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Different drummer
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The four-day scientific festival at NIT, Suratkal, was an eye opener. SUDIPTO MONDALsays the aspiring engineers defied our clichéd notions of them
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Photo: R. Eswarraj
NEW ROUTES Each of them wants to charter a different course and steer clear of the herd mentality
Four days in the campus of the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka’s Surathkal campus, covering their annual national-level scientific festival, ‘Engineer 08’, offered a peek into the minds of aspiring engineers. Apart from
the unbridled revelry and sheer numbers that turned up to participate from all over the country, the event was a stereotype busting experience. For starters, they are surely not a herd waiting to jump into the first software sheep van that shows up at the campus for recruitments.
A student who looked like Jimi Hendrix stopped by for a chat over lunch on a day. Between mouthfuls he explained that almost the entire campus can be divided into two halves. “Almost everybody here is either for open-source-software (free software) or against it,” he says.
In certain cases a student who supports open source software will not attend an interview of a company that doesn’t support free software and vice-a-versa. “It is a political choice. Like leftwing and rightwing.”
Talking of political choices National Institutes of Technology (Formerly called Regional Engineering Colleges) have been often criticised because of the supposedly strong regional divides among the students. Regional affiliations tend to play a big role in political formations during elections to the student bodies. If someone is from a certain state they would vote only for people from their home state.
“That’s rubbish,” says a diminutive, studious looking boy who is handling the press at the event. He reveals that there are dozens of little factions within one single state. The Karnataka contingent alone is divided into Bangalore (Bangies), North Karnataka (NKs) and locals from this region (locos).
“The locos might ally with the contingent from Delhi, which might also have the support of students from the North East. There are endless permutations and combinations. In fact there have been times when ten students from a contingent have supported ten different formations.”
Dharen Chadda a successful brand consultant from Bangalore, who addressed the students here and also judged an advertising competition, strongly believes in the creative abilities of engineers and trashes suggestions that engineering education creates one-dimensional parochial individuals.
His brief stay on campus impressed him enough to comment during a chat, “These kids are dreamers, poets, philosophers and most importantly creators.”
He felt that a lot of them were just carrying the burden of their parent’s aspirations. “Some of the best and most creative advertising brains in the country are engineers.” He says because of their structured learning, most engineers develop intellectual discipline, “and that makes them aces,” he says.
At a time when the nation-wide call for inclusive growth is gaining strength, some budding engineers staked their candidacy for the cause of socially conscious engineering as well.
A bunch of students from the Manipal Institute of Technology came up with an elaborate plan for sustainable development of Coastal Karnataka.
Concluding their presentation one of the students said, “This project is our dream. It is our moral obligation to be social and economic engineers. This is what we want to do when we pass out.”
A senior who is pursuing his Master’s course, shows some mind-blowing pictures he has taken on his digital SLR camera.
Did he want to pursue photography professionally? “No. I am much better at aero-modelling, I think that is what I’ll get into,” he says.
One of the girls who seemed like had made a predictable choice, was preparing for her MBA entrance. But eventually wanted to teach. Where was the archetypal engineer? The archetype, one concluded was no archetype at all.
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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