HS101: Social Sciences for the Indian Engineer
Starting with the compulsory English For Communication course and extending to a wide choice of electives, the HSS department in IIT Kharagpur offers a colossal range of courses. The alluring language labs to the mundane economics classes, and from the peculiar Happiness courses to the lifeless history courses, HSS may not at all times interest a geeky engineer, but could build a good intellectual of him. The Scholars’ Avenue set out to understand the need for humanities for engineers by talking to a few professors from the department of Humanities and Social Science.
The evolution of technology from science dates back to 200 years ago. It has ever since been developing and advancing in research, employability and funding opportunities. Science on the other hand hasn’t made a leap since the last 80 years. The greatest frontiers of science have been achieved in the 1920s and 30s. The development of subjects like Humanities and Social Sciences has always been, but only at a steady pace and not radical. Thus it has been underplayed.
Technology as already told has been advancing and developing. But it is observed that it is not being utilized as expected. Scientists and technologists, in the recent years had realized that this is significantly so because humanities and social science components had not been taken into consideration. And when you find that technology howsoever developed, has to be ultimately implemented in the context of human beings — for human beings and by human beings, Humanities and Social sciences become necessary.
A lot of pertinent issues facing society can only be solved with a clear understanding of the motivations of its entities. The solutions to many of these issues, as have been historically observed, is more technology and with a subtler understanding of economies, policies and societal prejudices, as provided by a study of the humanities, enterprising engineers would be disposed to apply their technical knowledge to these problems. This is particularly relevant amongst a complex people like of India.
Visionaries who started Engineering and Science education wanted it to be broad based and liberal so that students become all rounded citizens and be aware of various events that happen in a civic society. The concept of having an HSS department in a technical Institute came from IIT Kgp. Prof. Kelkar, one of the founders of IIT system wanted HSS to be a co-curricular requirement rather than a support course. Just as in maths, physics and chemistry you should be well versed in various topics of humanities too.
What do you think is the need of Humanities and Social Sciences in Engineering education? Is it any boon to an Engineer? Could it be having any technical applications?
According to Prof. Anuradha Choudry, “Great Engineers who have excelled in science, technology, logic and reasoning all had a strong left brain orientation. Such excessive orientation seemed to detract the balance due to lack of life skills, creativity and innovative arts centered in the right brain. Humanities help people look at things from a different perspective — a perspective of understanding various emotional and philosophical aspects of one’s actions. It takes inspiration from philosophies which have existed since ages. For example, Hydro Social Systems, which Prof. Jenia Mukherjee is researching in, involves different aspects. If to measure the depth of the river and calculate the water pressure is an engineering aspect, the humanities aspect would include how the society is influenced by the quality of water. Also, it includes how the water is influenced by the society. Unless an engineer studies and undertakes projects in a more holistic manner, they create unbalanced outcomes. Thus a good engineering institution should have a strong and vibrant HSS department.”
Prof. Priyadarshi Patnaik says, “Humanities is applied everywhere. In any technical or business work field, it is human communication which is indispensable while working with people. Also, there is a new field of digital humanities being developed which integrates people from digital sciences and social sciences. Here, when human related components interact with technology, a lot of data gets generated.”
The HSS department at IIT Kharagpur offers different courses for UG and PG students and has a research programme of its own. There are a lot of language related courses, history related courses, history of sciences, society sciences, human resource management, and other courses on communication. The institute also takes pride in offering some unique courses like “The science of Happiness” course and “Emotional Intelligence” courses.
Are there any particular challenges which the HSS department at IIT Kgp is facing?
Prof. Chhanda Chakroborti says, “No major challenges. In fact, I find it more fun to teach the HSS subjects to the students with Engineering and Science background at IIT Kharagpur. Because, the IIT students are intelligent and capable thinkers, and they are eager to learn, provided the subject is made interesting for them. Consider, for example, my Symbolic Logic course. It is popular as a UG elective, and I find that the students in general too enjoy learning. The idea of including HSS courses in IIT system is to provide an exposure to a broad-based education. As you know, these days the soft skills have become as important as the hard skills. In my opinion, if there is a limitation which the HSS courses face, it is related to the short exposure that the UG students get to them. In case a student enjoys an HSS elective, usually there is no scope in the curriculum for that student to get more advanced expertise in terms of doing more advanced level courses or supervised projects in it. This could be a limitation as you don’t always get to do a minor or a project in every HSS area after doing well in a certain HSS elective course.”
There is a common belief which people have of HSS courses to not have a proper guideline when it comes to correcting exam papers. Is it that marks be given only to those creative and innovative answers? Is it that creativity creative only in eyes of a specific evaluator? Are the grades random?
According to Prof. Anuradha Choudry, “An answer consists of both factual and subjective components. In subjects involving grammar, there is only the factual component which you can’t be creative about. So, there is hardly any scope for random grading. There are other subjects which require subjective answering in the form of long essays. Ours, being a technical institute, due to low expertise in subjective answering, it may so happen that students mug up answers which match with the points the teacher teaches and finally end up with good grades.”
Prof. Priyadarshi Patnaik says, “There are certain project oriented courses. The evaluation becomes more complex but useful that way. The element of creativity is thus tested.”
Then there are written tests. Should the exam require any knowledge of facts or is it just sufficient to vomit some creativity into the paper, or is it a mixture of both that is required? What could the examiners expect in their answers? Prof. Chhanda Chakroborti says “It depends on the course itself. There are questions asking definitions, or to write some fact where you cannot be creative. There is still always a scope of asking creative questions like in case where they ask how a definition applies to a specific case study.”
Such is the complexity and diversity of HSS courses in IIT Kgp. Necessary as they are, HSS courses have been designed such that there is an option to relate to a future relevance of an engineer.
