As Queen Elizabeth II said “At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a noble profession”, the question which always arises in my mind is are we finding solutions for social upliftment or we just want to make our life easier by ignoring impact on society.
"We" along with nature and our surroundings makes society. It has Elites like Mukesh Ambani to the middle class like me to poor and BPL and Paatal Lok citizens. And so, there are many complications and a wide range of societal problems. But for a better world and life we have to be united. But divided by so many different cultures and problems, we can be united only by ENGINEERING!
And Engineering has done that task much better till now. Engineering careers have become highly diverse over the past 50 years. They are now tackling complex social issues such as poverty, inequality, disaster recovery or climate change. Let's understand by these examples. Because examples are great and a much simpler way of learning things: - While the needs of the especially abled often remain unrecognised, these science and engineering are making efforts to empower them with new innovations.
But before some facts which I would like to show here: One billion people in the world are differently abled, 21 million of which are in India alone. And there is much to be done for them. And so Assistive cars which have mechanisms that can be easily installed under a car’s driving seat, making it disabled-friendly. Turn Plus seats are designed to make car travel easy for a disabled person, using an easily installable swivel seat mechanism. And kudos to Anand Kutre, a mechanical engineer from Bengaluru.
Junhong Chen another Mechanical Engineer used nanomaterials to develop highly sensitive and low-cost sensors that can be easily modified to detect Lead in water, Ebola virus and other threats to human lives. And his ultimate goal is "SAVE LIVES"
And how can we forget the World Richest Man (till my point of writing, he was the richest man). The man with a mission to change human life and that too with sustainable development, without causing harm to society as well as nature. The man behind the idea of Space-X and Tesla. Yes, you all have guessed correct! It is Elon Musk. Yes, he should have topped my list of examples, but I wanted to give better and better examples to my viewers as they go through the blog!
This simple tweet of him shows us how deep he understands the topic "Engineering and technology in social upliftment"
Now let's take a dive into another diversified field also:
HEALTH: - Advances in medical technology is solely down to engineers, and without it doctors would not be able to treat patients the way they do today; with fantastic success rates.
COMMUNICATION: Today in this hustling world, we sometimes feel low. And all we need is to call our best friend. Or a video call to our beloved ones. Long distance relationships and families living away can truly understand the need to communicate which have vastly improved due to engineering.
There are no aspects of the world we live in today that aren't affected by the work of engineers. The great thing is that engineering is continuing to affect society in a great and beneficial way.
But as old school says, we can improve in better and better ways. And being an engineer of the 2020 decade, we have to improve in many areas. We have to improve in Green Buildings structures, adapting Renewable Energy Sources, dumping of waste and their usage. And yes talking about the latest example of how oil leakage from ships had destroyed the beauty of Mauritius Islands. The oil spill not only affected marine life of Mauritius but also impacted neighbouring islands and their marine life including that of Maldives.
As an engineer, we have to be very careful and cautious. The saying "Savdhani hati durghatna ghati'' is very much relatable in the Engineering field. And when it comes for cause for social upliftment then we have to be more cautious.
And this leads us to think more deeply for the upliftment of society in a country specially like India. We have heard the saying that "The rich become richer and more powerful while poor become poorer". But now this Engineering should become the bridge between the two.
Being a student, we all have learned about Newton's laws of motion. In that 3rd law of motion is almost everyone's favorite, as it was very easy to learn (You can relate this and till now you must have recalled that law also). And the law is "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction". This implies to our social world also. If we are using Engineering blindly for our personal upliftment without being ethical, it has a more dangerous impact on our life. On the other hand, the more ethics and social character is present in any form of Engineering, the more peace and harmony is there in that society. And if anyone doubts about this, I would recommend you to study the Engineering pattern of Countries like Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal. These countries are the most peaceful countries. And studying their Engineering pattern one will always find an element of social upliftment in all their projects.
As Henry Petrosky rightly said "Science is about knowing and Engineering is about doing". The whole idea of writing this blog can be conveyed by that saying. We have to know and research in detail about problems hanging in our society and then with the help of Engineering we can take steps accordingly for the upliftment of society.
If you have reached till here, I want to give you some surprise which is connected to my topic and on the other side, it will be fun. Yes! I will suggest some great movies which you can watch and you can relate what we have talked about till now. And plus, it will kill your boredom and if you are a movie lover then you will definitely like this. So have a great watch time. And bye till we meet again in our next blog.
The imitation game
The fly
The shape of water
The Martian
Hugo
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