Transforming Engineering Education in India by Seeking Motivations from Bharat

Abstract

There has been a growing awareness in recent years about the need for transforming engineering education in India that can enhance its effectiveness in serving the social and national goals. The efforts involved in these transformations pertain mainly to increasing the effectiveness of the processes of imparting knowledge, skills and wisdom by a teacher to a learner. However, most of these efforts are inspired by educational processes that are followed in the developed countries of the present. This paper is based on the contention that instead of following the developmental models of other countries if we seek motivations from our own past then we can surely approach our future as a developed nation faster. This is because history reveals that India before the British rule, i.e., Bharat excelled in all aspects of human development including science, engineering and education and enjoyed the status of a developed nation for a long unbroken period. In this paper we attempt a backward journey in time from India to Bharat to seek motivations from our inherent ischolar_main strengths. We then discuss how these motivations can illuminate our path towards achieving the desired transformations in the present engineering education in India, which can contribute to the resurgence of our glorious past, i.e., our re-emergence as a developed nation.