New Delhi Times

Gaurav Bhatnagar reporting from New Delhi, India

If not engineering, then what…

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I got many thought provoking comments to my recent post on how engineering is such a hot profession in India. I agree with the general sentiment that ignorance and herd mentality are the main reasons for students blindly following a well travelled path. Apart from this, the social seterotypes are so rigid that it is almost expected that a student who is doing well in school will take a crack at IIT or medical entrance exams. Jatin pointed out that almost 200,000 students appeared for the MBA entrance exams as well. However, it is well known that over half of them are engineers. That is just more evidence that a majority of engineers actually get forced into the profession. Why else would they jump to management without even gaining any professional experience?
The good news is that in today’s India, there are several other career options. We have 100s of TV channels in India. So there has to be lot of scope of in the media industry. We publish the world’s most read newspaper Journalism ought to be hot. The retail sector is growing very fast. There was an interesting article in India Today about art restoration and how expensive it is. So that is another niche avenue. And don’t forget Bollywood. Its a billion dollar industry employing millions of people. Surely there is money to be made there!
It is wrong to say that students opt for medicine or engineering because of a dearth of options. However, parents and schools alike need to take responsibility of introducing students to all the possible choices out there. Unless we encourage this out of the box thinking, we can not expect innovation and enterprise from our coming generations.

Written by gaurav

June 30th, 2005 at 5:11 am

Posted in India

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  • http://spaces.msn.com/members/krisdhingra Kirti Dhingra

    What I meant was that there are no schools of excellence with regards to other fields. Students would think about Journalism,Media, Film Making, if there were institutes like IIJ(Indian Institute of Journalism), IIFM(Indian Institue of Film Making) etc, which would be as good as the IIT’s with equally good placements.
    The IIT’s and IIM’s are great institutes, it’s a tag that you can carry with you anywhere and you would immediately be recognized and appreciated.

  • http://nirmans.blogspot.com Nirman

    I have two comments. First : timesofindia is really not a good example of journalism. It might be the most read newspaper in the world, but I guess few read it for news :) . Second : the fact that engineering and medical science and recenltly business studies are the most popular is because of what people learn at home and see at home. It is through the schools directly we must bring the variety in professions directly to the students, so they know from beforehand that their choices are many. This is just an idea, but I think it will work.

  • Sujan

    Well its also a matter of return on Investment at the end of the day we are here to make money. If you look at the Average Salary which an engineering/medical graduate earns and benchmark it with the other streams there is a clear difference…Hence the craze… IIM and IIT are tags only because it enables you to get an opportunity for exploring really lucrative careers ..
    “its all about the money honey :) ”
    and i agree with Kirti “Times of India” is so trashy its good its not journalism its just mirch masala which we like .. :)

  • http://amehndiratta.typepad.com Ashutosh

    I am no psychotherapist but here’s my twisted root cause analysis/guesswork on this behaviour :) -
    Seems like there is always some kind of fear engrained in average Indian’s mind and his/her life revolves around it. While growing up children are taught fear of falling down while playing or drowning or injuring themselves which restricts their expression of physical freedom. Then elders and teachers have so much authority that freedom of speech and thought gets affected. Children in metros even have fear of not pronouncing English words correctly :( Then comes fear of mingling with the opposite sex (excepting Metros). After that fear of not making a career which triggers mad efforts to get into engineering or medical school. Interestingly, the habit of living in fear doesn’t go away…it starts to become permanent. Then fear continues in one’s career and trickles down to the next generation.
    Average Indian family’s saving rate is one of the highest in the world which again is driven by fear. Considering the state of Indian economy, this fear is justified but the downside is that it kills the free spirit.
    However I have noticed that poor immigrants in US from other countries don’t necessarily live in fear. It’s a learned behaviour that makes one risk averse.

  • Jugal Barik

    Kindly suggest me the best Film Making Institute in Delhi. Because Film Making is my passion and New Delhi is a place where people cheat like anything.
    Would you please suggest me!
    Jugal

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