Engineering is everywhere from living things to non-living things it’s all about imagination and
passion to create. Dreams, passion, interest and motivation are the four basic qualities that shape
an individual’s life. Knowledge and skill sets determine the nature of career that students choose
to pursue. Present day technology enhanced lifestyle and comforts have become possible only
because of the vision and passion of a few who created it way before the current generation.
Engineering education is a platform that provides the right environment and foundation for
students to innovate, invent, discover, create and implement their own creative ideas and vision.
But unfortunately over the last three decades higher education in India especially technology and
engineering related professional courses have become a gateway for short-term career and easy
way to earn money. Our Indian society has embraced B.E or B.Tech degrees just for the sake of
IT jobs or IT service related industry jobs. Money and lifestyle has become the only motivation
that has led to such a high demand for engineering education in India. In this mad rush,
individuality and capability of many students have been lost to desktop-based service jobs in IT
sectors. And the most important blow to our country has been loss of great minds.
In this context, and present state of engineering higher education in India it’s important to
interpret, analyze and understand who should pursue engineering education. Every individual has
the freedom of choice & the right to fulfill his/her own dreams and goals in life based on his / her
interests and passion. But many students who are about to complete their higher secondary
school education get carried away by overwhelming advice given by their parents, friends and
media towards engineering degrees.
School education in India from fifth standard onwards only focuses on scoring marks based on
student’s memory. Unfortunately the schooling system doesn’t allow the students to explore and
understand their strengths and weaknesses. The system also doesn’t provide the opportunity to
realize individual student’s area of interest and an avenue for expression. This hollow mindset
has translated into students and parents looking at engineering education as a means for IT
service jobs or BPO jobs. And sadly, the current state of (outsourced) IT service industry is
struggling with VISA issues and protectionist sentiments from across the world. Many countries
have restricted skilled based immigration pattern which has been the norm for last 4 decades. It
is pathetic to note that under the garb of globalization and skewed capitalism based economic
principles, delegations are sent across developed countries to minimize visa restrictions. If our
country had been a nation of inventors, solution providers and innovators, the current state could
have been avoided.

Secondly, students may follow their passion they had since childhood which they had identified
in themselves, even before entering secondary classes. Passion being a non-parametric factor
which is combination of will power and natural instinct, it is difficult to define it. From a bird’s
eye perspective it’s the happy feeling, contentment and being at peace with oneself, when one
makes effort to learn, think and try to improve their understanding of a subject or any activity
then that’s can be approximately defined as their passion. Some students show more interest in
breaking toys and playing with them, but some try to build their toys on their own by
understanding how it works; that’s their skill set and intellectual ability to create. In this scenario
the role of parents should be to identify those interests in their wards and try to provide them the
facility. Every child through his / her growing years show his / her passions / interest and parents
are supposed to identify and nurture those talents and not twist it and subtly or indirectly
brainwash children into pursuing engineering or medicine as a career. A family’s economic
background cannot and will not deter an individual from pursuing his/her passion. The famous
scientist Jagdish Chandra Bose started his research in a small area (a 24-square-feet room)
because he did not receive much support from the then government. Or for that matter Sir C.V.
Raman started research institute with very little money in hand. But it’s their motivation to
conduct research and to know the unknown that made them successful in their chosen field. They
were not influenced by the materialistic career but they achieved what they were passionate
about.
Thirdly the society has created a myth in the minds of young students that getting a B.E degree is
imperative to get an IT job; irrespective of the stream. This is followed by the social and family
pressure to buy a house, marry and settle down. That’s the best that life could offer!. If this not
case then students are coaxed to go abroad, preferably to USA, Canada, UK, and Australia to
earn money. It does not matter whether the jobs one gets in the foreign lands has nothing to do
with their education or the degree they earned. This is clearly shows the mindset of the present
society which primarily focuses on materialistic pursuit by letting go of values and intellectbased
life. The media and society only focuses on a few successful stories of expatriates and very
conveniently leave out the reality of the majority who are struggling and are working on lowly
paid jobs available in those countries, just to maintain the illusion back home that they are living
abroad. But many would acknowledge that more than half the Indian students abroad don’t lead a
comfortable life and miserably end up in low end jobs unable to adopt and adapt to the new
learning system. Nothing wrong in these single minded aspirations of material pursuit and
immigrating abroad but this mindset has led to service oriented society incapable of making and
producing its own technological requirements in a globalized world.
Even today India has to import most of the defense equipment, 90 % medical devices like x-ray,
MRI, CT and other medical laboratory equipment which are not manufactured in India,
commercial aircraft are not manufactured in India and most of all, even the basic semiconductor
industry that manufactures electronic products like mobiles, tablets and chips are totally absent in
India. Even the most important industry in India, Agriculture, still follows the 20th century
technology. Wealth alone cannot make a society happy and content, the ability to create wealth
through technology and engineering in all aspects of life is what makes an individual, society and
a country stronger and independent.
Though engineering education is for professional employment too; it’s not just for jobs. The
main aim of engineering education is to bring out the ability to express oneself in terms of
creating novel things, devices, equipment and structures. It’s a way to explore the interface
between man-made world and nature. The school education system in India has failed to make
young eager minds understand the basics of how and where knowledge is moving to. In India,
it’s unfortunate that even many qualified engineers don’t know the basic differences and how
different domains can be inter-related. Science is the basic ability of human species to explore,
observe, analyze and understand the universe within their limits of intellectual ability through the
basic five senses. Technology is the ability of humans to create tools, crafts and equipment’s
based on the knowledge obtained through science for their own comforts by developing different
application platforms. Engineering is the process of building that technology through design,
fabrication, and manufacturing and in realizing that technology. Mathematics is the foundation of
all the three which is ably supported by inherent human skills of speech and communication. In
India more focus has been given to superficial communication and basic arithmetic skills and
these skills are enough to fill the huge requirements in service sectors of different industries. But
today engineering, technological and science education has all been converging towards a more
complex and interesting future. This requires lot of creativity and passion. 20 years ago nobody
could have imagined that a mobile phone or tablet would be accessible to all (that too with touch
screen) but today it’s a reality. That has been made possible only through research and
developments. These research and developments have been accomplished through dreams and
passions of individuals working together in engineering and technology.
Another most important aspect of studying engineering is the implementation of concepts and
theory practically through design and fabrication. Since, schools in India do not provide the right
environment and facilities for laboratory skills; it will be fascinating to do the same in
engineering education. Though not all engineering colleges provide the freedom and flexibility
to learn practically but best ones provide the right facilities. To do real experiments what one
requires is easily available within a house. What is needed is real passion & creativity to design,
construct and operate devices. But the Indian educational environment and the society haven’t
encouraged this in young minds. This has resulted in grooming of engineers who aren’t willing
to get their hands dirty but are more than eager to fill the chairs in office complexes. In
developed countries children are encouraged to be independent and create with their own hands
from kindergarten. This is one the main reason why most of the modern gadgets, instruments and
devices are invented or designed in such countries.
From radio, to television, to computer every modern facility has been imported from the west
and our country’s contribution to modern technology is almost nothing.
Engineering education in most of the colleges in India is no different from school education
based on solving exam papers using memorized texts. But at least some provide the right
environment and surrounding for budding engineers. If one has the ability to dream, think,
understand, analyze and create, then engineering is for them. If one has the passion to challenge
themselves irrespective of the material gains then it’s engineering. Don’t take up engineering for
the sake of jobs. Aspire to be an engineer, only and only if one wants to pursue it with heart and
mind.

Author Name:
Prof.Rabinder Henry
Director
Pralhad P Chhabria Research Center (PPCRC), Pune
For innovation and research visit us at
www.ppcrc.in
www.isquareit.edu.in
www.famt.ac.in
Prof. Rabinder. Henry is currently the Director at Pralhad P.Chhabria Research Center, Pune (A Project of Finolex). His thrust
areas of work have been in transforming the education system specifically in Engineering Higher Education by making it more
applied intelligence oriented. Formerly been Director for Engineering Colleges and also been CTO in the industry. He has a
Master of Science Degrees in RF & Microwave Engineering (1) and Photonics (2) from Technical University Dresden and
Master of Science in Medical Systems Engineering (3) form University of Magdeburg, Germany. He has worked with Fraunhofer
Institute for Photonics Microsystems, Institute for Mikrosystemtechnik, Magdbeurg and Helmholtz Zentrum Rossendorf,
Germany. His areas of interest include Microwave Engineering, Microfabrication, Bio implants, Photonics, Nanotechnology and
convergence of technology. Professional member of many bodies IEEE, VLSI Society of India, ISTE, and ISC etc. Established
Institutes at Meerut, Jaipur and Pune.
His profile has been published by Marquis Publications in Who’s Who in World 2009. Global Young Leader by UNDP (United
Nations Development Program) for Peace Initiative in 2008. Awarded by Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and
Operations Management (SREQOM) for Innovative Applications of Information Technology in Interdisciplinary areas in Science
and Technology, December 2009.