Just got up and found this headline on the economictimes website that Indian factories fail to move up competition ladder. Sad, but we are consistently driving ourselves further in the same direction.
Most of our engineers get into IT, coz they get paid better there, have better working conditions and get a better raise in money each year, although the quality of work is quite the opposite at times. Strangely, these Software companies are categorized as Tecnology Stocks in our share markets, while Manufacturing is a separate sector - as if all the technology lies there in what you do with computers, while it is not even true as far as most of the Software work we do in India is concerned, which is mostly cleaning up or updating or maintaining stuff created by Americans.
Having said that, it is not the engineers that determine the area of focus in a particular section of an economy. The Manufacturing sector is probably not able to reach the critical mass where it can push for further investments and aggressiveness to achieve higher scales. It is either just sustaining itself or shrinking each day in a milieu that is a total turn-off. While the milieu and mindsets are changing and will further change once we have better incentives, job opportunities and quality outputs to prove the viability of the sector, the fundamental driver even for that lies elsewhere.
I believe we basically need strong policy action by the government, to push the Manufacturing sector, which will not happen as long as we go on taking too much pride in our IT sector and ignore the other areas which are important if we want to be fundamentally strong in the long term. A strong policy action, and encouragement through perks and incentives is enough to drive our systems and businessmen towards creating the right ingredients to generate resources for growing the sector. Resources, like people with right set of skills and adequate technical knowledge, are immensely scarce. But so were C and Java resources once upon a time. The funny thing is that our mechanical, civil, electrical, electronics, chemical, metallurgical, mining engineers, and others whom I missed, all somehow learn C/C++/Java or some other such thing in weeks, and become professional software engineers for life, while the stuff they learn for 4 years of engineering study, is just to get them degrees, and what they learn during those 4 years hardly matters to them or anyone. Then where's the incentive to improve the education standards of our engineering colleges?
I had this feeling often when I was a software engineer, that if I had done the same job when I was in my 10th standard, I would have done it 10 times better and more efficiently. Afterall, the skills you require for being one, are not beyond 10th grade. And the maturity you require for such jobs, is also not beyond 10th grade. But I had no other option, coz that was the best job I could find.
Of course, the world will always be imperfect, coz we don't have a deadline to make it perfect. Our movement forward or backward in any area seems to be the sum of human push and shove (which, I realized just now, is a vector!). Government action, therefore, has to be driven by push from the Industry, and vice versa. We have to get it right somehow :-)
Most of our engineers get into IT, coz they get paid better there, have better working conditions and get a better raise in money each year, although the quality of work is quite the opposite at times. Strangely, these Software companies are categorized as Tecnology Stocks in our share markets, while Manufacturing is a separate sector - as if all the technology lies there in what you do with computers, while it is not even true as far as most of the Software work we do in India is concerned, which is mostly cleaning up or updating or maintaining stuff created by Americans.
Having said that, it is not the engineers that determine the area of focus in a particular section of an economy. The Manufacturing sector is probably not able to reach the critical mass where it can push for further investments and aggressiveness to achieve higher scales. It is either just sustaining itself or shrinking each day in a milieu that is a total turn-off. While the milieu and mindsets are changing and will further change once we have better incentives, job opportunities and quality outputs to prove the viability of the sector, the fundamental driver even for that lies elsewhere.
I believe we basically need strong policy action by the government, to push the Manufacturing sector, which will not happen as long as we go on taking too much pride in our IT sector and ignore the other areas which are important if we want to be fundamentally strong in the long term. A strong policy action, and encouragement through perks and incentives is enough to drive our systems and businessmen towards creating the right ingredients to generate resources for growing the sector. Resources, like people with right set of skills and adequate technical knowledge, are immensely scarce. But so were C and Java resources once upon a time. The funny thing is that our mechanical, civil, electrical, electronics, chemical, metallurgical, mining engineers, and others whom I missed, all somehow learn C/C++/Java or some other such thing in weeks, and become professional software engineers for life, while the stuff they learn for 4 years of engineering study, is just to get them degrees, and what they learn during those 4 years hardly matters to them or anyone. Then where's the incentive to improve the education standards of our engineering colleges?
I had this feeling often when I was a software engineer, that if I had done the same job when I was in my 10th standard, I would have done it 10 times better and more efficiently. Afterall, the skills you require for being one, are not beyond 10th grade. And the maturity you require for such jobs, is also not beyond 10th grade. But I had no other option, coz that was the best job I could find.
Of course, the world will always be imperfect, coz we don't have a deadline to make it perfect. Our movement forward or backward in any area seems to be the sum of human push and shove (which, I realized just now, is a vector!). Government action, therefore, has to be driven by push from the Industry, and vice versa. We have to get it right somehow :-)
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