Last week I saw my son's Control Systems book lying on the dining table. I picked it up and started running through it over a cup of coffee.

I was flooded with memories of several years before, when I studied Control Systems Engineering under Prof. MAL Thathachar and Prof I G Sarma at IISc. Equivalent systems, Laplace Transforms, PID controls, Stability Analysis, the Routh-Hurwitz criteria, Bode Plots, the most enjoyable Nyquist plot, Pole-zero compensation, Distributed Digital Control, State Variables - I lived through them all!!

Prof Thathachar's excellent classes drew me to Control Systems - a subject that is widely shunned in the undergraduate level in engineering. I took Prof Sarma's 200 level course as an elective pre-requisite to doing a project under him. His challenge was that I score an A in the course, or I would not be on his project. I did score an A, and went on to do a project under him.  But more than that, Prof Thathachar and Prof Sarma channelled me into a career in Process Automation.

There were two incidents that happened during my interactions with Prof Thathachar and Prof Sarma. I had consistently done well in the internal tests and assignments in the Control Systems course, and was all set to do well in the final examination to get an A. But as luck would have it, I fell sick on the day before the exam with fever. I went to the Institute clinic to consult my doctor. He was not in attendance that day, and I was directed to the doctor in attendance, a lady. When I explained my problem to her, and said that I had an important examination the next day, she behaved most illogically. She told me that she did not believe me, and since I normally consulted the other doctor, she would not issue a medical certificate!! Needless to say, I wrote the examination with the fever the next day, and missed the A and got only a B. Later I met Prof Thathachar, and he said he was surprised that I did not get an A. That was when I told him of my fever and the doctor's reaction. Then he asked me one question: 'Why did you not come to me then? I would have organised another date for your test. But it is too late now!'

The incident with Prof Sarma (sadly, he passed away, at a relatively young age, may his soul rest in peace), was equally gratifying, though my response to his suggestions rankles me even today. I was working at that time with a multinational in Madras. They had not been entirely honest in their recruitment process about my area of work, and I landed up with a job I was not happy with. I came to Bangalore to meet Prof Sarma to explain to him my predicament. He offered to help me get a job at a National Defence Laboratory, which would enable me to do a Ph.D with him at IISc. Like a fool, I turned him down, and I have lived to regret the decision!!

However, I spent some of the most satisfying years of my career designing and engineering control and instrumentation systems for power generating stations. It is in a way sad that I had to leave control & instrumentation and move into engineering management and project management to maintain a decent increase in my salary.

Which brings me to another important point. Why should Indian companies insist that to grow in their organisations, employees need to move away from engineering and go to management? There needs to be a national debate on this. If anyone with any opportunity to do something about this should chance to read this blog, I would beseech him or her: Please do what you can to keep engineers doing what they like doing - engineering.