketing, etc.Here, Engineers will learn about system requirements, creation of specifications and drawings, test protocols, localisation, value engineering, reliability and life cycle analysis, etc. These will be useful when we start work on original design. I think China was at this stage in the 1980s, for automobiles.Weapons engineering, maybe the 1950s and 1960s. They learned lots from the Soviets, too. Today, their weapon systems (China's) are quite contemporary, with Fly-by-wire Aircraft and CIWS Weapons Systems being exported.
 

nrupatunga

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@kushalappa @TrueSpirit

'Nine out of 10 engineers never wanted to be one'
'Today it is simpler to get into a university overseas than into an IIM or an IIT'.

More than 20 per cent of the seats in India's engineering colleges are going vacant. The same is happening in management schools.
So we have these top-end colleges that are highly sought after and admit only the best students into their campuses. On the other hand, you have students scoring between 35 and 45 per cent who are chased by several institutes that give admission to anyone for any course and at the end of it all hand them degrees. Many of those kids are not fit for the jobs that they think they are eligible for; the curriculum, the quality of education, faculty and overall standard of whatever they are undergoing in the garb of education leaves much to be desired
The fact of the matter is that if you got 33 per cent, maybe you did not get the right educational exposure, or you were not academically bright, but at least you stood a good chance of becoming a skilled plumber by enrolling in ITI. Today, those same kids are going to an NIIT because they teach programming, which according to many is a better career option than plumbing. Frankly, as long as you pay them the fee, NIIT doesn't give a damn about your career. In the process, we have not only lost good programmers, we have also lost good plumbers. So you have problems at both ends.

At the ad agency where I used to work, we've had MBAs willing to join us for Rs 25,000 per month, and then IIM graduates who were not willing to work for less than Rs 2.5 lakh a month. You can't compare the two and that's where the gap comes in.
I wish there were more kids who wanted to be chefs, lawyers or anything other than the predictable engineers, CAs and MBAs. The latter are important, but there is a serious dearth of professionals in every other sector. For one chef, there are 1,000 engineers. When everybody zigs, if you zag, chances are you will have better opportunities in store.

I don't know if you are aware of 'actuaries' -- they are niche professionals who evaluate risks and work in the financial security sector. As of today there are very few actuaries in the country, so if you qualify as one, the world is looking for you.

On the flip side, only if an actuary dies does someone replace him. So be careful when you're making adventurous career choices.
Was a nice article untill the last line (in blue). That may very well be the cause for 1000 engineers for every chef/lawyer/plumber nowadays.
 
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