Opinion From unemployment to innovation

But there is no escaping the immediate bad news. Take India’s most high-profile group of job aspirants,the engineers. The supply-demand equation in the engineer production line is worrying. On the supply side,there is an inundation of engineers. In the past decade,hundreds of engineering colleges sprouted. As per a report,in Andhra Pradesh,over 200 engineering colleges were sanctioned during the course of a year. These new colleges added a capacity that matches the total output of engineers in several leading European counties,according to one estimate.

On the supply side again,the government has never worried about mapping skill supply to marketplace demand. It has mostly caved in to popular demand,licensing engineering colleges and courses willy-nilly. For instance,the government sanctioned biotech engineering courses in a variety of flavours: bioinformatics,biogenetic engineering and so on. In the past five years,only 5 per cent of biotech graduates from the top 10 engineering colleges have found jobs in the biotech industry. The rest found their way to,where else,the IT industry.

The scenario has changed in the past couple of years. On the demand side,these graduate engineers’ biggest employer,the IT industry’s growth is slowing and is no longer in the same hiring mode. For instance,the number of entry-level engineers hired by the top 20 IT companies in India has dropped steadily from around 350,000 annually a few years ago to 150,000 last year. While capacity doubled in the past years,entry-level jobs for engineers have near-halved. The upshot of this demand-supply gap is that engineers will have to contend with not just unemployment but also a newer phenomenon — underemployment.

But,as seen from Bangalore again,there may be a bright side to this story. The glut of engineers is sparking off an entrepreneurial and innovation surge. Thousands of engineers pour into Bangalore each year,hoping to snag their dream job. Dissatisfied with the choices,some are turning to entrepreneurship. At a time when every idea is being converted into an app,newer technologies such as social,mobile,analytics and cloud are opening up opportunities for students to demonstrate their innovative spirit,said former academician Ramamoorthy Ramkumar,a senior vice president of research and communications at Cognizant Technologies. “The glut could unleash a new normal,a start-up culture,” he said.

“There may be a deficit of jobs for engineers but the idea that there is a shortage of opportunity is nonsense,” said Sanjay Swamy,an angel investor who is managing partner at an early stage start-up incubator,Angel Prime. There are significant prospects for Indian engineers to build world-class products targeting the domestic as well as global markets,he said: “The past 20 years have been a dream run for IT but the next 20 will be just that for engineering innovation.”

More engineers could take to higher education,niche specialisation and research,all areas that got the go-by during the IT revolution. “This could drive fundamental research,lead to more R&D and patents and also address the gap in supply of high-quality faculty,” said Ramkumar.

These opportunities could come knocking on the doors of those with ambition,passion and original thinking. For the others,the engineering dream could soon go sour.

saritha.rai@expressindia.com