Biotech Engineer in India

With the advances in biological sciences and biotechnology, the world is experiencing a new era of modern technology and advanced methodology. But such developments are restricted more to western countries like US and European countries while in India it is still in the infancy.

The educational institutions in India are encashing this and implementing variety of degree and vocational courses( like B.Sc, M.Sc, BE, ME, diplomas etc) without caring for the infrastructure, needs of chemicals, facilities and advanced equipments required to maintain such courses. In my opinion, Biotechnology should be considered more as SCIENCE rather than ENGINEERING, there is no need to put Biotechnology as an engineering major in academic curriculum. For academic institutes ( other than IITs and Research Labs.) its quite difficult to raise large funds to provide their biotechnology dept. with constantly advancing technologies/equipments and provide the chemicals required to keep them working.
When a student enters into college, he is quite excited but after entering to BE/B.tech courses in biotechnology, he faces the difficulties of limited resources in the college, limited accessibility to some of the books,online/offline journals, good faculty problems, limited students doing lab works in an inappropriate manner are few to name. At the times of exams and study periods initially, he keeps exploring library in search of appropriate books to cover all the topics in the curriculum and internet to search scientific letters & publications but later he becomes reluctant and the looks for shortcuts like internet (mainly Wikipedia to get a superficial idea of the topic). This may be due to the fact that the books are difficult to get ( foreign editions) and also are quite expensive. During the lab timings only a few people get chances to work on the subject and rest are directed to watch and learn!! In such conditions how can a student learn to maintain sterility (very important aspect for biotech lab purposes) and carry out the experiments and what can he learn about the subjects. Apart from these, he goes with frustrations and humiliations of opting biotechnology as his branch after getting a good rank in competitive exams ( for some good colleges entrance) . He suffers from the comments from his colleagues from other branches and public of his locality like "Are you doing some Pharmacy degree" or " He's going to be an assistant in patho-labs" or "you are 'BT' not 'B.E.' " In the course...time passes....and here comes the placement time: a time to rejoice and party all night after getting placements of his and his friends. But unfortunately, there is no core companies listed in companies visiting for the on-campus placements. While other batch mates are getting into highly paid jobs in companies. He has to seek the doors of software companies (which have even ceased hiring due to global economic slowdown). In the end he may or may not get placed as his other friends got, even if placed..he has to enter a completely new world where his previously earned knowledge as biotechnology engineer seems to be ruined. But he is still celebrating for....the placement he has got, the placements his fiends got and for leaving biotechnology as his past. If one doesn't get a job, he is advised that" biotechnology has got untapped scopes & enormous opportunities" provided you have your M.E/M.Tech. and the chain goes to Post-doctoral degree.

Now, readers you tell me whether is he a real biotechnology engineer? Is this his fate what he has got when he probably, deserved a lot better?

There are only a few biotechnology companies in India. They mainly concentrates on production units. R&D are still not the taste of Indian biotechnology companies as India is developing economy and R&D involves a lot of risk & failure and they cant afford failures.Even at the time of hiring for R&D scientists, companies considers only PhDs and Post-docs and the engineers have no room. So, the Biotechnology course can't be considered as engineering major, at least in India.