Where is the engineer?

I repeatedly took “Cho” to task for posing a similar question: “Where is the Brahmin?” I hope I get a better treatment from the readers for this post than what I meted out to him. “Cho” by his own admission, is a notional Brahmin. Likewise, I too am a notional engineer. But, there ends the comparison. I am on my own hence forth. God save me! And, that from an avowed atheist! You must, then, surmise that I am launching myself on an impossible task. So be it.

A couple of days ago I read that one of the three political Thackerays took exception to the proposal to name the Worli-Bandra Sea Link in Mumbai after Rajiv Gandhi. Please stop me from gagging myself with a spoon, twice over, once for the original suggestion and the second time for Thackeray’s, which carried the names of V D Savarkar, Phule et al. Nothing personal in my reaction, though gagging oneself is indeed intensely personal. It has everything to do with who I think I am, at least notionally – a civil engineer.

You cannot finish counting on all the digits you have – and if you are a male, one more – the number of properties owned by Mahatma/Indira/Rajiv (add Rahul to project this into the future) this, that and something else, in India. It can be a JJ colony, a university, a cancer hospital, a road, a chowk, a flyover, a bridge, a nuclear reactor, an airport, a dam, a canal, a shopping center – all over the country.

I am not being unduly harsh on the family; check that, two families. K. B. Hedgewar outbid the Mahatma for the larger of the two ring roads girdling Delhi. I have heard that the family of Annadurai is really hard up, but Anna himself is rich. He has an airport terminal, an arterial road, flyover and whatever else, all in Chennai, not to mention other cities, towns and villages of the state (there must be an Anna Bus Shelter somewhere along a barely passable rural road). Chatrapathi Shivaji owns Mumbai. But, Kolkata appears to be at least marginally different. While Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekanada, Ishwar Gupta, Vidya Sagar, Subhash Chandra Bose, and even Sister Nivedita are real estate tycoons and memorial owners, some scientists, like J C Bose, are also prominent property owners. But, to my knowledge, no engineers, like even Visweswaraiya, may own properties beyond one’s home state. But, Visweswaraiya’s assets will not match C V Raman’s, a scientist, who, if I am not mistaken owns a colony in Bengaluru.

Engineers are a very rational lot, it appears. Why else will all the IITs be recognized only by their location? Go inside IIT, Madras and at the first bifurcation in the road we see Bonn Avenue and Delhi Avenue, acknowledging the collaboration between the governments of India and the then West Germany. That is how rational engineers are. But, there is more to the story. The stationary hostels are named after flowing rivers and the moving buses, after immovable mountains. Have you seen finer balancing? Neither have I.

Engineers also do not seem to have someone like Prof. Jayant Narlikar to promote the cause of their profession. This may even be only at the most elementary level, like naming a place. A few years ago I had asked Prof. Narlikar why is it that India seems to shun recognizing scientific talents in the public sphere. In his response by email he mentioned that roads within the campus of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune, of which he was the Founder-Director, are named after distinguished Indian scientists.

Why did the engineering community not put up its own suggestion, an Indian engineering personality, for the name of the sea link? One, engineering is too amorphous and equally intermingled to come up with a consensus. Two, engineering personalities are subsumed by the scale of the projects they undertake. No one is going to believe that a single engineer is responsible for Bakra-Nangal Dam. True, Mr E Sreedharan is garnering all the accolades and he is irrevocably connected with Delhi Metro. But that is a one-off. But, he too acknowledges in every forum that the felicitations belong to everyone in the organization. Equally importantly his involvement is recognized at the level of managing the process and not necessarily for the technical input, the engineering contribution. He is an engineering manager and not necessarily an engineer, per se. Yet, it is not E Sreedharan Metro but Delhi Metro.

Sure, there are a number of professional associations and government bodies that recognize engineers, but these do not impinge on the conscience of the public. No Engineering Oscars. Consequently, engineers do not own any of the properties they create.

In these times, when what you own defines you, indeed validates your existence, engineers do not own anything. Ergo, they do not exist. Engineer’s existence can be proved only through an analytical statement: The existent engineer exists! Engineers really cannot complain and indeed should not.

First I thought I would use my powers of concentration and invoke Vishwakarma, the original architect-cum-builder, to come down to earth and identify an engineer among humans. But, I may have run the risk of inviting a TRIPS based lawsuit. Hence I took up the job myself. I have finished the task and am going back to my humble abode, just as sage Vasisth did in “Enge Brahmanan?” but without the guiding hand of the Lord himself.

Raghuram Ekambaram