Let us look fifty years ahead (Talk Delivered at VJTI)

·       If you buy a bike today, it may serve you five to ten years, but the degree you earn today will serve you about fifty years or more. I look back to 1962 when I earned my first degree. I thought of what my life was going to be and what choices I would make. What would be fast-growing technologies? What kind of jobs would be available? My principal had told me not to risk getting into newfangled topics like electronics! “Do your electrical engineering”, he said, you will never worry about a job, there will always be Rs 150 per month in the electricity board! If you like, you can do post-graduate study in electronics after your B.E.! To simplify my task, he turned down my application to transfer to a sister college where I had to go for electronics!

·       What can I tell you that would help you look ahead a little better? A lot of scholars have tried to look ahead and written about their findings. Reading relevant books can make your looking ahead successful.  This reading if continued life-long can give insights all your life. After all, it is not as if you can make all your decisions for your career by Dec 31!

·       I will attempt in the time available to share a broad perspective with you. You will now make the decisions I had to make, like going abroad or not, and if so, when to return. I went abroad in 1971 and returned in 1973. India today is very different than what it was when I returned in 1973. There was a rationing of milk! I could not buy butter easily; the shop keeper would sell butter only to those who bought a loaf of bread as well! We have now Indian milk production at three times the per capita level we had in 1973. Life is a lot easier for the average Indian than it was in those days, so it is even easier to return now, but still it is not a bad idea to go abroad to get better learning opportunities, to get a better professional background, and to enjoy combined opportunities to learn and work for some time. But come back! You are needed here!

·       Let me come back to the economy. As I see it, the basic challenge of life in India is this.  We get a ton of rain water per year and solar energy equivalent to 5.5 KWh per day for every Sq. M of land, along with several other things.  We have to use these as efficiently as we can and manage within these limits. Can’t we?

·       What about capital? We seem to have more money as market cap in the Indian capital markets than Germany! About 2.12 Trillion $. The people may be poorer, but they are saving 30% of the GDP every year! Some of that saving goes into industry and creates jobs for young people. As more young people come out of school, our population becomes a better-educated one every year. 

·       How good India’s economy is going to be will depend upon how well-educated our young people are. Statistics show that if you looked at Indians 20-24 years old in 1970, their average length of schooling had been only 3 years. If you like at a similar group of Indians now, you find the average schooling is 8 1/2 years. The average is going up every year.  Don't sneeze at it! The average years of schooling for Japan in the year 2000 was 91/2 Countries Compared by Education > Average years of schooling of adults. International Statistics at NationMaster.com 

·       What about jobs? As a student, I had learnt that India was a developing country, mainly dependent on agriculture. India has changed since then. Agriculture gives us 15.4 % of our GDP. Oil & Petroleum industries give it 15%. Manufacturing gives it 16%. Auto industry gives it 7.5%. Information Technology gives it 7.7%. Banking & Finance sectors give 7.7%.

·       You may wonder why you need to hear about the economy and about different sectors. Many companies, particularly in the IT sector, expect employees to have domain knowledge in one or more sectors of the economy. Every one of these sectors hires engineers. Even Banking & Financial sectors also hire their own share of engineers. Enterprising engineers who start a business also have opportunities to work in any of these sectors.

·       There is another reason to be aware of economic issues. Look at how fortune turns. When I passed out of college, one of the high technology fields I admired was nuclear energy. Now, look at the economics of nuclear power plants. Each plant location needs an exclusion zone, 3 km in diameter around it, to limit the risk of any adverse incident. What is the cost of such a piece of land? Who wants to live near it? How much nuclear power will you generate there? A few gigawatts? How much solar energy can you generate from the same piece of land? At what cost? Do we need nine sq. km in one piece for solar energy?

·       There are huge forces at play reshaping the world. We need to be aware. I don’t think it would hurt a young engineer to take a map of a coastal city, say Mumbai, Goa, Ratnagiri, Kolkata or Chennai, and draw contour lines showing low-level areas. Which of these areas would lose commercial value due to climate change in your lifetime? 

·       On October 5, 1973, my wife and I returned after two years stay in the USA. Ours was a TWA flight from Pittsburgh to Mumbai via Jerusalem. We landed in Mumbai and learnt that a war had broken out in the middle east. The price of petrol went up five times in the aftermath of that war. Can you imagine what changes an event like that can bring in the careers of young engineers?

·       One of the things it did was to encourage researchers to develop more efficient batteries. Three of them developed the lithium-ion battery which has brought us closer to the electric car. They won a Nobel prize in 2019.

·       Their science is working for the world already. Our cell phones would not be what they are without these batteries. There are even one-lakh rupee electric bikes available in India now. What do you think would happen to electric cars in India in your lifetime?

·       Look at the LED revolution. Their usage in India has gone up more than ten times during 2012-2018.

·       Consider what is happening to some cities in the north due to air pollution. The cost of disposing of stubble left over after the harvest poses a major problem and endangers peoples’ lives. Who can save them? Obviously, engineers can and should do that.

·       Also consider what app-controlled cabs have done: created over a million part-time jobs for drivers and have even reduced the demand for car purchases.

·       So, air pollution is not the only problem that engineers can handle. Traffic problems, water supply problems, employment problems, affordable housing problems, a whole lot of these are our problems. We design and implement the solutions. It would be necessary in future for engineers to be involved in dealing with problems from the policy level downwards. I am glad that two of your alumni are already senior ministers!

·       Let me conclude by saying you are going to have your hands full. There are lot of problems to tackle. There are lots of opportunities. You can bet that the India of the 21^st century would be a great place to live and contribute. I offer my best wishes to you.    

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