Women Can't Have It All; Neither Can the Men!

Today morning I was going through the excerpts of the views expressed by Indra Krishnamoorthy Nooyi, the high profile lady President and the CEO of the multibillion, multinational soft drink company of the world-PepsiCo, that the Times of India published. 

The Times of India titled the article like this: Why PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi Can't Have it All?

The views expressed by this lady CEO essentially highlight the high work load of a CEO and the problems that such persons face in their lives due to paucity of time for the home and family especially when the CEO happens to be woman. The lady CEO is in the dominant role of the boss at her work place but has to be in the conventionally submissive  family role of a daughter, wife and mother at home!

Coping up with these mutually antagonistic roles is not an easy task, according to Ms.Nooyi. She has been 'trying all kinds of coping mechanisms'. 

As compared to the men, the women have additional problems. 

'The biological clock and the career clock are in conflict with each other'. Indra Nooyi admits from her experience.

So having all the benefits of the career and the family in one go is very difficult for the women. Women simply can't have it all!

So, those women who can't cope with all these either sacrifice the career or some thing of their family life!

Otherwise they have to do the continuous balancing act consciously through out their lives just as the trapeze artists. It is indeed a risky game of life! You simply can't enjoy a high profile career and a good and satisfied family life simultaneously, unless you are prepared to do some adjustments!

But is it an exclusive problem of the women alone? I think, men also can't have it all without doing the trapeze acts! But unlike the women, they prefer not to complain because of their male egos. Perhaps there won't be any one to listen to their problems.

Biologically men and women are to become complementary pairs to form the basic unit of mankind, the family. They are naturally made for different functions to complete the human functions. They are not made for doing the same functions!

Thus both husband and wife cannot be both heads of the same family at the same time. Life becomes smooth and natural when men and women go according to their natural designs. 

CEO's by nature are people who have the first degree priority attached to career growth and official work regardless they are men or women. All of them face the dilemma of prioritization of priorities of life and have willfully chosen career as the first priority over others. That is how they have become the CEO's. But having accomplished that they have to cope up with the pressures of prioritization of priorities! 

They have to do the cope up acts, the balancing acts, the sacrificial acts and many such things which are difficult for normal human beings. Many CEO's thus become naturally abnormal as a consequence of their balancing acts!

But all bosses are essentially minor replicas of God on earth. 

If they knew something of the great secrets of God, perhaps they could have accomplished all their tasks much easier. 

Because God is the Supreme CEO of the Universe and yet He copes up with all the CEO pressures so easily without any one ever noticing it. 

And one of the most important secrets of God as the Universal CEO is the manner in which God has delegated work and power (responsibilities) to all His subordinate personalities of the universe. [Read the potential of delegation in progress and development!]

Our management gurus know much about the power of delegation and mentoring in management whether it is management of the family, small business, big business or even the governments. 

But we are all with human weaknesses and that prevent us from perfectly practicing what we know. 

Most CEOs fail utterly in delegating work and authority. They fail utterly in mentoring people to perform and progress. They keep indulging in others work because they fail to trust people even after delegation, making their delegation degrade to pseudo-delegation.

Have you ever seen the Universe CEO interfering in your life? God has delegated you free will for all decisions and choices. Having done that, God will not interfere in your free will in any way even while He possesses all powers to do that. 

And imagine the problems of God, had He been to solve the problems of all in the universe even after he delegating the powers of solving the problems to all below! But God is perfect and He never changes the rules in between, even while He has the powers to do all that.

And just imagine the situation, when the human CEOs ( we are all CEOs in one way or other for some situation) trying to imitate God and work as true replicas of God on earth by truly using the God given powers wisely! Perhaps then, the work of others would not shift unfavorably to a few others, making imbalances in our human relations. 

Perhaps we might tend to become a society in true progress with less and less individual problems.

Neither Indra Nooyi nor any others like her need not be over worked and without paucity of time, provided they know how to delegate responsibilities to those who are capable of discharging those responsibilities equally well.

A good leader or boss knows the art of distributing his or her powers and responsibilities to each and every individual down below in the team commensurate with their individual capacities to make use of those delegation effectively.

When the boss does delegation of authority and responsibility improperly, the organization fails to perform adding to the woes of the boss. 

In the family too, such delegation of work and responsibilities is to be implemented with much care. If done well, the family too would become a smooth running mini organization.

When every one is enabled to perform according to their inherent capacities we get complimentary families and organizations that run well without causing problems to others.

At least, things would be better and bosses may not be required to devote more time than their subordinates to make their organizations perform.

The gender of the boss would not make any difference too!

Career Opportunities and Salaries in Post Liberalization Era in India!

India had been a country which followed the socialistic pattern of economy ever since it got independence way back in 1947 till its economy got partially Americanized some time in the Nineteen Nineties. The period before 1990's is called the pre-liberalization era and that afterwards till date could be called the confused era of liberalization.

In the pre-liberalization era of administered socialism, the salaries of all employed people in India were governed by certain limits mandated by governmental directives. No person in India was allowed to draw a salary more than what the President of India got in those days. Rs.10,000/- per month was that sacrosanct figure. In those days it was also mandatory for the government and the private sector companies to publicly announce the details of salaries that they paid to their respective employees.

All employment advertisements from the government and the private organizations routinely announced salient details of the salaries. It was easy for any one to actually know how much an employed person legitimately made as salary. What was not known to the general public was the legal income of businessmen and the illegal income of salaried people especially those employed by the governments.

One of the remarkable achievement of the government of India in the post liberalization period was the removal of the sacrosanct limit of salary for the private sector. I consider this event remarkable because this was done by the bureaucrats of India without raising much protest as their own salary remained lower and limited.

The liberalized government also allowed even loss making private company boards to fix limitless salaries for some of the key members of their own boards, a much liberal rule that allowed many small companies getting drained of their initial and working capitals too soon to become non-existential. 

Post the so-called Y2K digital confusion of year 2000, the software and IT enabled companies of India got enormous opportunities to get dollar remuneration from the USA due to the high IT-outsourcing trend that this country adopted. This enabled many Indian companies who earned their incomes from the dollar economies to pay higher salaries to their Indian employees. 

Then developed the age of private industry opportunism and favoritism in the guise of market forces. As the government did not enforce any thing with regard to the salaries of private sector employees, the initial euphoria of high salaries in private sector soon died out with the majority of private sector employees earning much less while a few of their top favorite managers earned incomes disproportionate to their real contributions. The Indian private sector has degraded as an organized system of exploited managers as many of the white collar private employees are designated as officers or managers without any collective bargaining power. Besides, the private sector pay have been becoming more and more secretive as the employees seldom realized the pay and perks of their colleagues and seniors. 

As such a few of the Indian private sector began to mimic the elite corporations of the USA and such other developed nations where salaries are determined by the educational elitism or educational branding of their managers rather than their actual worth and contribution to the company. Some board level and below board level managers got the opportunity to draw salaries unimaginable by many in the world while the majority of their employees slogged for their respective companies to keep them going without getting even a minor fraction of such high salaries. However, a good majority of Indian private sector in the manufacturing and production fields struggled hard to make income and to pay even some comfortable salaries to their employees and managers as they were all required to play in an uneven ground.

In the mean while, the government officers and those in the government got the opportunity to compare themselves with their elitist private sector companies. The consecutive pay commissions began to take some cue from the private sector average remunerations and began to fix the government officer's salaries. Since this was mostly on the basis of some average, the top government officials could not earn exorbitant salaries. However they have done many other things to compensate their so-called low salaries. Now many of them fly quite often to foreign lands, travel in chauffeur driven luxury cars, have government paid servants at home and office and have many comforts and facilities that their counterparts in private industry do not have. As they are the administrators, executors and interpreters of rules and policies, private industry big wigs often Que up to meet them which indirectly provide many benefits. 

Governments-both central and states- own many public sector companies. Some of them are large and key economic drivers and contribute significantly for the economic well being of the country. A few of such companies had been privatized in the past with the government selling of the majority stake. However, a large number still remains with government as the majority stake holder. Such companies have government nominated boards but are actually run by company officials and managers who are generally recruited by the concerned company. They are called the PSU officers and managers. The PSU officers are deemed public servants with all the responsibilities of public servants, but with hardly any defined authority. They have been a disadvantageous group with regard to their salaries and perks for the past many decades. Only in the recent past, their salary scales have become comparable to that of their counter parts in the government. However, excepting a few, the majority of them are never given any opportunity to prove their skills and professional competence. As their career advances, most of them degrade as 'frogs in the well' due to various reasons which could be a topic of research for any one interested to find the truths. However, the public sector had been the poaching ground for experienced professionals for the growing private sector initially.

As the governments could not take any decisions regarding the future of the public sector companies with regard to the question of they be privatized or not, the public sector companies of India suffered much with regard to their succession planning . As a result, there have been practically no recruitment of officers and workmen in the PSUs for the last several years. Many PSUs now have very senior officials drawing secretary level salaries waiting for their retirement in a couple of years and working too independently. They have no subordinates whatsoever under them. PSUs of yester years which used to simmer with many fold economic activities in the past with thousands of employees have closed down many of their activity centers and losing their collective experience and expertise. Many of them are just waiting to be closed down as their experienced people are getting reduced in numbers with time. When all around the world governments are trying hard to generate employment to their citizens, India with its highest unemployment levels, is undetermined about the future course of actions with regard to the huge industrial infrastructure it had created in the past in the public sector.

Now coming back to the salaries of officers and managers of India. It is difficult now to get clear idea about this. But with some research I am giving some idea about the salary and perks of officers and managers working in India in private sector, public sector and government (The salaries given are approx gross p.a) :

Category                Indian Private Sector     Indian Public Sector   Indian Central Govt 

                    

Entry Level Officer          Rs.0.2-0.6 Million      Rs.0.4-0.5 M         Rs.0.3-0.4 M    

(1-7 yrs)

Entry Level Mgt              Rs.0.5-1.5 Million          -Do-                         -Do-

(1-7 yrs)

Middle/Sr Mgt                         -Do-                 Rs.0.8-1.0 M        Rs.0.8-1.0 M

(7-12 yrs)

General Mgt                    Rs.1-5 Million            Rs.1.5-2.5 M        Rs.1.5-2.0 M

(12-25 yrs)

Top Mgt                        Rs.2.0-20 Million        Rs.2.5-3.5 M         Rs. 2.5-3.0 M

(15-35 Yrs)

The career growth in central government is smooth and steady with seniority playing the major factor. For top postings political patronage is essential. 

In the PSU's both seniority, luck and mentoring by seniors do the magic of career growth up to general management levels. Bureaucratic and political mentoring are important for CEO levels and board level postings. Salaries are a bit better for the officers and managers of large central PSUs. However, they have comparatively not much opportunities for proving their abilities. Their public image and status is also not very charming except for some top management positions.

The pay, perks and facilities of private sector officer and  management career depend on the type and size of industry coupled with the mindset of its management board or promoters. The variations are too high. While some get extremely high salaries and perks, a good majority are underpaid when compared to their work loads. The private sector job is secure only when it is doing well financially. The internal politics in some private companies are too high that people with a straight forward mind might find it too difficult to survive. Hence, most private companies have a high attrition rate. Since the government has not yet openly allowed the hire-and-fire policy, many companies resort to retrenchments in a clandestine manner. Indian private companies are yet to learn the benefits of retaining their managers! While a few managers of Indian private companies are able to get pay and perks many times more than their counter parts in the PSUs and government, there are also millions of them without ever enjoying such benefits. It is also common that the promoters appoint themselves to key positions with extremely high salaries which professional managers cannot even dream of.

Except for the civil services of the government, there is no regular intake of officers either for the Indian PSU and private sector. The recruitment in both private industry and the Indian PSUs are done with no long term vision or planning. At entry level, either they recruit in large numbers or refrain from it for years together. As a result, the career growth and experience opportunities in many private and PSU companies are not so motivating for many of their managers.

In the government, there is a periodic system called the Pay Commission to revise the salaries of the central government officers. In the Central PSU's such an arrangement may or may not be adopted. In the private sector such a thing is practically absent. Unlike the private sector, reservations play and important role for the selection and promotions in the government and PSU jobs.

Government and PSU jobs may not give much satisfaction to one's job due to many factors. High individual performance and competency may sometimes cause career shocks. However, in the private sector, individual performance and competency are mostly recognized and rewarded. 

In the overall analysis, as things stand now, private companies of good track record provide the best career options and job satisfaction. The least of it as of now could be in the PSUs.  

Engineering Career in India : Some Aspects that are Often Overlooked !

One of the noticeable changes that occurred in India after it partially adopted the free market economic policies of the Nineteen Nineties, is the mushrooming of engineering colleges in every nook and corner of the country.

Yes, the Government of India has been giving fantastic sops to entrepreneurs to set up engineering colleges in the last few years by setting up the All India Council for Technical Education with statutory powers as delegated and implemented through the provisions of the AICTE Act of 1987 .

As per the published statistics of AICTE, the approved intake capacity of technical institutions to train youngsters in diploma, degree and post graduate degree courses in technical and management fields is going to be nearly 3.5 million in 2012-13 as compared to nearly 1.7 million that existed during 2008-09. A neat 100 % growth in four years ! [See the statistics of AICTE here !]

While this kind of a growth is justifiable on the basis of the number of engineers per thousand population in the developed nations like the USA, South Korea, Japan, etc there are very disturbing realities that cannot be overlooked whether or not the policy planners are willing to recognize it.

Setting up and engineering college or a management institution or any such technical institute is prima facie does not come under the purview of a business activity, though in reality it stands out as a profitable business at least for those who grabbed the opportunities in the very beginning.

Let us examine the process of setting up an engineering college and the likely incomes that are generated by such an institution.

The first step is registering a society or trust which is nothing but a registered association of people with the stated objectives as promoting technical education in the state or country or region. Essentially, there would be a few founder members who cleverly make the bye-laws of the society in such a way that the actual promoters control all issues of managing the society for ever. It is not necessary that the founder members have any knowledge in engineering. If the members are mostly from the same family or friend circle, it would be of much advantage. 

The next step is to mobilize the funds. A negligible sum comes from the membership contribution of the society members. The major sum comes as loans or donations made by the individuals to the society. They need to have at least 10-20 % of the total money required to set up the engineering college initially in the account of the society.

At present, setting up the engineering college initially would require about Rs 5 -10 Crores. Let us see how it works out:

         1. Purchase of about 5-10 acres of land away from the city limits ( the more the better) : Rs 2-5 Cr

         2. Costs of AICTE approval including security deposit:    Rs 1 Cr

         3. Buildings and other infrastructure            : Rs.2-4 Cr 

Now, how to initially finance this amount. Suppose that there are 20 members in the society. Each member contributing Rs.10 Lakhs would make Rs. 2 Cr. That is enough for the society to proceed with their project. The rest of the money could be raised through bank loans or other personal loans.

Initially the AICTE gives temporary green signal to proceed with the allocation of a few branches of engineering and the number of approved seats for each branch of engineering. The trend adopted by the new engineering colleges is to start courses on Computer and Information Technology, Electronics, Electrical, Communication which requires the minimum infrastructure and offer the maximum possibility of various course combinations. In any case, the start up institute gets permission to start 3-4 streams of graduate studies with an intake capacity of about 160 students in an year. 

If the college is fortunate, they get all their seats filled up. If not, they may get around 100 students. There is government patronage in getting the seats filled and in fixing the minimum course fees. As the minimum fee is government determined, the start up engineering college in the first year itself would be in a position to earn about a crore. They manage the finances by paying less initially to the faculty and the staff so that a surplus is generated in the first year itself. Every year the number of students increase to become the maximum in four years time. The revenue of the college (society) by way of student fees now surpasses more than fifty percent of the total money invested. In a few years time, the society cleanly comes out of all debts and would have good sums to spend in improving the infrastructure, beautification and other improvements with money accumulating in its accounts. The society members get back their loans with interest. If the college has survived a decade, the chances are that it becomes a good institute provided the management committee and the staff do their job well. 

Legally, the individual members of the Society which manages the college cannot have any personal gains from the profits of the college. But it should be remembered that the majority Indians do not have any mindset to do any philanthropic work. The simple logic for them is this: If there is no fayada (benefit) why should any one do some work ? So definitely fayada is there. But how this benefit is to be realized is not written in the laws and the statutes. So the unfair siphoning of funds accumulated by collection of hefty fees do take place. The methodologies are the same old practices that are adopted by people who are entrusted with powers to manage. It does not matter whether it is the industry, the NGO, the society or the government department ! Absence of the laws or inadequate check systems or pliable individuals all make these things easier. But at the same time the law enforcement agencies can target any one whimsically if they so desire. This gives the power centres ample scope to control things the way they want. In short, prevalence of arbitrariness becomes the way of governance in a country which claims to be democratic.

Now coming back to the fate of the millions of fresh engineering graduates whose parents spent nearly a million rupees for getting their engineering degrees ! There is no authentic data on how many of them find a useful job. Even then, private estimates by various agencies figure out unemployment levels as high as 30 % among engineering graduates of India. Remember, this is the situation of the present. You can well imagine the situation when the number of graduates double in the near future as planned by AICTE.

Even this unemployment figures could be misleading. The actual could be much higher considering the fact that the majority engineering graduates of any discipline are going to be employed in non engineering jobs including computer software related fields. In the software industry and the BPO industry of India, the markets lie beyond the boundaries of India and no one really knows how far this industry could go like this. Will the software industry bubble burst some day ? What would happen to the millions of Indians and the Indian economy that have now surrendered themselves to an economic activity which they do not really understand with regard to its market dynamics ? In other words, what would happen if the major markets that are outside India change their priorities ? Only foolish people will try to live without contingency plans !

So what are we supposed to do then ? Training engineering graduates and postgraduates in the engineering colleges in huge numbers is one thing. But that is not going to help India getting improvements in engineering expertise in any way. No fresh engineer is good to undertake any real life engineering work with confidence unless he or she gets the opportunity to get trained under experienced seniors for a couple of years. Again no engineering graduate can gain useful experience when opportunities of actual work exposure do not exist. A good number of working engineers in many organizations in India hardly get any useful experience to make them an expert in their field of work.

Indian planners, who are definitely not experienced engineers or technocrats, have forgotten the importance of having matching numbers of trained technicians and engineering supervisors and the importance of them gaining reliable work experiences by doing years of actual work. When India prefers to import equipment and systems from China and other countries, what is clearly forgotten is the opportunities lost in this country to get its people trained in core engineering and technology works.

Operating in this manner without understanding the fundamentals have landed India into a precarious situation. If any one wants to set up a manufacturing base in India, he is posed with the problem of shortage of experienced technicians and engineers. In a competitive world, how can you think of spending huge sums for training all your man power some where else always ? Barring a few, almost every manufacturing facility now India are foreign owned. They may close shop at any given time when things do not move in their favor.

Engineering graduates, post graduates and doctorates who work in the engineering colleges as teaching faculty cannot be considered as engineers with practical experience, in India. This is because of the extremely poor mobility of engineers from industry to academics and vice versa in India. The AICTE which is presently dominated by academicians seem to prevent this from happening for reasons that could be guessed easily. Engineering curricula in India is crammed with theoretical topics which are of practically no use in real life situations in many instances. Engineering colleges and universities need to learn tailoring of the courses for the benefit of the industries where the engineers are going to be employed by mutual interactions. However, due to the impractical approaches by AICTE and the institutions, such a thing can never happen in India as that are happening in developed countries like the USA and some European nations. The result is that India produce more cut-paste engineers who haven't really understood what engineering really is !

Now let me come to the personal side of engineering career. Engineers are the most isolated lot of professionals in the world, even while they do their jobs in teams. This is because, every individual engineer, in most situations of actual engineering, does a unique work most often not really understood by their colleagues, peers or seniors. Their problems are not realized by their family members, their employers or their colleagues who themselves could be engineers. This is true even for those engineers who happen to be modern IT engineers. Engineering in reality is a brain storming work and as human beings are, no one really wants to live with fuming brains always. Thus in real engineering field, a number of engineers learn the tricks of cheating their hardworking colleagues to gain easy benefits. Many times, especially in India, deserving engineers get neglected when clever colleagues snatch their opportunities. In such a situation, most often it so happens that the clever ones get elevated to top positions of technocracy. This complicates the matter further for real working engineers because now it would be their bosses who would do the actions of killing the real engineering and technology work environment. Real brainy engineers would be totally deprived of their opportunities to excel in their fields doing good for the country and the society. The easy goers would be happier and benefited if their organization get an equipment, project or technology from external sources rather than getting it done using their own talents ! Many organizations in India with major stakes in engineering and technology have failed miserably to accomplish their goals or sustain their goals only due to this kind of a situation. Indian engineers due to various reasons become so selfish that they fail to do mentoring their subordinates so that the latter can give their best in their career.

Another aspect which I have noticed is important to be understood in this context. The engineering curricula, as I said earlier, is too theoretical oriented that the young graduates do not get much opportunity to learn professional ethics and other soft skills that are essential in life. At the same time, when many of them proceed to do their management studies, they forget their engineering for all practical purposes. Unfortunately, post graduation and doctorate courses in engineering are more theoretical and are prepared by those who have learnt it in the same manner before. These courses only prepare an engineering graduate to be a teacher of some theoretical aspects  of applied physical sciences and they would no longer be in a position to distinguish between science and engineering. Unlike in other professional courses, engineering has degraded itself to be worth of considering as a professional course. Thanks to the way it proceeded in India in the last few decades.

The degradation is too visible when you notice the eagerness of some technocrats who proudly declare them as management experts and not as engineering experts. They consider engineering as an inferior job. This is a peculiar situation in India. No engineer in high positions in developed nations would ever prefer to say like this. In fact this particular situation has created a situation in India that many engineering organizations are now headed by non-engineers.

If any one has failed the engineering profession, no one else should be blamed. It is the so-called engineers themselves who created such a situation in this country. By creating that kind of a  situation they have knowingly or unknowingly made engineering a free-for-all profession with no value. That is perhaps the reason why the top brain engineers from the IITs and other such institutes are trying their level best to use their education to leave this country seeking better pastures elsewhere where they can use their talents and creativity in a better way !

India needs engineers who can work for India with honor and dignity. India needs to provide its engineers the opportunity to try out their skills without the hassles of constraints and pressure of opportunists. When that is possible, perhaps we could think of keeping pace with our neighbors like China.

At least we would be doing some justice to the million of youngsters who are hopefully spending their moneys and brains to acquire the basic skills in engineering. If we fail to do that, then it would soon be the engineering bubble that is going to burst in India !

Chemical Engineering : A Launch that Failed to get Momentum after Take Off !

As an engineering student I learnt chemical engineering, the modern day engineering discipline which equips a student to get familiarized with various knowledge inputs, theories and mathematical tools that are required for designing and operating various kinds of process plant systems concerned with all kinds of gases, liquids and solids and their physio-chemical conversions.

As part of the curriculum, I remember getting introduced to various topical concepts such as Fluid and Particle Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Transport Phenomena, Instrumentation, Process Control, Stoichiometry, Unit Operations, Unit Processes, etc, etc with necessary equipping inputs in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and fundamentals of established conventional engineering such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical and electronics engineering.

Those who devised this relatively new branch of engineering perhaps thought of having a better trained lot of professionals for designing and operating complex automated chemical process plants such as the oil refineries, the fertilizer plants, the petrochemical complexes, mineral processing plants, bulk industrial chemical production plants and the like with a better understanding of the multi-disciplinary skills required for such complex industrial production units of modern times.[For those interested in knowing the history and origin of chemical engineering click here or here !]

If  conventional engineering disciplines such as Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering   originated as what we know today as a result of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries in UK and Europe which instigated professionalism in modern civilization, Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering was on account of a similar professionalism of some US academicians a century later.

Chemical Engineering being more modern got a curriculum cramped with much of the information from the former engineering disciplines and some more of its own from the Industrial Chemistry and Applied Physical Sciences.

In that way, Chemical Engineering offered the students a much broader aspects of knowledge about the modern industrial technology and was thought to equip the newly trained engineers with better inter disciplinary skills that are required to work in the complex industries of the twentieth century.

From my personal experience, I can say that those who got trained as a chemical engineer is in a better position to grasp the interdisciplinary complexities of the modern day industries where physio-chemical processes are employed for various kinds of production activities.

Stringent statutory stipulations in industrial safety and environmental issues coupled with the economics of production caused greater opportunities and challenges for chemical engineering. Higher demands of instrumentation and process control automation incorporating modern day advances of digital electronics added more complexity to this field of studies. Developments in corrosion sciences and modern materials of construction technologies enhanced the burden of diverse knowledge in chemical engineering.

As a result chemical engineering began disintegrating into more and more specialized fields. Petroleum and Petrochemical engineering, Bio-chemical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, etc came into being as a result of academic initiatives in the last few decades.

However, the enthusiastic universities that went ahead with specialized fields of studies some how appeared to care little to create equivalent awareness about such courses and their benefits in the minds of the industrial planners and decision makers.

This has caused the recruiters often forgetting to include such advancely trained candidates from their essential qualification specifications for their new recruits or to allot a lesser intakes for such candidates.

The result was lesser career opportunities for those who ventured to learn more. This resulted in vacant seats in the universities which offered advanced courses.

This in turn created a shortage of adequately trained people for the industries, the latter resorting to place conventionally trained engineers even in specialized interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary areas for which they lacked the necessary background knowledge. This resulted in poor technical management of industries causing poor industrial safety and higher Operational and Maintenance costs.

A vicious circle has been created !

Let me cite the example of India. In the days when I was a student some four decades ago, chemical engineering was one of the most sought after disciplines of engineering.

Now it is not. No new engineering colleges which came into existence in this country in the past one and a half decade period offer chemical engineering as a course of study. Chemical engineering is offered only in the elite and old institutions. Even in those, the responses from the students are lukewarm due to the collapse of career opportunities in this branch of engineering.

At the same time engineers who work in the industry, like me in senior positions, feel the shortage of adequately trained chemical engineers in the intake levels who could take up the industrial challenges.

In India, the massive exodus of fresh engineers of any discipline to non-engineering field of works should be another concern for any body who has long term thoughts on human resource planning.

I would like to get feed backs and opinions on the issue that I just highlighted from engineering academicians, students and engineers working in the industries.

Update-1 [4-12-12]

Let me thank all those who gave their comments so far.

There are two professional bodies in India which are supposed to take care of the professional development needs of the chemical engineers. These are:

1. The Institution of Engineers (India) : This body is for all engineers including ChE.

2. The Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE) : This body is exclusively for ChE.

Though these professional bodies are doing some work in organizing professional seminars and conferences or conducting associateship examinations, their contribution in ensuring good career prospects to those who have chosen this discipline, on a broader perspective, is not so commendable. They lack the will to take up major issues with the government or the Industry. Their activities in the recent years appear to be more of a routine nature than some thing of a proactive nature.

There are some industries in India who have realized the benefits of having ChEs in their technical and general management streams. These industries usually provide a good career opportunity for the ChEs.

However, in many other industries and areas, jobs which are most suited to ChEs are professionally diluted due to the ignorance of their top management. In such industries, brilliant ChEs get entrapped in an intellectual and professional dilemma, making them soon losing their interest in professional work.

Many bright ChEs are compelled to switch over to other areas of work which has nothing to do with their background training and education.

In the 1950's handful of ChEs passed out with degrees in India from one or two engineering institutions. In 2012, this should be to the tune of about 6000 [ I do not have any correct information. This is a mere estimate. There are nearly 165 engineering institutions now having a department of ChE. Assuming that they are capable of training an average of 40 ChEs every year, then the number should be about 6600. Besides, the IIChE and the IE(I) conducts their own associateship examinations in ChE which is equivalent to a Bachelors degree such as the BSChE, BScEngg (ChE), BE or BTech (ChE). All the engineering colleges that impart training in ChE are reputed institutions who have been in existence for quite some years. The majority of Indian engineering colleges established in the private sector in the last 10-15 years do not have a ChE department.

For a country of India's population and size, this is a small number. Since ChEs are comparitively short supply, their employability is better as compared to the other disciplines now.

In this context, I find this paper  presented by Mr Sharu S Ratnekar in one of the conferences of ChEs an interesting reading.

[Chemical Engineers-Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow ] 

It would be of help to all , if you express your views and reactions. 

Escaping from the 'God-dog' Syndrome !

A person inducted as a responsible link in any organisational set up would immediately land in to a very complex behavioural situation. He or she is boss and subordinate to some one all at the same time ! An organisation regardless of its objective and purpose, is made up of an endless chain. But most people fail to understand this 'endless' characteristics of the organisation. What is apparent in an organisation is a powerful head with many weak tails, linked together by links of varying strengths and powers.

Human psychological trait is a mix of master-slave behaviours. Though both characteristics are essential for our survival, there is a danger of people forgetting this in built mechanism.

In an organisation when people are entrusted with various kinds of powers, they assume the role of the master or God. Those entrusted within their command then have to assume the role of the obedient servants. Some play their role as servants too well with unquestionable loyalty to their masters. In an organisation where a boss happens to have subordinates showing abnormal dog like loyalty there is a danger of the boss getting elevated to a pseudo psychic level of a god. The boss starts thinking as the god of all that he or she surveys!

The danger starts from this. Organisational career growth is a lure built in the system to exploit the ambition of people to move from the servant to master levels. But it works for only immature people who are so gullible and foolish into forgetting their real individual nature when someone praise them meaninglessly or award them with a temporary title of a 'higher' post.

So for all individuals in an organisation the 'god-dog' syndrome develops to varying degrees. For those at the top levels the god characteristics most prominent infront of those below. But unfortunately for this 'god' to maintain his or her  status as 'god' a higher level of 'dog' nature has to be exhibited infront of his or her boss. Thus the god-dog trait has to be highest at the highest levels. Such a situation makes these unfortunate fellows at the top organisational levels always in a pseudo mind set which makes them forget about their true self.

Many such pseudo gods face the 'fish-out-of-water' situation when they are out from the organisation by retirement or retrenchment.

Their life becomes pathetic at some point of time due to their earlier acquired pseudo god status with no 'dogs' to serve any more!

This syndrome is everywhere. But in the governmental organisations where 'gazetted' powers are more, the syndrome is more damaging. Damaging the true self of the individuals.

Organisations are made for the benefit of all individuals in the society and are groupings of conveniences for societal order and development.

As the society develops with all people contributing to a common cause, all individuals will become part of some organisation or many organisations at the same time.

They will have to play the roles of the master and the slave all at the same time.

But role plays should not change the true self.

But for immature individuals it is very difficult to realise the realities of life.

If they learn to escape from pseudo life situations such as the god-dog syndrome, it will do much good to them, to their family and the society all at the same time.

[Reproduced from the Author's Blog at SiliconIndia Website]

[View the linked list of all Blogs of the Author Here ]