The winner of the next century will be the nation that decides and focuses on the engineering challenges that can make it the leader among the developing nations.

As reported, a high powered diverse committee of experts, including some of the most accomplished engineers and scientists of USA, met and proposed the following 14 grand engineering challenges for US in the 21st century

” Make solar energy economical
” Provide energy from fusion
” Develop carbon sequestration methods
” Manage the nitrogen cycle
” Provide access to clean water
” Restore and improve urban infrastructure
” Advance health informatics
” Engineer better medicines
” Reverse-engineer the brain
” Prevent nuclear terror
” Secure cyberspace
” Enhance virtual reality
” Advance personalized learning
” Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

While the challenges zeroed on by US are very much acceptable by other countries too, but each nation has its own priorities and so India must have its own areas of focus. Can Indian technocrats, engineers, managers, and scientists decide the engineering challenges for India for the century and even the next, as it will have to lay down the strong and well designed foundation for meeting the challenges?

Kapil Sibal’s hyperactive dynamism provides hope about the availability of human resources for the task, though the country will have to wait to see the executions of the Sibal’s reforms. The considerable quantitative progress through sarv shiksha aviyan and mid-day meal getting extended to secondary level, the private sectors’ interest in education in (K-12) as well as the professional higher education along with the reforms for an early entry of reputed foreign university are all inspiring. But in R&D, India is to move many miles still. It is not the question of the number of persons involved in the activities, but basically the mindsets of a large number of researchers and the administrators require drastic change. I consider the number of students engaged in Masters in science subjects, in engineering graduates and post graduate courses in all the first class institutes, and also the MBAs are the first group of potential innovators on which the government, the academic faculty and the heads of India Inc must focus. Unfortunately as on today, the standard is pretty poor.

But still a large number of people will remain unskilled with only12% or so get into the courses for higher education and that too with majority in humanity subjects and so the development of modern technologies that work efficiently with a large labour component will remain a priority for India. And as already recorded, India does have a huge potential with hundreds of grassroots innovators. Perhaps, the success of Amitabha Sadangi’s International Development Enterprise (IDE) and its treadle pump= a foot-operated water-lifting device to irrigate small plot of land and also its drip irrigation kits provides example that also require appreciation. Can some researchers provide solar-powered water pump in rural India so that the power outages don’t affect the crop? Even the end-users must cooperate and discuss the problems that must get solutions on priority.

The industrial leaders such as Tata who created a wave in auto-world with Nano must focus on R&D and new breakthrough innovations for which they don’t lack the resources, but certainly the priority and mindset. All household devices such as washing machines and dish washers that require a lot of water need research, and so are the needs of researches for a change in the power source of the refrigerators, air-conditioners, and other electronic devices such as TV, and computers from the electricity from the regular plants to the power from solar or wind. The scientists and technocrats must focus on the researches of battery for electric cars that are going to be the main means of transportation. The rural India requires similarly cheap effective equipment for the water filtration that go to every household.

Most of the laboratories in the institutes of excellence in India are to use its resources in the most efficient manner and use its synergy to reach the goal.

When can the Indians know the choices of its engineers and scientists about the nation’s 20 engineering challenges for the century?