The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has introduced a revised syllabus for engineering students which will be implemented from the coming academic session.

The new syllabus includes the mandatory lessons of the Vedas, Puranas and Tarka Shastra, the science of dialectics and logic – apart from the core subjects, the Hindustan Times reported.

The revamped syllabus also includes mandatory lessons on the Constitution and environmental sciences. These subjects are going to be mandatory but will bear no impact on the final credit of the student.

“The syllabus has been revamped by preparing a model curriculum as an updated curriculum is a student’s right,” said HRD minister Prakash Javadekar, according to Hindustan Times.

The course on Essence of Indian Knowledge Tradition will also focus on Indian philosophical, linguistic and artistic traditions, along with yoga and Indian perspective of modern scientific worldview.

“The course aims at imparting basic principles of thought process, reasoning and inferencing,” according to the course objective.

I am very happy to be at @AICTE_INDIA as it has come out with comprehensive Model Curriculum document. pic.twitter.com/EQsyv4VsND — Prakash Javadekar (@PrakashJavdekar) January 24, 2018

They have also reduced the credits to be earned for an undergraduate degree from 220 to 160, as reported by The Hindu. Internships have been made mandatory. The internship would have a minimum of 14 credits. Each credit means 40-45 hours of work. Also, more emphasis would be given on hackathon and creative activities, according to the syllabus change.

The Logical Indian Take

India’s more than 3,000 institutes produce about 700,000 engineers every year but barely half of them find employment. In 2015-16, of the 758,000 graduates, only 334,000 got jobs through campus placements, AICTE data revealed.

The change in the syllabus to include Hackathon and Creative activities, which would help students get more practical knowledge is a good step, but imparting religious ideologies to a group of students who belong from different religions or might not have religious affiliations is an imposition.