Seriously! Where are we heading to?

There are certain important things that the current financial situation has made me think of, seriously!

We are all listening to the words like financial crisis, liquidity , recession very often these days and we all only fear of one thing - "How bad can it affect me!?" A few posts back, I had quoted that only "talented literates" can survive this doom, but my next question was - "What about the rest of them?"

I say the problem is all because of "Engineer population explosion"! Didn't get it quite right?
Let me explain - 3 decades back there were 5-8 engineering colleges per state and now there are more than 200-300 colleges! Churning out on an avg 50000 engineers per year which turns out to be a excess of engineers "on bench" and many even unemployed.

A middle-class family like ours will think of making a fortune in "creating" a software/electronics/mechanical brand product called engineer rather than letting himself to make a living in other low earning professions. Rather, the damn politics in this country and unhealthy reservations in all competitive exams force us to choose and be a part of the IT world of MNC's as they are free from all these.

Forced by the US markets and baseless future trends, the "new born engineer" is forced to work in so damn good projects like developing smart-phones which use symbian/android! Vlsi Chips with integrated HDTV-out, Bluetooth, wifi, FM, camera and what not all on the same chipset! Quad/Octa/Decahexa/ (nonsense) cores for gaming consoles!, All touch interface screen innovations!, Chipsets for showing the numerical display of odometer, speedometer and fuel gauge! He is fascinated by the work/project he involves and he is happy till he gets paid with all the perks ;)

Previously it was necessity which was the driving cause but now its changed to -"Laziness is the mother of all invention". People need gadgets to do everything for them. No doubt it makes life easy but there needs to be a limit for this Idiocracy. Have you ever thought of the number of brands and models of cell-phones in the market now? It will exceed the number of people in the world in few years or it may have already exceeded! We must be having enough number of host PC's and Laptops in this world to exceed the IP address range itself. Do you even use all the features that your cell phone provides atleast once in your lifetime? but yet the market sees a future! how and why?

Instead we need to innovate on something useful to humanity, like cost-effective solar energy trapping systems using mosfets and inverters, Effective farming with current technology, Fuel saving alternatives in cooking and travel, superconductors at room temperatures and levitation, LED lights for street lamps and torches, Eco-friendly houses, Recycling of waste water, Rainwater harvesting. Its time to go back to the basics, food-clothing-shelter-water.

I have started doing my part by commuting to office via cycling regularly. There is rainwater harvesting scheme, We have implemented at our house which partially works. I cook most of the times using microwave to save energy as it is efficient than heating up vessel unnecessarily. I preach only after testing feasibility and lots of practice :) Its the little things that makes life great!

In my opinion, the market is just driving people crazy.. and the already crazy people promote it even more!
Was there really a market for small cars in letting the tata nano out? How many middle-class families are going to invest on a car at this time of crisis? I am sure its going into the hands of Richie rich kid's and politician teen-kid's as a toy! Adding more to the traffic and pollution, the situation will worsen soon.

People need to understand that there are other professions too to choose a career and stop working on becoming yet another branded product themselves!
I read this somewhere - "If you throw a stone at the streets of Bangalore, It is sure either to hit a dog or an engineer!"
So wanna be yet another one who gets hurt? ;)