India’s Underutilized Engineering Human Capital
M. Rokonuzzaman writes for DOT :
India produces 1.5 million engineering graduates every year. Unfortunately, 80 percent of them do not get suitable jobs to make good use of their degrees. The quality could be an issue. But what about graduates of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)? Graduates of IITs excel in technology industry of the USA. But why has India failed to capitalize such a rich engineering human capital in developing India’s innovation economy. Here are few areas where we should look into to get some insights about the issue.
• A country develops Engineers to address three basic purposes: 1. To work as in-house employee of technology using companies and organizations, 2. To work in engineering contracting firms, and 3. To work in start-ups, pursue start-ups, or to work in large technology firms. By focusing on only science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), IITs focus on developing engineers for the first category. IITs have been developed to teach the technology which is already known somewhere in the world, and/or to conduct follow up research having little relevance to harnessing India’s innovation opportunity.
• India’s Government policy has been towards importing technology, as opposed to leading the creation of new technology wave.
• Indian’s firms are weak in pursuing incremental innovation, as their business strategy succeeds on protectionism. Upon succeeding in making certain things, Indian firms keep replicating them. For this reason, many of the products produced by Indian firms are virtually remaining the same. Inappropriate corporate strategy and Government incentives are root cause of slow progress of product quality.
• Research for the sake of making publications, often getting patents, for the purpose of increasing number, does not produce return from R&D investment. India’s research culture must graduate from this state of knowledge production. They should prove that investment in research leads to far grater return through the improvement of quality and reduction of cost of whatever India is producing now. Once this model is perfected, private sector will start making aggressive investment in R&D driving India’s edge.
• Predatory pricing, Government incentives, and protectionism are barrier to India’s capability to unlock technology and innovation capability. In the recent past, one of the richest men in India went to keep burning billions through predatory pricing to monopolize the telecom business. How much that company invested in R&D for advancing technology in making telecom service better and cheaper is worth of questioning.
• Culture of making risk free profit is another major barrier for India. Benefiting from technology edge through R&D investment is a risky proposition. Indians are in the following group. Due to that reason, India could not succeed in translating the IT service success into building IT innovation business—to lead the world.
• India’s frugal innovation appears to be non-functional thinking, leading to mega failure of TATA NANO.
India can take many lessons from Japan. By capitalizing tinkering and imitating capabilities, Japan entered into industrial economy. But by focusing on incremental innovation, Japanese firms are market leader in many areas. Japan’s success hinges on creating knowledge and translating it into product and process features in serving customers better. Although 13 Japanese firms are among the top 50 US patent recipients, but there is not even a single India firm in the ranking.
IIT graduates are doing very well across the world, and India is a great nation, but why India has not succeeded in building a story like virtually unknown Largan of Taiwan? It’s time for India and engineering graduates on creating knowledge and translating it into product and process features so that Indian firms can succeed in offering better quality product at lower price in making greater profit, while paying more to people and producing less pollution.
M. Rokonuzzaman, Ph.D, Academic, Researcher and Activist: Technology, Innovation and Policy
e-mail: Zaman.rokon.bd@gmail.com