RAINBOW REVELRY: Night-riders chill at Calcutta hotspot. Picture by Rashbehari Das

Sujoy Samanta always wanted to become an engineer. His family wanted it as fervently. He stayed up nights preparing for the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination, which he took in 2004. His rank was 19,008, out of close to 1 lakh candidates. But when several rounds of counselling for admission didn’t yield much hope, Sujoy approached Bankura Unnayani Institute of Engineering. He managed a seat in computer science and engineering.

With tuition fee and living expenses, the four-year course cost the Khardah boy over Rs 3 lakh.

Sujoy and his family may have thought that a course in engineering was the gateway to a respectable career, but the placement system at the college was not encouraging. The batch previous to Sujoy’s, which graduated in 2007, saw only 10 to 15 per cent students getting jobs on campus.

In Sujoy’s batch of 230, only four students bagged jobs with tech giant Infosys. Many others, including Sujoy, got placed in smaller IT companies. Sujoy and 19 others from his college joined Infogen Global. Some of his friends joined Assurgent Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd, another Sector V firm.

They had to pay about Rs 50,000 each as security money to the companies in exchange for a job. The companies would provide a stipend of around Rs 1,500 during a training period, of six to 15 months’ duration, followed by a monthly salary between Rs 7,000 and Rs 12,500.

5 things to check before selecting a college

1. The college’s placement records 2. Whether the seat offered to you is available. Some colleges take in more students than the sanctioned number of general or management quota seats 3. Whether your course is affiliated to AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education). The college may be affiliated, but each course needs a separate affiliation 4. The quality of faculty (number of permanent, part-time teachers) and the student-teacher ratio 5. College infrastructure: Laboratories, equipment, workshops, number of computers, hostel, etc

5 things to check before joining a company

1. The company website 2. Whether the company is registered with the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) and NASSCOM 3. Conditions attached to the security deposit 4. Present employees’ views on the company 5. Fine print on your job contract

Security deposits are not confined to little-known firms. Companies such as Wipro ask campus recruits for a deposit that they return to the employee after 18 months, with interest. “At a time when attrition was high, fresh recruits would switch jobs for Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 more. The company makes a huge investment to train recruits, so the security deposit was introduced,” says a Wipro spokesperson.

Sujoy “got” his job and paid up. But was never called. In February 2009, after having waited for almost a year, trainees and employees of Infogen filed an FIR against the company bosses for cheating them of their salaries and security deposits. The bosses went missing.

In June 2009, over 700 employees and 228 trainees of Assurgent Technology complained of non-payment of salaries and no refund of security money.

The absconding directors of Infogen, which was found to be an unregistered company, were nabbed one by one, including founder Anirban Ghosh. They are now out on bail.

None of the students got their money back. After sitting out one year, Sujoy is now working with a web development agency on Prince Anwar Shah Road. He makes Rs 6,000 a month.

Another Infogen victim, Rajat Choudhury, is working at a small firm in Durgapur. His job involves data entry. He takes home Rs 3,000. Rajat did his BCA from a college affiliated to Burdwan University and MCA from the Management Institute of Durgapur.

Boom to bust

The craze among Bengal’s youth for a career in “IT” continues unabated. But it prompts a look at the real job prospects of a BTech, MTech or MCA degree-holder in the state.

“IT” became a buzzword in 2003 as Bengal sought to catch up with the tech boom in southern states, particularly Karnataka and Andhra. Fresh engineering graduates, from mechanical, electrical, chemical or even civil streams, were snapped up by tech firms, big and small, with starting salaries upwards of Rs 20,000. Core engineering sectors, with initial pay packets of Rs 10,000 to 12,000, paled in comparison. IT became the chief minister’s baby — the “Sunshine Sector”.

The boom lasted till the final quarter of 2007. The stock market took a beating in January 2008, the world was shaken by recession and projects dried up. So did company offers. Desperate students clutched at any job.

“My father took a loan from his provident fund to send me to engineering college, how could I have gone back home without a job?” asks an Assurgent victim.

There are 120 colleges under the West Bengal University of Technology, 80 of them engineering institutes. Around 20,000 engineering seats are available in Bengal and over 1 lakh aspirants take the state joint entrance exam every year.

But of these 20,000 seats, only around 3,500 to 4,000 are in “quality” colleges, say industry experts. The rest have been added mostly by private tech colleges that mushroomed in the state in the last decade. Despite the demand-supply mismatch, around 2,500 engineering seats remained vacant in Bengal in 2009. Many students prefer to study in private colleges outside the state paying a hefty “capitation fee”.

“If your joint entrance rank is anything above 5,000, you’ll have to settle for a B-grade college, mostly in the districts,” says Madhurima Chatterjee, a retired mathematics teacher at a city school, whose students would take the Joint Entrance exam in hordes every year.

Some colleges don’t have proper laboratories, some have libraries but students can’t borrow books, while some have a joke for a placement cell. The biggest shortcoming is faculty — most colleges have a small number of permanent teachers and mostly function with overworked part-time teachers who hop from one institute to another every semester.

But engineering and computer application — from any institute — are still in greater demand than general stream subjects. Not only for their respectability. “My son got through chemistry honours at a city college but I insisted he join engineering, though it was in a little-known college in Jalpaiguri,” says S. Dasgupta, an employee in a public sector bank.

There is little scope for a pure science graduate to land a job and Dasgupta said he didn’t have the means to send his son abroad for higher studies or to pursue an MBA. “At least he will get some sort of placement assistance at a tech college,” he says. IT and engineering win in the choice between some job and no job.

Few are called

Employability is another concern. Many of the engineering and computer-training institutes produce graduates who don’t mind shelling out Rs 50,000 to a company that promises to “train” them before absorbing them. Even if it’s not a top-notch company, work experience gained there can lead to a better job some day.

Hence out of the 20,000 engineers every year in Bengal, few land in top-notch companies, even when big names go head hunting on small campuses.

At the Management Institute of Durgapur, only one from a batch of 57 MCAs qualified for an offer when Wipro came calling in 2007.

After the Infogen and Assurgent scams, a blame game erupted among the colleges, placement agencies and students.

Ayan Biswas, a former student of electrical engineering at a private college in Bishnupur, says: “We asked our college placement cell co-ordinator if those were good companies and he assured us to go ahead and take up the job.”

The colleges, however, washed their hands of the matter. “If a huge company like Satyam can turn out to be a fraud, how can we ensure transparency with smaller companies?” asks Sheila Ghosh, the placement co-ordinator of Narula Institute of Technology.

Another college blamed the scam on the desperation of “mediocre” students. “Since many of the students failed to get jobs with big companies like Wipro, CTS and TCS, we had no option but to invite smaller companies to our campus. But we did not expect the companies to be fraudulent as they came via reputed placement agencies,” says a senior administrative official of the Bishnupur college.

The placement agencies said it was up to the colleges to run background checks before allowing their students to take up jobs.

“We simply act as middlemen and get a fee from the colleges for introducing them to the companies, hundreds of which approach us. We cannot ask the directors of the companies to show us their trade licence or Nasscom registration. We generally glance through a company’s website,” says Sourav Kundu of E-jobs, a placement agency that had worked with Infogen and Assurgent.

In some cases, the rogues are in the college placement cells. MCA students of Management Institute of Durgapur suspect their placement officer was hand in glove with the directors of dud firms. Some heads rolled in Bankura Unnayani Institute of Engineering with three officials, including the Calcutta head of the placement cell, Sujoy Chattoraj, being suspended.

Some colleges have stopped advertising “100 per cent placement guarantee” to save their skin in case of future frauds. The term they now use is “100 per cent job assistance”, the last word written in a small font, beside a giant “100%”.

Dupe drama goes on

Infogen and Assurgent operated out of Sector V for years before the scam was busted. After the fraud came to light, Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority, the regulatory body for Sector V, carried out a survey of firms in the township. They denied the possibility of any more unregistered companies functioning in Sector V.

“We conducted a detailed survey of entire Sector V and acquired all possible details about each and every company, institute or business venture situated in the sector. We have not spotted any more dud firms,” says S.A. Ahmed, the chairman of the Authority.

But the IT services association said they had received similar complaints against at least two more companies recently. “The employees of two companies approached us in July and September, alleging that around 2,000 youths were duped by two Salt Lake-based IT firms. Both companies had recruited from campuses after taking a security deposit,” says Somenath Bhattacharya, the general secretary of the West Bengal IT services association.

Some students who did not find the dream IT job have charted out another career course — teaching at private tech colleges. “Given the rate at which private engineering colleges are cropping up, many students are looking at teaching as a career option,” says an industry expert. The severe crunch for faculty at these colleges ensures that demand outstrips supply. All that an engineering graduate needs is a masters in engineering (ME). According to a rough estimate, there has been a 30 to 40 per cent increase in ME enrolment in the last two academic sessions. It is likely that the semi-skilled youths are now gearing to fill up faculty posts at semi-equipped colleges to churn out more half-baked engineers. It’s a vicious circle.