Chemical engineering or medicine?

Why is it so difficult to persuade Indians that there are better career options than just engineering and medicine?

• When I was at the advent of high school, the only career option I was aware of was engineering. My father was an IIT zealot, and had an ardent desire to see me in one of those prestigious institutions, while my mother asserted that I would burgeon into a wonderful surgeon. I spent a year doing exhaustive preparations for IITJEE and PMT alike, but it later struck me that I was more inclined towards other options, like journalism, mass communication, and world economics. I had a very tough time convincing my parents to acquiesce to my decision of pursuing economics; and after months of deliberation on their part, they finally gave their approbation. I ended up opting for PCM with Economics, since my affinity for the sciences wouldn't let me choose commerce. Even now, when I express my desire to pursue  higher economics, my plans are met be apprehension from one and all. Isn't it high time for the Indian mindset to change, and for people to accept that there is more to the world than just medicine and engineering?

• Answer:

  My understanding is that post-independence India had to start building infrastructure and essential services -- which meant engineering, medicine, healthcare, and their ancillary industries. This is not the case just in our nation; all modern nations invested their time and energy towards infrastructure first, because everything else follows on from there. As evidence of this, the first institutions of higher ed to be established very early on were engineering and medical schools. Supply had to meed demand: public works, military, roads, vehicles, oil, cement, all these areas needed engineers. As for medicine, obviously the country needed doctors to tend to our sick and diseased during the impoverished decades that followed independence. The generation of Indians that were born and brought up during these times were naturally convinced that engineering and medicine are the only areas with good job prospects -- except that they became convinced of that view FOREVER. Frankly, you and I cannot blame them because people in the 60s and 70s needed food, clothing and shelter and could in fact survive without sciences, arts, literature, film and music. Now that your parents have built you a reasonably fail-safe launchpad, there is no reason you should give up your interests in journalism and economics. I believe that the Indian mindset "will" certainly change, but let's allow it to take its own time and course. For your specific scenario, perhaps a heart-to-heart with your parents will help them look at your point of view. Explain to them that there is no uncertainty involved in the path you want to take, given the flourishing (but rapidly transforming) media industry, and that you get your rush from news and global finance rather than radiology and fluid mechanics. This John Adams quote, although said for America, is relevant to this situation: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."