Nitin Pai: Train more civil engineers to solve our infrastructure crisis
India’s urban infrastructure is ill-equipped for heavy rain and the like. Although technical solutions exist, we lack expertise. Let’s encourage civil engineering studies, which have taken a backseat to IT-focused fields, so that we have enough professionals for our needs.
Over the past few weeks, heavy rains caused flooding in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Gurgaon, Guwahati and several other cities. Newly inaugurated metro stations, upscale gated communities, technology parks and arterial roads were flooded, causing economic losses and adding to the chaos that characterizes India’s urban spaces. A couple of years ago, an online survey found that over 90% of the respondents across the country suffer from water-logging.
It is easy and correct to attribute the problem to climate change, rapid urbanization and corruption. There is another reason: India does not have enough civil engineers.
We have been expanding cities and building a massive amount of infrastructure without trained, skilled and experienced engineers necessary to do a good job. We get highways with dangerous corners, roads that get jammed, flyovers that get delayed, and, yes, flooding in metro stations, underpasses and residential car parks. It is not an exaggeration to say that India is facing a civil engineering shortage crisis.
Also Read: India’s growth and urban planning: On different planets
The Indian Roads Congress, a venerable national standards body, has laid out standards for roads, pavements, pedestrian bridges, storm water drains and dozens of other things. After going through these standards, I tried to recall instances where they are actually followed. Other than a few New Delhi neighbourhoods and some parts of Panaji, I do not think there is any place in the country that is built in compliance with those standards.
It does not cost much to build roads that meet standards. A road that has the recommended gradient will drain water away and resist water-logging. It only requires the engineers who designed the road network to pay attention to watershed—and contractors to surface the road to maintain that slope. If your road is flooded, it is because either the engineer or the contractor—quite likely both—missed this most basic design lesson. Road medians and speed-breakers are installed without any consideration to their effect on water or pedestrian movement. Few traffic police officers have heard about or care about the Indian Roads Congress and its recommendations.
While local governments do hire engineers, people in these positions are technical bureaucrats rather than practising civil engineers. The private sector, for its part, has long been complaining of a shortage in skilled manpower. Why is there a shortage?
Also Read: Plot twist: Can the monsoon become urban India’s hero again?
Well, most people who graduated with a civil engineering degree in the past three decades do not do civil engineering. The great Indian information technology (IT) boom is the ‘Dutch disease’ that has claimed a large number of them. The remaining ones are in government, consulting and managerial roles in India’s fast-growing economy. Very few remain in the civil engineering profession.
In response to these trends, engineering colleges across the country have not expanded—and in some cases cut down—the number of civil engineering seats relative to computer science and electronics branches. Civil engineering is not a preferred branch for most students, and is seen as a halfway house to a career in the IT sector. We do not have accurate data, but of the 1.5 million or so engineers that graduate every year, around 300,000 specialize in civil engineering and 80% of them leave the field.
Only 60,000 pursue a career in civil engineering in India or abroad. Effectively, India thus produces fewer civil engineers than doctors.
There is also a problem of quality. Because so many graduates end up working in IT, it is hard to find good civil engineering faculty, resulting in weakness in the quality of civil engineering graduates.The overall effect is one where there is an acute shortage of good civil engineers. This cascades down the infrastructure sector: without enough engineers to supervise the work of technicians and labourers, the overall output remains sub-optimal. Shoddy quality, poor workmanship and project delays are covered up by corruption.
Also Read: Urban renewal: Indian cities need a governance overhaul
The good news is that unlike grand problems like climate change, chaotic urbanization and corruption, public policy can help increase the supply of good civil engineers. The Union and state governments should collaborate with the infrastructure industry to set up civil engineering centres of excellence in state universities in Tier-2 cities. Good faculty from the IITs and top-tier engineering colleges can be seconded to these centres to rapidly build capacity. Merely raising the profile of civil engineering—through industry collaboration and campus placements—can channel talent into the field.
The publicity around the extraordinary Chenab Bridge has rekindled public interest in the field. G. Madhavi Latha, a key member of the design team, wrote that although her role was exaggerated in the media, she is extremely happy that many fathers had written to her saying that they wanted their daughters to emulate her, and that young kids have expressed an interest in a career in civil engineering.
This is an opportune moment for India to invest in building a strong civil engineering base. Artificial intelligence can easily replace coders, but it will be a while before it replaces civil engineers and masons.
The author is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.
topics
