Dr Biju Dharmapalan
Every September 15, India pays homage to Bharat Ratna Sir M. Visvesvaraya by celebrating Engineers’ Day. The 2025 theme, “Engineering Excellence Drives India Forward,” resonates with the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047-an India transformed into a developed nation on its centenary of independence. But one question refuses to go away: are we really producing engineers who will power that transformation, or are we merely adding clerks with engineering degrees to an already saturated job market?
The Paradox of Plenty
India’s engineering education system is massive. With over 3,500 institutions producing nearly 1.5 million graduates annually, the numbers are staggering. Yet beneath this numerical pride lies an uncomfortable truth: fewer than 20% of these graduates are employable in core engineering roles. The rest drift into clerical Government jobs, routine IT support positions, or even unrelated fields like banking and insurance.
It is telling that engineering campuses today echo with a familiar joke: “B.Tech is the new 12th standard.” Families spend lakhs on professional degrees, only to see their children preparing for clerical exams at railways, banks, or state commissions. The return on investment-intellectual and financial-is worryingly low.
Engineering Education: Still Stuck in the 20th Century
Engineering education in India is predominantly confined to a 20th-century paradigm, characterised by rote learning, prescriptive notes, and assessments that prioritise memorisation over the cultivation of critical thinking and invention. Essential industry skills, including design thinking, prototyping, artificial intelligence, robotics, and sustainability, are frequently absent from the curriculum, resulting in students being inadequately equipped for modern issues. This crisis is both structural and academic: curricula are antiquated despite advancements in quantum computing, renewable energy, and biomedical innovations; faculty often lack familiarity with contemporary research or industry practices, resulting in monotonous note-taking; and the majority of institutions, with a few exceptions, maintain tenuous connections with industry, depriving students of substantial internships, practical projects, or innovation ecosystems. The greatest detrimental factor may be the lack of a robust research culture-undergraduate research is infrequent, patents are exceedingly uncommon, and the principle of “learning by doing” is hardly promoted. The unavoidable result is a cohort of graduates educated more as clerks-satisfied to adhere to directives-than as engineers capable of inquiry, innovation, and leadership.
The ‘Engineer-Turned-Clerk’ Phenomenon
The exodus of engineers into clerical roles is not just an employment trend-it’s a systemic alarm bell. The UPSC, SSC, and state service commissions now receive lakhs of applications from engineering graduates competing for non-technical posts.
This has two disturbing implications:
Skills Mismatch: Industry does not absorb engineers because graduates lack relevant expertise.
Devaluation of the Profession: If engineers are doing the same work as commerce or arts graduates, the very idea of a “professional degree” is diluted.
At this rate, engineering risks losing its identity as a problem-solving profession and being reduced to just another degree pathway.
What This Means for Viksit Bharat 2047
India’s 2047 vision is built on technological self-reliance-semiconductors, defence systems, climate technologies, AI, and space exploration. None of these can be achieved with graduates who think and work like clerks.
Weak engineering education cascades into weak industries, lower innovation output, and dependence on foreign technologies. Without competent engineers, India risks being a consumer of global innovation rather than a creator. That would be a betrayal of Visvesvaraya’s legacy and of India’s aspirations.
Seeds of Hope: The Alternative Path
Amidst the gloom, there are green shoots. IITs, IISc, and some private universities demonstrate what is possible when quality, research, and industry linkages align. India’s triumphs-ISRO’s space missions, digital infrastructure like UPI, the telecom revolution-prove that given the right ecosystem, Indian engineers can match the best in the world.
The start-up culture, hackathons, tinkering labs, and industry-academia collaborations also signal a shift. But these are islands of excellence. To change the national story, such models must be replicated across all engineering colleges, not just the elite ones.
Engineers as Nation Builders
History shows us the transformative power of engineers: Visvesvaraya’s flood management systems, Swaminathan’s agri-tech revolution, Kalam’s missile and space innovations. These were not clerical tasks-they were acts of nation-building.
The future demands the same spirit. Engineers must lead solutions for climate resilience, digital equity, healthcare technology, rural infrastructure, and sustainable energy. They must be dreamers, builders, and innovators-not note-takers waiting for instructions.
The theme “Engineering Excellence Drives India Forward” serves not just as a formal declaration but also as a caution and a commitment. India stands at a critical crossroads: it must decide whether to persist in the mass production of graduates who are technically unqualified and relegated to secretarial roles, or to transform engineering education to foster innovators who will advance the nation towards Viksit Bharat 2047.
(The author is the Dean -Academic Affairs, Garden City University, Bangalore and an adjunct faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore)
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