Doctored and Engineered........!!!

Does the word IT sound more familiar than Intelligence? What does Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon and Salt Lake Sector V have in common? Do you come across CTS, TCS, Infosys and Accenture more than SAIL or Larsen & Toubro?? Do u see a generation of youngsters sleeping during daytime to accomodate their USA time shift jobs?? Do the names of obscure of Technical Colleges in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu (even West Bengal these days) sound more appealing to the housewives than some of the premier institutes of our country?
Isnt it that the guy next door studying medical next door fuelling jealosy and similar aspirations in your mind. Isnt it, that every parent likes an appron clad guy with a stethoscope around the neck or rather the engineer in the neighbourhood with his fat paycheck and flashy automobiles??

Welcome to the generation obsessed with Engineers and Doctors...

The obsession generally starts early, more with the parents than the incoherent, couch potato, video game crazy, sit at home school kid. If its class 9, the parents get ready to send their child to several science and maths coaching factories. Computer, Biology (or even IT or Biotechnology in some show off schools) as an additional subject in the class 0 boards is as essential as air and water. A 90% in boards is imperative or how will a father face his office colleagues, a mother her gossip hungry neighbourhood and the child his/her mentors. Reason, one MUST study science in 11 and 12th standard which in turn is essential is necessary to get into medical or engineering.

A student is pushed to the limits in his/her 11 and 12. A heavy syllabus, innumerable tutions, physics, chemistry, maths, hindi/bengali, english, computer/biology etc etc... Add to it, school's obsession for good results in boards and parents and tutors expectations of good performance in competitive examinations. A poor science student goes through hell. I m not undermining the commerce and humanities students though. But, even if one fares poorly in 10th boards, even if one doesnt have aptitude in Science, one is forced to take it up. I have seen it often heard, "Commerce, Arts?? why on earth, why not science? Did not score good marks or what?" The irony is that, nowadays the trend has been so much of science with its cream o students that poor humanities and commerce have become victims. People generally expect that good students go to science and not otherwise, as the masses do. As if, history or geography is out of the blue, Commerce is unnecessary in our country's development, Literature never really was known as a subject, Archaeology is such a waste, "oceanography??What :O Come again...", Art? Can u make it??? ....

Yet, Rabindranath Tagore is lauded as the one the greatest Bengalis or Indians, everyone loves reading novels and blabering English with peers at Cafe Coffee day or City Centre, and all of it came without art or literature. Alas, our middle class !!!.....every subject has its own right, it has its weightage and its own role to play in society. Every subject offers its own peaks and chance for excellence and recognition.
Films are enjoyed by all, films that are the work of artists and men with vision and creative and not nerdy, window eyed engineers or stetho hung medical professionals. It takes least mention to stress how lucrative films and the level of appreciation its stretches to... true, not everybody can make it to become filmmakers, but compare the numbers with as many applying for engineering....

Coming back to the education scene... With a very competitive admission scenario and today's urban culture very select few make it to elite engineering or medical institutions from the cities. The rest... thanks to a booming industry of private engineerining and management colleges with their bare minimum admission criteria, mass intake, fat semester fees and donations, parents rush to get their children a "secure" career. People mostly see their neighborhood students joining such colleges more frequently than Presidency or Xaviers, offering BSc or Bcom or BA and thus institutes from Haldia, Techno, Heritage, ABC, XYZ, some college near Bangalore gain more popularity. The popularity not necessarily from performance but from the number of people getting engineering admits. People see engineering as lucrative, but are all engineers well off??? Engineering gained reputation as a plush profession over the last few decades. The situation was different. Engineering institutes were mainly government owned and regulated, numbers were few, country was growing and developing, and engineers were in demand, and in the process they got well paid. IITians, RECians and people from Roorkee, BESU, etc. gained popularity abroad and in India. Nowadays, people fail to realise, that just an engineering degree from a "what did u say?" engineering college is not enough security for a good career, they are not the same, as the well off engineers passed out 2 decades back. But still, there is a mad rush to get people into engineering and medicine, even at the cost of lakhs in donation, whereas quality seats offering Science and other degrees remain vacant of occupied by a lesser intellectual strata.
Not everybosy passing out of these arbit engineering colleges get a job. Moreover, a majority or almost all of these people who get jobs are placed in the IT sector, which they soon get bored off after sometime and are confused about their lives again. Enter "Management", and there again is the same old story. The neighbourhood aunty has forgotten about u by then. For her, the story ended the moment u entered engineering, not until ur career reached a stage of fulfillment.

The loss is to society itself, which is pressurizing itself unnecessarily to chase an obsession and closing its doors to other opportunities and ventures. Maybe, we still have a long way to go until this bubble bursts. Till then, the IT groom continues to be in demand.

Phew!!!!