The Indian student perspective (Score 1)

I am a CS student in India, studying in an engineering college. Over the past few years a large number of privately funded engineering institutions have mushroomed all over the country. We students, when we wrere in school, took it as the opening of oppurtunities for us to study engineering. Because all these years engineering was confined to a few prestigious state funded institutes (of which the IITs are world famous).In an overpopulated country like India competition is fierce and getting into these places is difficult. It is also the dream of most middle-class students to become an engineer or a doctor. These professions bear a lot of social prestige. So, once out of school, the path forks into either of these two fields. Doctors command a lot of respect and in a place where poverty is widespread there is always work at hand. Engineers nowadays rush to enter the IT industry. Starting salaries of Rs 20,000/month (around 450 USD) are attractive for beginners, and even more tempting is the chance to travel to the US, when the company sends them on training.

Academics here stresses on theoretical knowledge. In our college, there is no difference between the IT and the CS course. 90% of the students learnt to program in C in college. We still use the DOS Borland Turbo C++ (blue screen) IDE and know that compiling a program means clicking on the menu and finding the 'run' option. Those who have a slight inclination towards technology and computers, get sucked into the VB-.NET-Java paranoia. Though we've had papers on data structures and algorithms they have been grossly neglected by teacher and student both. It's but natural, because, spending time learning these will give us no edge over any body when we get recruited by the IT companies. For the few (there are two in my class) who resist such commercialisation of computer science education, it becomes frustrating, coping with poor quality teaching and zero exposure to innovative work.

The IT industry here is services based. Companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, CTS are into mass manufacturing and maintenance of hackneyed business software. Making money is the major motivation of Indian companies. That said, at the end of the day we Indians are chasing illusions. Our policy makers are inviting outsourcing and creating jobs, and mass-producing software professionals (from engineering institutes). In the long run we loose our identity and the foreign companies return dissatisfied.

In India you'll find geeks in litrature, music, art but since there is no generation that has been brought up on electronic gadgets, video games and the PC, the programmer community and culture is hard to find.