Once admitted, students worked hard but also had a lifestyle involving billiards, wine and formal meals in Hall.Ĭol. 1870 onwards, the India Office cast its India-bound engineers in a gentlemanly mould … Applicants to the RIEC at Cooper’s Hill were tested in classical languages and English history in addition to mathematics and natural sciences. The ‘§’ indicates an excerpt from a different portion of the book than the previous.įrom c. In the interests of readability, footnotes and references have been omitted here. In the PWD, however, the very British culture of engineering constituted an enormous barrier for these aspirants. In the period between the World Wars, homegrown Indian engineers fought for a greater role in the engineering profession.

The extract describes the culture of engineering in the Public Works Department (PWD), one of the most important employers of engineers in India at that time.įor much of this period, the engineers forming the higher echelons of the PWD were recruited primarily in Britain by the India Office (the establishment of the Secretary of State for India, the British minister in charge of Indian affairs). On this occasion: the following is an edited extract from The Birth of an Indian Profession (2017), by Aparajith Ramnath, which traces the history of engineers as a profession in India in the first half of the 20th century. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.September 15 is Engineer’s Day in India, marked on the birth anniversary of the celebrated engineer and civil servant Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (1861-1962). In doing so, he provides a fresh perspective on the history of science and technology in twentieth-century India. Turning the spotlight on practitioners of technology and their professional lives, Aparajith Ramnath explores several themes including the work culture of engineers, their conception of their own identity, their status in society, and their relationship with the evolving colonial state. Previously dominated by British expatriate engineers, the profession expanded, became considerable Indianized, and also diversified to include industrial experts. Through detailed case studies of public works, railways, and industrial engineers, this book argues that changes in the profession were both caused by and contributed to industrialization in the country. Charting the development of the engineering profession in India from 1900 to 1947, The Birth of an Indian Profession is the first synoptic history of engineers in modern India.

Tie-Breaker by Aparajith Ramnath