End of India’s Great Engineering Dream: Is Skill Gap to be Blamed?

While engineers in India struggle to find jobs, experts say it’s the skill-gap behind their unemployablity.

(Photo: Shruti Mathur/ The Quint)

Video Editor: Deepthi Ramdas
Cameraperson: Akanksha Kumar

Twenty-nine-year-old Abhinav Pathak has been living in a 4*4 feet room since 2013 as he continues to prepare for different competitive exams. Hand-written notes with mathematical formulae and maps adorn the walls with space available only for a study table and mattress alongside.

Abhinav completed his B Tech six years ago from a private college in Ghaziabad and has been looking for a job since then.

Despite having a B Tech degree with a specialisation in electronics, there were few takers in the job market for the skill that Abhinav brought to the table.

Engineers Switching to Non-Technical Stream

“Not a single company came to our campus. Outside the college, they (companies) were calling only those who had a reference.” 

Abhinav Pathak, B Tech pass out (2013 batch)

Soon, Abhinav got disillusioned after the college failed to ensure that everyone in their final year gets placement.

2013 onwards, there was a surge in the number of government vacancies in banking sector and other departments. This resulted in Abhinav switching from the technical to non-technical field in the hope of getting a job but to no avail.

Future of Engineering Students Marred by Low Placement

Close to the Mukherjee Nagar locality, considered to be a hub of coaching centres in Delhi, lies Gopalpur village, a nondescript colony with residents living in gullies demarcated by serial numbers like 1, 2, 3 and so on.

Owing to its proximity to coaching institutes, the local economy of Gopalpur revolves around 3-4 storeyed buildings, with rooms slightly bigger than a cubicle, rented out to students who flock to the capital every year. Job aspirants like Abhinav often prefer to live here as rooms are quite affordable.

Abhinav is not the only one who is jobless despite completing a four-year-long professional course. Twenty-four-year-old Neeraj Kumar met a similar fate after completing his B Tech from a government college in Rajasthan’s Kota.

Coming from a family of farmers, becoming an engineer was a dream, something Neeraj is very emotional about even today.

“We had to sell our land for my studies. Since it was a government college, placement was low. No one was willing to take the responsibility. If one got a job, fine, otherwise no one cared.”

Neeraj Kumar, B Tech pass out (2017 batch)

Continuing Trend of ‘Stubborn Unemployability’

Experts have termed this trend of joblessness among Indian engineers as ‘stubborn unemployability’, attributing the pattern to failure of keeping pace with recent technology.

“The curriculum really lags in machine-learning, statistics. New technology is in cloud, mobile, all of these are missing. Things like blockchain, all of these have not entered the curriculum.”

Varun Aggarwal, Co-founder, Aspiring Minds

In its recent report, Aspiring Minds, a pre-employment assessment company, has found out that only 2.5 percent of Indian engineers possess the skills in Artificial Intelligence.

The report further revealed that while 37.7 percent of Indian engineers can’t write a correct code, the figure stands at 10.35 percent for their Chinese counterparts. Shouldn’t the technical education regulator, AICTE, step in and revamp the curriculum as per the demands of the industry?

Until then, students like Abhinav and Neeraj will continue to suffer at the hands of a system which has simply refused to evolve over the years.