Dear Readers,
Engineer Diary convey the best wishes to you and your friends "Wish you a Happy Engineers Day".
It may very odd to share a article which may demoralise the engineers, However it is very true and essential to understand the reality. It is very worth to share this article " Why are engineers in India paid a low salary?" by Mr. Alok Kumar. He is answered by Alok Kumar in Quora Forum. He works at Ministry of Home Affairs, India. Take some time to read. It is worth.
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Because they are oversupplied.
We have 2 lakhs CAs, 10 lakhs doctors. Engineers! They are in crore.
Take the case of doctors. US has 25 lakh doctors for just about 32 crore population. India has 10 lakh doctors for 130 crore population. Obviously, doctors are scarce in India. They get better salaries.
Compare this with engineers. US produces around 1 lakh engineers per year for a $ 16 Trillion economy. India produces 15 lakhs engineers for a $ 2 Trillion economy.
If there are so many engineers, there must be enough demand to pull them in. But it is not there. The earlier mass recruiting sector was manufacturing. It used to recruit from the core branches like civil, electrical and mechanical. But, manufacturing is stagnant at just 17% of the GDP. So the core branch placements have become difficult.
The new mass recruiter is the IT sector. It grew from scratch to almost 5% of the GDP in 25 years. Employed millions of engineers.
Now, IT is also saturating.
If you look at the sectoral composition of Indian economy, most of the sector do not need engineers. Tourism is 10% of the GDP, does not require engineers. Financial sector, trade, hotels and restaurants do not require engineers. Requirement in health, education, agriculture is almost negligible.
More than 50% of the GDP has no role for engineers. Still most of us are becoming engineers. The current situation is not sustainable.
So the demand is less while the supply is high. Over and above this, skill level of an average engineer is poor. I say its non-existent. Leave the top 100–200 colleges. And you will find that a fresh engineer has no idea of what s/he has studies. Ask a fresh mechanical engineer, can s/he design a simple frame?
Today the situation is that most engineers are working in a field that has no connection to what they have studied in the college. This is a waste of resources.
Engineering degree does not come cheap. It costs about 10 lakhs. For poor parents, its a huge burden. When their son is not able to secure a job, they are devastated.
For the nation, you can calculate the loss. Leave around 1 lakh engineers that NASSCOM says are employable. The rest 14 lakhs have each wasted 10 lakhs of fees. That totals to around $ 20 Billion. Almost equal to the Government’s spending on healthcare. Over this, there is loss of human capital.
We need to replan the whole engineering education system. Cut down on the number of colleges and improve the quality in the rest.
