An invitation to brain storm on the image deficit for Indian engineering profession...

Dear Fellow Prof. Chakraborty,

It is truly wonderful to be remembered by a person of your eminence and achievement. Then it is a great honour that you consider I am of value to contribute to the brain storming session on the image deficit and its correction for our profession.

In my opinion it is members of our own profession who destroyed the pride in our field by being grossly unprofessional. While self-flogging is not a pleasant nor a means of finding a solution, the fact remains and has to be recognised that we need introspection first.

We have reduced our profession to mere tenders, bids, outsourcing to paid consultants, consultants to oversee consultants and another prime consultant having consultants to further advise, finally each of them acting subservient to a programme manager who has no inkling of what is civil engineering.

In the days of the great engineer Shri Viswesarayya , an engineer is considered a man of great integrity, intelligence and capable of thinking originally and produce out of the way solutions which normal administrators cannot think of.

The key word is intelligence and willingness of the engineer to be courageous to walk the new untreaded paths.

But today's famous and respected role models of engineers are vitual brokers, if you excuse my use of the word, to make money for the corrupt in a sophisticated polished manner . It is foolish to think that the society does not notice or know. The effect is they dismiss the engineer and his profession as nothing more than a service which can be purchased at will and manipulated to one's own desire. Does it remind you of that word prostitution?

Sad but true. Engineers who forgot engineering and very poor in principles of engineering physics, but strong in manipulative politics of power structures also become successful consultants and some rise to very powerful leadership positions too. They get top honours as bestowed by the society too. But they are empty shells in my opinion.

So among the walking ghosts of engineers of today, it is futile to seek special image for our profession.

Is there solution? Your anxiety is appreciated. I share your concern. But I am personally deeply hurt with my professional group and feel anguish that I spent more than three and half decades trying to bring honour to my profession and country by walking uncharted path.

It is my own professional group which abused positional authority and acted against the country's interest. It was one man's fight.

Dr Abdul Kalam agreed with me in many a one to one discussions we used to have when he was our President , at Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Can you imagine he told me I did a mistake in not accepting my Maryland Univ seat soon after my graduation as Univ. First in 1966. I should have left the country and had I done what I did outside the country, it would have been implemented and India would have been very proud of an Indian doing such exceptional work! I responded by saying my life time has gone waste with my decision at that time that IIT Kharagpour was our national pride and would rather study there.

Or I should have no regrets. The fight itself was my reward. Though National Geographic and Discovery covered my work and suddenly some remote place in Switzerland a train guard recognises a Konkan Railway name as that engineer of Konkan Railway ( that was me) who stood between colliding trains to make them stop automatically as shown in National Geographic, I should feel happy. he does not know my name. But he respected some other senior officer of Konkan Railway who was traveling there mentioning this.

Well how do you build respect for engineers' profession? They have to do respectable work.

How do you get a good image? One should do outstanding work which speaks for itself.

My dear Professor, being in cess pool can we rise up, is our doubt.

Yes like the proverbial lotus, we can, if we want. Do we really want, is the question. We must liberate first our internal spirit and get back our self-respect.

Self-respect does not mean arrogance about own greatness. The group should have the courage and self-confidence to trust a colleague's integrity and intelligence and capacity to be innovative. The group behaviour in our country particularly abhors innovation.

Envy and feeling that "how can anyone else be better than me" creates antagonist attitude and inimical and indifferent attitude. Soon this herd behaviour forces many an engineer to go mute and fall in line. mediocre men rule. Money takes over.

Where money rules, there can be no professional pride nor image. It is not only engineers but all other scientists too suffer the same fate in our country. Nobel prize is so elusive for a country with such a large scientific community.

We can be comfortable that we we all share the same glum image and trapped in time and space to suffer eternally. One or two who may get agitated to get out of the trap will organise a brain storming and generally it stops with that.

With due respect to you, apart from my above thoughts, I have little to contribute. I am not anxious now a days to attend meetings.

Currently I am trying to make up for my time lost in my loved country, by working overtime to finish my work of finding a new generation Gravity Powered Rail, Road, Waterway, Runway systems. I divide my time between US and India. Paris APM2011 invited me to speak after a peer review of my work That is the difference. I had requested a number of times INAE to review and debate. The deafening silence is amazing. South Korea reviewed and published intheir International Journal. Now US-Europe group has reviewed and asked me to present the case to save 50 to 70% of currently used energy in transportation. Taking my case as a study case, honestly, what should I think?

After all, Dr Abdul Kalam is right.

I do wish you all the best and hope you will find a viable solution which is not innovative. Because if it is innovative your colleagues are likely to kill it.

I regret I cannot take this honour of participating in the session.

May God bless you, my friend!