The meaning behind the fundamental art and science of engineering is completely lost upon the average Indian student, and as one among them, I have a few gripes with the state of Indian engineering as an institution. The following is an attempt to lay them down after weeks of thought and countless missed deadlines to put this out. THe only reason that it took this long is that I wanted to get this bang on, since we get only one shot at speaking about this.
The boom truly started in the 1990s, with the opening of the Indian economy to the global markets. A massive and young workforce, teeming with the hope of a better life and the opportunity of the largest social and economic forward mobility program that has ever happened in the nation in front of them was there to meet the demands of the global shortage of a skilled yet cheap labor.
THe IT revolution of India, led by the giants that we now see as Infosys(1981), TCS(an ancient company - 1968), Tech Mahindra (1986), and HCL(1976) to name a few, kicked off the race to maintain the largest workforce that was capable of delivering and executing contracts at the lowest pay and the highest efficiency.
They called it Business Process Outsourcing, that included everything from customer support and call centers, right up to the developemnt of entire systems for clients. Regardless of the timezone, the demand, the absurd sizes of the projects - if there was something within the world of IT that needed to be done, there was an Indian company that was ready to get it done.
ANd boy did they get that shit done. We delivered anything and everything to the world man, Y2K fixes for US and European Banks, airlines, and insuranc agencies, millions upon millions of lines of code in COBOL and C; then the legendary SBI transformation for our own country, and as word spread, for other Asian banks too; Wipro developing GE Medical firmware in the late 80s all the way till the end of the 90s; ERP portals and other financial systems that ran the most crucial financial transactions at that time; I could go on and on and on.
This led to the word spreading like wildfire in US and Europs, that Indians can build software out of seemingly thin air, can get it done YESTERDAY, and charge peanuts for it. And that, was all that it took for the white men to rub their hands together, and start bringing us over. Rememebr me mentioning forward social and economic mobility? Yeah, this is it.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, MILLIONS of our bretheren immigrated to Europe and America to work within the IT and software industry. We spread like the pollen of a flower man, and where ever we went, we maintained a core fundamental - "We will deliver whatever is asked of us". Indians started earning 6 and 7 figures a year, and ending up with 8 figure sums all throughout their careers. The money, was un-deniably amazing. It gave them access to a better life, better healthcare, education, roads and transport, improved quality of life, and what not. So much so that the remittances that were generated from all the money that was being sent back home contributed a significant portion of the national income at one point in time. This is where the notion of Indians being the IT wizards of the world came to fruition, and honestly, the notion holds true till this damn day. There is that one Indian IT guy at all companies who is the one stop solution to all the problems that have or may arise ever.
The scene was changing rapidly back home too. Not all of them went away - lakhs and crores of engineers stayed back home, in hubs of the IT indstry like Bangalore, Pune, Noida, Gugugram, Chennai, Delhi and the whole NCR region, MUMBAI (how the fuck did I almost forget my own city?), just to name a few. They worked in their own country, paid taxes in the rupees, but the money being made, and being billed was in the good old USD. It was a dream come true for millions - they get to live with their family and earn the MOST amount anyone in their blooodline had ever seen since like, the last 5 generations.
Academia, was no different. As much as it may hate the fact, it itself on the same course as the industry of a particular country. To keep up with the way that business was done, there had to be enough kids being trained to suit the needs of the money making machines. And man oh man, did we not disappoint here.
THe government privatized higher education to an unprecedeented degree, and "Engineering colleges" started popping up like nukkad-ki-chai stalls in ecery state, city, and and town. Complacancy is not an issue, but rather a feature in the institutions of this nation, and this lead to sub-optimal checks and regulations within the process of opening up a damn college.
We Indians love the systems that include exclusivity and elitism, so inavadently, there was a system that formulated itself where college started to have tiers within them.
THe cream of the crop were the IITs, and to be even more elitist within that, we had the 7 old IITs. And then a bunch of new ones, because there weren't enough benches to hold the butts that were coming in. Then in tier 2, there were the Regional Engineering Colleges, rebranded into National Institutes Of Technology. Finally, there was quite literally everything else. And here, is where it all started going to shit. Read on, I'll explain why.
See, the tier 1s had it all. Funds enough for a man to swim in, the best faculty, and some fucking standards in its systems when it came to running the college. And this, led to every kid aspiring to get into these limited seats. And with all things in India, the scale was incomprehensible. There was a time when the 12th standard matks were consifdered to get you into these collges. But, the establishment quickly realised, that was not enough to differentiate the applicants. There was a clear need for a better method. Something that'll ensure only that the best students could have access to these elite institutions. Something that could sepatate the top dawgs from the rest. And thus, they invented the greatest rat race in the history of mankind. The Joint Entrance Examination. The great separator, the end-all be-all of all engineering aspirants, the-you know what, I should stop. As IT and the money being made started being popularized, and as academia started gearing up to mould the next generation of IT "Engineers", all that was left is for the floodgates to open and for the young talent of India to flood in. And boy of boy did they flood in alright.
You remember the money that everyone was making with the boom? The stories were amplified with a gain higher than infinity (I am an electronics engineer if you couldn't tell already). It wasn't long till every family, parent, grandparent and all the relatives that you could think of, in the social and financial underclass of the Indian society started dreaming about making the same money and beyond what they were hearing. And the fucked up part about it all is that when they felt like they missed the gold rush, they tried to live their dreams through their kids. Unfathomable number of kids had their fates sealed the day that they were born - "He/she shall be a software engineer". People went mad with this obsession. Kids had their childhoods snatched away from them, in order to get them ready and prepped for the JEE exams, and there were entities in place to take advantage of it all. Who am I talking about? You guessed it - coaching institutes.
It started small, like all social evils do. A man who goes by the name VK Bansal is credited with the start of it all. A bright student himself, he was a mechanical engineering graduate from Banars Hindu University, now known as IIT-BHU. He established the Bansal coaching classes in 1991, and that is the genensis of the shitshow that we see these days. Tier two and three cities like Kota, that had no business being centers of economy started flourishing with this coaching industry. Hostels, food messes, coaching institutes that look like they are straight out of the soviet union, started popping up and establishing themselves as the one-stop solution to getting into a IIT. A dream that is sold to CRORES of kids every year, and the poor sould have no choice of their own, since ther fates were sealed since before their birth. Young children started flooding in these cities and coaching institutes in numbers that seem laughable to be honest with you, all with the sole aim of beating any and everyone in their sight.
2 year classroom programs, distance learning programs, foundation classes - I have seen kids from the 6th standard being enrolled into these. A kid who's primary concern should be the time when Ben 10 comes on the television has now been entered into a rat-race that he has no business being in. The indoctrination of software engineering ran so deep and so started so early, that millions of kids grew up not knowing anything apart from what they have been told when it comes to career options.
Youtubers are another piece of this puzzle. The democratization of software engineering in India had been done so poorly that it watered down the whole meaning of engineering. The notion that was being pushed around declared that anyone can get into tech and become an engineer, all they have to do is watch this 10 hour video lecture and they are done! It started out as a way to help people get into tech, but quickly spiraled into low-hanging fruits being glorified as the end-all-be-all of software engineering. The rise in their popularity only made the echo chamber bigger and louder, and this is where the problems began.
Parents failed to educate their kids about anything beyone software engineering. Coaching institutes started brainwashing kids into believing that JEE and other entrance exams are the single most important moments of their lives. Colleges failed to set standards in their curriculum in order to produce more "Engineering Graduates". Youtubers made people believe that anyone can ben an engineer in their life, without understanding the actual meaning of engineering. And the kids? They simply suffer.
Here is the deal. Engineering, mathematics, physics, coding and programming are inseparable. The problem with the state of indian students, is that they learn how to code, think they can program, call themselves engineers, and ignore the math and physics behind it all. Let me elaborate.
Good read