Give me some sunshine....give me some rain!

All is well? Hopefully so! Or may be not! Who cares? Question some youngsters and the most clichéd answer would be, “We barely have time”. How many of us do actually wonder that in an age where things happen lightening fast we do not have time to think on some of the most mandatory things? More so, we do not have time to think on what we want to be in life, why do we want to take up some profession? Is it because it returns fat cheque early in life or just because some peers are running to it? Some chauvinists would argue against me citing thousand reasons if I call it a “rat race”. Even then, I’d dare say that it is. Take for example, the burgeoning engineering colleges all over the country. As a kid, we used the word “burgeoning” for population. Within a span of just fifteen years, I’m alarmed to see how dramatically usage has changed and usage being so rightly made, one can not even complain. Many visionaries put up iconic institutions to catch the plight of many thousands of students aspiring to be engineers. Where the visions failed miserably was most likely the fact that they thought that work ended with putting up of the institution and that the rest would work on its own. Here, I bang the temple gongs, church bells, or even the Sikh gurbanis, whichever might awaken those visionaries, and say that it now requires toiling day and night and make the vision come true. I ask them to look into the insides, to see what kind of engineers are in the making and how they are in the making. Is the process that they are following right? Are the equipments right? Do you have the faculty support that is ready to give in everything to make world class engineers? If we can answer at least one of these questions satisfactorily, then we might as well say that we at least on the right track. When all of these have been looked into, one of the most important questions, how do you select students? Do you just select anyone that secures the required minimum marks in some aptitude test or you also look in to the reason why the kid wants to be an engineer. This would not ensure results which are hundred percent accurate but will definitely lead the kid to rethink if he actually wants to be engineer or is it any of the above cited reasons? Ensuring these few points would set things partially right. The question now is what more needs to be done? I’d again say a lot more. Firstly, the quality standards of education imparted to the students need to be under constant scrutiny. Secondly, rope in some measures to the check the level of innovation amongst students. This is because; this is what ultimately engineering is all about. I, thus plead to say, Give me some sunshine, give me some rain........