Engineers – Are they the Messiah’s or the Satan’s

Last year was a disappointing year being a human. Two states of the same country, fighting with each other for water. Water crisis is going to be the cause for the next world war. Though we are living in a world surrounded by 79% water, still the availability of potable water is getting decreased day by day. Is this because the demand is exceeding the supply or is it because we are taking water for granted?  There are 12 thousand farmer suicides that happen in this country in a year on an average. In the last ten years we have almost lost 1.2 lakh farmers. Isn’t there a solution for the problem? There are almost 15 lakh engineers coming out each year in India. Aren’t they the ones who are supposed to give solutions to the modern day problems?

Engineering in India today is seen as a way of making money, symbol of status, a means for increasing the saleability of the bride, a degree to be shone of to the community of illiterate that one has became an engineer. But are we seeing the real engineers or do we really teach engineering? We are expecting solutions to the modern day problems from the engineers? But aren’t they the ones who created these problem to begin with? We the engineers are confused about the roles we are supposed to play. Civil Engineers for instance in India believe that their role is in constructing the buildings and only the buildings. Isn’t farmer suicide a civil engineering problem? A problem which arises due to the mismanagement of land, inappropriate irrigation practice, wrong cropping pattern, ill-treatment of water, etc , etc,  etc.  Almost 1200 road accidents happen in india every day, which accounts to around 4.5 lakh accidents every year. Isn’t this a civil engineering problem? India generates around 150 million tonnes of waste every day. What’s so staggering in this statistic is we have produced a record 104 million tonnes of rice in a single year in 2012? That means we are producing more waste in a single day than the rice we produce for the entire year. How are we really going to manage this waste generated? Isn’t this a civil engineering problem? The water dispute between Karnataka – tamilnadu – Andhra – kerala,  isn’t it a pure civil engineering problem? 

I have a doubt whether we are supposed to look forward or backward. Moving back to 2500 BC, i.e almost 4500 years ago, we had the Indus valley civilisation. Civilisation was consisting of two major cities Harappa and Mohenjadaro, which was having a fully closed drainage system, closed using burnt bricks. All the houses had access to water and drainage facilities. In modern day India, is there any city which boasts off 100% closed drainage facilities. Even the so called metros failed to provide closed drains, forget the other India which is much more underdeveloped. Kallanai dam which was built during the 2^nd century amidst a turbulent Cauvery river, is used to split Cauvery water into four streams kollidam, vennaru, Cauvery and Puthu Aru to effectively utilize the flooding water for irrigation. It’s almost two thousand years since its construction, and it is still in excellent condition. And we saw a flyover in Kolkata collapse last year during its construction killing twenty seven and multi storey building collapse in moulivakkam killing 61 people, constructions which were supposed to have the use of all the modern day advancements and technology.

The city of lakes kanchipuram developed by the palavas had excellent draining system which utilised seasonal rains to fill its lakes and supply water for irrigation throughout the year. The modern day engineers propose fantastic plans to construct even government facilities in the midst of the channels and encroaching lakes dismantling the drainage systems, which is the reason for the ever frequent floods. On one hand we have countries like Israel with hardly any rain with surplus water, and in india with above average rains we fight for water. Is it because of the nature’s fury? Is it the utter mismanagement of resources by the modern day planners? Or is it the non applicability of technology and innovation to solve the local problems by our modern day engineers?

Everywhere we see, there are hundreds and thousands of engineering problems which needs immediate attention in our country. Problems which need the effort of thousands of engineers to work tirelessly for a number of years for it to be solved. But yet we hear the stories of thousands of engineers being unemployed. And all those who are employed are working hard in the IT sector solving the problems of the world. Earlier engineering was focused on building the community, a nation, where technology development was focussed on the welfare of the people of the community or the nation. Engineering enabled and ensured a better life of the individuals with its focus. But the focus gradually changed into wealth accumulation, were all innovations or technology was focused on ensuring maximisation of profits, exploitation of resources and in turn death and destruction worldwide. Engineers are no more messiahs that ensured a living environment; they are the satans that have lead to the slow destruction of this beautiful earth.

The air quality index of delhi has approached near to 1000 were the satisfactory standard as per our own pollution control board AQI is around 50 – 100. The pollution levels are almost 10 times higher. In the quest for faster cars, higher production, greater wealth, better standard of living we are killing ourselves. We look forward to those engineers who created those ultra modern cars, who created those super efficient industries, who created those fast growing hybrid crops and chemical fertilizers, who helped accumulate huge wealth for a select few billionaires of the world to come forward to save our mother earth.  All we need is pure air, pure water and safe food for our children’s across the world, and you are the only ones who can ensure it. In the current scenario it is not going to be long before we see men eating men for their basic needs and that would be the extinction of this human race. All who will still survive would be the inhuman spirits that will do anything in order to satisfy their needs, without a hint of love, compassion or brotherhood and fully consumed by the Satan. It’s time for us to decide the role we are going to play, the earth saving messiahs or the earth consuming satans.