The road NOT taken ...

its easy to go by the trusted methods but it takes immense courage to break the conventional theories and develop your own set of ideas and theories... a knack to take the road that has not been taken may lead you both to the door of success or lots of troubles. So its always good to analyze the pros and cons of the decision that you are to take, and in such cases you need to be calculative not intuitive... its appreciable to follow your dreams but never go bye it just because you dream about it. You should realize your capabilities and take the decisions accordingly.

Its always very fulfilling to work in an area thats of your choice, so just introspect whats your calling and explore the possibilities in that area; these days there are a lot of interdisciplinary career openings like engineer working with medical machines, lawyer dealing with science and technology, engineers in bollywood, there is lot to explore, so never repent about what you are doing now ... just plan what you want to do in coming times - that might be crazy for others but you know that you can do it so why to wait ... dive in and the world is yours.

"An engineer has a duty not only to the client, but also to society and to the environment."

Today the consequences of human creativity in the areas of engineering, technology, and science have reached measures that only a few decades ago were unimaginable (e.g., telecommunication, genetic engineering, biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technologies, artificial intelligence). This capacity and development means an enormous amount of Power and Power can be tamed only with responsibility, obligation and accountability.

It is always expected from an engineer to keep the well being of the society in his/her mind, while designing new plans and implementing them, issues such as:

> Health and safety of common men,

> Pollution of all kinds,

> Depletion of resources,

> Energy policy,

> Nuclear power generation and waste disposal,

> Privacy,

> Economic and social aspects of advanced technology and automation,

> Educational aspects of the impact of technology.

Must be considered, because the development that we aspire can’t be visualized if the basics are not met, we very well know that the higher the building is to be built deeper the foundation is dug.

The fact of living in a complex, global, and intercultural world coupled with the unquestionable technological power wielded by governments and societies, make it necessary that engineers amplify the horizon of their technical knowledge with humanistic values and harmonize their specialized innovations and development with knowledge of the norms, principles, and ideals of ethics, it becomes moral duty of engineers to work for the betterment of society and to implement their knowledge for constructive purposes only. An engineer who is working for a particular firm or person should not blindly follow the orders of his employer, he should not act like a “hired gun” rather if something is going wrong then he must object, we must remember that society comes above individual gain. An engineer is ought to be morally correct and considerate of the responsibility endowed onto him to change the past into a better future. In the moral sense, responsibility is a virtue: a “responsible person” is careful, considerate, and trustworthy; common citizen rely on engineers, so if engineers do there job diligently they are being more than competent; in serving fellow humans, and serving them well is being good and honest to their profession. All the professions are given liberty to work autonomously for the betterment of society, a common person blindly follows the advice of a professional be it a doctor, lawyer, teacher or engineer and this liberty to decide the fate of society should not be made a mockery.

Thus, a responsible and competent engineer is one who is responsible for balanced development of society, nation and nature; he/she should be well informed about his field, should think for common people and be diligent towards his/her work. Always remember if we are not paying back to our roots then we are being a defaulter and defaulters have no where to survive.

LOK SABHA elections

Its about four five months from now that worlds one of the largest democracy would go voting but the verdict is again going to be biased, there has been a trend to promote the pratices of regionalism and communalism and we feel proud behaving so un-rationally and by not electing the right person, most of the people today suffer from psuedo-concern disorder-yes, that is they dont care really to exercise their right to vote and even if they do so, they end up favoring someone who is from their caste or religion- its sad but true, party like BJP with true nationalist ideology has suffered a set back just because they don't know how to ensure their minority vote bank by making fool out of that marginally influential part of population. Its a tragic irony that when we call BJP a hinduvadi party we tend to ignore that the hindu party with so called 80% of population behind it fails to make it to power, and they are termed as bad people who promote violence and what not all; but their counter part is so pure that they don't even need to talk about hinduism still they get to power, the problem is with the system that Indian republic follows somewhere BJP is better and in some aspects Congress scores higher and for that matter any political party, what i feel is that there should be a fair fight between their ideologies but then turn up these little regional parties making the in roads into the totals of bigger parties creating a mess in the national level elections in the name of caste and region, this multi party system at national level spoils the essence of elections and the elections merely turn out to be a formality of redistributing the seats among parties for a later on mutual decision. If we really want some solid leadership then we need to follow a two party system (or only national parties should be allowed to contest LS elections) at the national level where the two(or only all the national) parties should contest the elections and the winner should be asked to form the govt. so that it may function properly for next 5 years and can take decisions that serve NATION and not any individual or religion or caste; while regional parties should be constrained to assembly elections so that they may effectively see towards the local problem and let the bigger players worry about global issues.There might be many alternative to the current scenario but seriously we do need to revise this whole federal democratic system of Indian republic.

...prateek