Class, Techies, and me

What is the story of civilization if it isn’t the story of class struggle? Blood has been shed and forgotten, just to be shed anew… Every morning, I take the bus to work…and though sometimes I imagine myself surrounded by highly intellectual and highly educated people…I most often liken my being to a labourer being herded into trucks and asked to break rocks all day…

As George Orwell put it in his book, 1984, the high, the middle and the low. Which class of people, I belong to beats me. Whether the question is relevant or not is a different issue altogether, but since I am driven to write about it, I will assume its relevant enough for me. In the Indian context, I find that an engineer is somewhat of a dull creature…devoid of any recreational pursuits…driven solely by his desire to …umm…code. It appears to me that people are bent over backwards to be technically proficient…whether it appeals to them or not, I will not comment on. A profession of your own choosing will make you happy…is what I had heard when growing up…I find it difficult to swallow that so many of our fellow countrymen are driven to engineering because their heart desires it.

My batch was full of people wanting to get into management…To this regard I want to share an experience with you…Once preparing for his MBA interview, a batchmate asked me to test his knowledge on engineering issues…lest they ask the same of him in his interview…among other questions I asked him ‘How does an aeroplane fly?’ .The question was met by silence, one could always argue that it is not in the domain of an final year electronics student (one of the toppers) to know such redundant details…or could one??…my point being …a B.E. is worthless…the skill set required to do most of the work in the present scenario can be taught in two years…or less….

Out of place and out of scope, the two great descriptors of the mammoth majority of Indian engineers…
Creativity is often, a word they have their last encounter with, in school…A relic of a forgotten childhood…The masses sing praise for the regiments of able engineers passing out every year…But I see an army of shovel wielding blue collar workers…typing away incessantly with their legs chained to giant balls of steel…with a salary enough to make him stand proud among the vaster army of farmers and labourers…but too little to give him anything he really wants…Yes I am the middle…never the high