Tainted Genius

The word "engineer", as any reliable source will tell you (as will Wiki), is derived from the Latin word for cleverness which incidentally is the same root for genius, ingenious, ingenuity and all other such related words that mean some extraordinary mental capacity that is inherent and/or in-born.

So, at the end of this otherwise ordinary week which, just for the record, contained Engineer's Day, celebrated on the birth anniversary of the legendary Visvesvaraya (this, incidentally, being his 150th) as well as Vishwakarma Puja (one of the rare fixed festivals of Hinduism, Vishwakarma being the chief engineer of sorts as per the religion and is revered by engineers, architects and craftspeople), I present to you a 4-part series called "Philistineering?" - a product of the personal experiences, observations and detailed, fool-proof research undertaken by the engineering student in me:

Part I - A Taboo Called Engineering

Part II - Engineer Equals Philistine

Part III - Sad But True

Part IV - Bitter Pill

And while it definitely rankles that people from mostly similar backgrounds such as architects go ahead and deride their technically purer counterparts, I guess it can be forgiven to an extent since this drastic change in attitude can be, like most other things young and urban, traced back to the diet of heavily Americanized popular culture that we have grown used to being fed over the past couple of decades. Then again, is that really something that can be so easily forgotten and should the perpetrators be just as easily forgiven?

That's an intensely personal choice, I guess. But what is definitely not a matter of opinion - and this regardless of how much you buy the multiple intelligence theory - is that there is no substitute for sheer genius, no matter how much mud you sling.

Bitter Pill

(continued from Part III - Sad But True)

But while figures paint a completely different picture, the ground reality is, still, this - a vast majority of the population has always and still chooses to swim in tried and tested waters, for as the age old saying goes, a traditional professional degree in hand is better than two severely limiting certificates including one general degree and one fancy diploma in some vocational course in the bush.

Granted, there are genuinely smart people from regular (read: non-wealthy, non-artsy) backgrounds who don't go for science after 10th - and even if they do, switch over after their 12th. And granted, there has been an improvement in terms of the masses' mentality - so it's no longer "engineering for boys, medicine for girls" (which has definitely been aided by the fact that the allied branches, unlike the core ones, do not involve any strenuous physical activity), and law, which has always been respectable, has come into the picture. Also, granted that the percentage of smart, talented individuals has simultaneously gone down in these traditional professional fields while going up elsewhere (this being more evident in urban areas where the lack of knowledge of certain people in private technical colleges astounds you whereas interacting with, say, a media student makes you heave a sigh of relief).

But the fact of the matter - and this I cannot back up with any figures or stats - is that you are more likely to find a genuinely smart person with a balanced knowledge of the world and brimming to the top with multitudes of talent and ideas just waiting to be unleashed onto this world in an engineering college than anywhere else in India. Well, at least till they're in the first year and a half, after which the education system starts taking its toll - but that's an entirely different discussion altogether. Exponents of certain performing arts as well as sports usually condition themselves to train from a very young age, no doubt - but that's yet another totally tangential discussion.

Most of those who go for science and then engineering are brimming with potential - they the smartest minds in their respective peer groups that are at once knowledgeable as well as analytical (which is probably the reason they find themselves in this field in the first place which sucks 'coz aptitude over passion is a bad, bad choice to be made at such a crucial juncture of life), and while there are various theories ranging from multiple intelligence to God-giftedness, the possession of such cerebral prowess ensures that they can excel at whatever they choose to pursue, including many things creative. Whether they choose to fulfill their potential is yet another question that I am not really concerned with at this moment.

Conversely, since everything depends on marks and barring exceptional cases (illness, phobia of exams, or an extremely clear idea of what you want to do with your life), the smartest minds get the top marks and get into science-based professional courses; the above average ones manage to get into science at the +2 but are forced into BSc or a rethink (which, in many cases, turns out to be a blessing in disguise). Those with double digit IQs, well, you know where they land up. So if you think that everyone who's studying literature, the arts, film and other culturally superior stuff are doing so because they have always wanted to, well, you are wrong - chances are they could not get into the conformist stream and made their peace with it.

On the other hand - and this I say from personal experience - walk into an engineering college and while there will be people who live up to the stereotype of geeks, chances are you'll bump into someone who's very well-read, someone who loves dissecting films on the basis of their technicality, someone who's so knowledgeable that s/he has won every quiz since primary school; there are bound to be a bunch of sportspersons who are good at what they play, a gang of riders who can't live without their bikes and many bands of extremely skilled musicians who can set any stage on fire.

And as for why every second public figure isn't an engineering graduate, well, if someone doesn't want to hone his/her talent and pursue it as a career, let it be, okay? That's not to say that there aren't any well-known people who have a BE/BTech to their name - on the contrary, you find them in all sorts of fields (and I am not even considering anything technical or managerial here). But it's my turn to just let it be - for now.

Sad But True

(continued from Part II - Engineer Equals Philistine)


Now I have done a lot of research about engineering education at the under-graduate level in India and its products, and without going into too much detail let me just say that 1979 is the year that segregates the 2 eras.

Before that point in time, there were just about 100-odd colleges offering engineering degrees to students just out of school. Some of these were relics from the British era, a select few were set up and financed completely by some wealthy individuals and all others were either set up or granted financial aid by the government. Some were instituted from scratch; others were upgraded from their previous polytechnic status. But whatever be the specifics, the reason behind the establishment of each and every one of them was that the administrators at that point of time believed that the development of their territories was in the hands of engineers, and they had to make sure that these hands belonged to the smartest, most talented individuals of the land.  About 20% of those 100+ institutions offered only specialized branches related to fields such as metallurgy, agriculture, textiles and chemicals, while the balance offered the standard 3 branches - civil, mechanical and electrical.


Things started changing abruptly from 1979 onwards. Karnataka was the first state to be hit by the storm, and before you knew it, private colleges mushroomed all over the country. On top of that, the late-80s saw another mini-revolution of sorts - one no longer required a bachelor's degree to study law. And just like that, professional course after school no longer meant just engineering or medical. So yeah, now there's more of everything - colleges, branches, seats and career alternatives. What was about 100 colleges and 10,000 seats (Fermi estimates, the latter more so) has now swelled to over 3000 colleges and nearly 9,00,000 seats. Needless to say, it isn't exclusive anymore.

Exclusivity is not the only benchmark, of course. It is possible for something to be not exclusive and yet be of a certain calibre, in this case intellectual. But that's a long shot and sadly doesn't hold true when we consider technical education in today's India. Almost anyone can get a seat, so it is really a question of choice - and, in many cases, money.

Thus, interacting with engineering students gives the impression that all they care about is maintaining their position in the lead pack of the rat marathon which is some sort of a brainwashing radio station that their minds have been tuned to since childhood - study through school, score high in exams, coach for entrances, take them, get into engineering college, toil, get a job, work for a year or two, coach for MBA entrance, take a bunch of those, get into B-school, toil some more, get a high paying corporate job, start ruthlessly working up the corporate ladder, etc.

And first impressions, as they say, are long and ever lasting.

(NEXT: Part IV - Bitter Pill)

Engineer Equals Philistine

(continued from Part I - A Taboo Called Engineering)


Now let me make one thing absolutely clear - any person on being specifically asked about their opinion will in all probability not spout all of what was written in the previous part or what is written underneath. So don't start thinking where I got these ideas from since you are thinking in your head, "Hey! I don't think like that and frankly I don't think anyone else does either - anyone other than you, that is" 'coz frankly, there are certain things you just draw from experience. Six years is a pretty significant length of time, and if you disagree, tell that to those who are busy publishing the debut novels of 12-year-olds.

There is a set of allegations levied against people who pursue science-related fields beyond 12th. It is the revenge of arts and commerce, served cold after having let it occupy the freezer for an intermediate period when the official stance of the young and the visible was, "whatever you do, you should be good at it". Clearly they don't see the need to do that anymore, so it's all out in the open now.

We can't appreciate art. We don't have an aesthetic sense. We lack the designer's perspective.We just don't have the eye for photography. We have the poetic sense of a sixth grader who has just been exposed to Wordsworth and his Romantic brethren. We have absolutely no flair when it comes to writing. We don't have any idea what we're talking about when it comes to the cinematic medium, especially when it comes to the technical aspects and acting prowess. We don't belong in theatre - not on this stage, not on that stage, not on any other stage, not on the street even. We are tone-deaf, lack the ability to arrange or compose melodies and cause bathroom mirrors to crack when we try to sing.

We lack creativity. We have bad tastes in anything and everything remotely connected to the fields of entertainment and lifestyle. We have no taste at all when it comes to fashion. We lack the talent as well as the spirit when it comes to sports. We were born to follow in a herd, never to stand out of a pack and lead and thus should spend our lives following instructions that no one cares about, not even the person giving them out. We are the connoisseurs of mediocrity. We have absolutely no idea when to put an end to things.

What's mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg. All these are assumed to be true just like axioms back in middle school mathematics, and are used to make a bunch of derived, secondary allegations. These are fewer in number but much worse in taste, and fall into one of two categories - you never had it in you and realized that early, and you might have had it in now but you lost it because you were (and still are) a coward. Both these arguments not only fail and are highly prejudiced but are also borderline supremacist. No, let me correct that - they are already on the wrong side of that frontier.

(NEXT: Part III - Sad But True)

A Taboo Called Engineering

A few Sundays ago, I was at this elitist conference at the Habitat. Every time a speaker finished his turn, the emcees would urge all of us in the audience to switch seats and make new friends. Networking, though, doesn't come naturally to me. So, by the end of the day, the only new contact I made was this guy who came up and spoke to me during the lunch break. After the event wrapped up, he was kind enough to drop me off at a convenient location. As soon as the ride ended, my mind immediately switched to the conversations I had just wrapped up, which cemented my convictions about a rather disturbing school of thought in young urban India: engineering is a lowly middle-class pursuit taken up by those individuals who either don't have the means to follow their talent-backed dreams or whose only talent is to cram techie stuff, reproduce most of it on paper and score well in exams.

Till about 20 years back, only a limited number of options existed - the brightest minds opted for science in high school and tried to pursue one of the two under-graduate professional courses (engineering and medical), which, given the limited number of colleges, branches and seats and the additional burden of competitive exams was an uphill climb. This exclusivity meant being accorded the greatest possible respect for someone without a job. Whether they stuck to their fields and climbed up the ranks or dared to be different and jumped ship after graduation isn't really imperative - what's important is that unless one was born with a golden spoon up one's ass (read: had the backing of a family business or an established arts lineage), being adventurous wasn't really different from being foolhardy, at least as far as higher studies went.

Then, things started changing. Private colleges and universities offering a wide range of professional education to kids just out of school, coupled with changes in government policies regarding education and economics meant that one could get a job in the private sector after pursuing commerce or arts at the undergraduate level just as easily as one could after taking up a non-technical professional or a vocational course. Just a small glitch though - most of these private players were in it just to make a quick buck, so weighing these non-standard options against potential returns meant that most of these were taken up by youngsters from well-to-do sections of the big cities. As far as the many, many others went, forsaking the established path and instead treading down the path less travelled was still a huge risk, although one that was not as big as it was till the late 80s.

So when, during the course of my mid-course break, I first drew flak for being an engineering student, I was quite shocked. But before I could dismiss it as a one-off incident, the realization dawned - this contemptuous attitude was prevalent uniformly across the well-heeled sections of the urban Indian society, and more so amongst the youth, including a few engineering students who were only studying this at the behest of their well-to-do (and possibly principled) parents who were probably concerned about the laid-back, directionless, purposeless attitude of their children - a concern which these rich and otherwise spoilt brats absolutely failed to fathom. And while this contempt for what was once the most revered choice of education is not entirely unjustified, it is imperative that engineering students take it upon themselves to correct this notion - if not for any latent love for technical knowledge, then at least for the sake of those lakhs of rupees spent by our middle-class parents.

(NEXT: Part II - Engineer Equals Philistine)