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        The increasing importance of the professions in an evolving and developing modern industrial society like India has led many observers to describe the current ZEITGEIST (The Spirit of the Age) in such phrases as 'The Age of the Expert.' This irrevocable and inexorable trend implies that the growth of professional (technical) occupations is based upon specialised knowledge. But it also suggests an informed concern with the effects of such developments upon education and human values - in short, the cultural consequences. Such societal concerns ought to make a study of the role of the modern professional in any field, be it Engineering, Law, Medicine and a host of other modern and newly emerging technical professions, mandatory, significant and meaningful from the point of view of larger public and national interest. Who is a dedicated engineer? What does he believe in? What is the extent of his influence? These thoughts came to my mind when my learned and versatile friend C S Kuppu Raj, formerly Chief Engineer of PWD, government of Tamilnadu and now president, Tamilnadu PWD Senior Engineers Association, sent me a copy of his proposed volume for publication titled 'THOUGHTS OF A SENIOR ENGINEER'.

        Excerpts from his own writings from time to time from 2000-2007 in Mootha Poriyalar, a journal of the Tamilnadu Senior Engineers Forum (TANSEF).

        When the Tamilnadu Senior Engineers Forum was formed in January 2000, in the first issue of Mootha Poriyalar, C S Kuppuraj defined its Mission Statement as follows:

        'The Tamilnadu Senior Engineers Forum (TANSEF) has been formed with two main objectives. Firstly, to look after the interests of the Retired PWD Engineers. The Association of Engineers, TNPWD is too busy in protecting and fighting for the interests of the working Engineers in the PWD. Therefore it was considered necessary to organize a separate organisation to represent the needs of the retired engineers, which are numerous and mostly go unheeded. Secondly, the retired engineers of the PWD contain within themselves a large reservoir of technical knowledge and expertise, born out of wide practical experience in various fields of Engineering. This knowledge is lying unused. It is the intention of the TANCEF to make it available for the benefit of the nation and the people. There are many areas in which the working engineers are unable to give expression to their views freely because of the inhibitions imposed by the service conditions. The retired engineers are free from such restrictions. They could tell the policy-makers frankly about the merits and pitfalls in taking very important decisions regarding development schemes.

        I can see from the brilliant and incisive writings of Kuppu Raj in the quarterly issues of Mootha Poriyalar from January 2000 to April 2007 that the chief characteristics of the noble and lofty profession of Engineering are Knowledge, Autonomy, Obligation and Commitment. They are variables, and as such, in the profession of engineering may be located somewhere on a dimension representing the extent to which the knowledge of engineers is abstract and theoretical or the extent to which autonomy is a central concern to the active practioners in the engineering profession.

        Engineering today has become a revolutionary force in society. Kuppu Raj's vision of the revolutionary role of the engineer in the technological society of today is reminiscent of the vision of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) in America in the last decade of the 19th century. Veblen predicted the emergence of a technocracy, with the engineer becoming the guardian of the community's material welfare and who, with his dispassionate, rational mind, would turn the nation's industrial strength and economy out of chaos onto a path of ordered socio-economic progress through responsible perspective planning.

        The social role, even more important than his scientific, technical and professional role, of the engineer in our country today is going to get more and more stressed and underlined in the years ahead in view of the following established trends noticed today and which are going to get further accentuated in the future in India:

        A) The development of large-scale systems in the development, control, and use of energy and natural resources.

        B) Continued development automated manufacturing industries and the emergence of different forms and varieties of manufactured food to meet the needs of an ever-expanding Indian population.

        C) The development of rapid transportation systems for land, sea and air.

        D) The development of Bio-Social systems which are concerned not only with medical advances, housing, community development, and pollution control but also with the co-ordination of these advances into large-scale social systems, such as the planning and design of future cities, satellite towns etc.

        E) The expansion of space programmes and military defence systems.

        The significance of these ever-expanding spheres of new activities of engineers for the larger society in the macro sense will call for a profession whose commitment to the idea of social responsibility will be of vital importance. In all this the role of the engineer with outstanding ability, patriotic vision, high moral courage and above all with a highly sensitive and evolved social conscience will become more and more crucial and critical. These and other aspects and dimensions relating to the engineering profession of the future have been highlighted and analysed in a masterly manner by Kuppu Raj in his varied writings in MOOTHA PORIYALAR.

        In a series of brilliant and evocative essays, Kuppu Raj has brought out ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS HISTORY OF THE PWD IN THE OLD MADRAS PRESIDENCY (and later Tamilnadu) in a graphic manner. We get to know the life and times and achievements of great English engineers like Sir Arthur Cotton, Col. John Cumming Anderson (1825-1870), Chief Engineer for Irrigation, PWD (1867-1870), Col. Pennycuick, Col. W M Ellis, Chief Engineer Irrigation, PWD (1914-1917). Sir Arthur Cotton immortalised himself in the history of irrigation in south India by constructing massive irrigation dams across the Cauvery, Krishna and Godavari rivers in the Old Madras Presidency in the 19th century which threw open thousands of hectares of parched dry lands belonging to poor and small farmers for assured irrigation. It was Col. Pennycuick who was responsible for the construction of the MULLAI PERIYAR DAM across Periyar river in the last decade of the 19th century.

        Col Ellis covered himself with everlasting glory by designing the Mettur Dam and it was he who wrote the classic Manual of irrigation. I can still recall with pride and nostalgia the enthusiastic comments of S Y Krishnaswamy ICS who was requested by Rajaji in 1938 to write his landmark report on Cauvery Water Distribution: 'I have learnt more from Col. W M Ellis's Manual of Irrigation than from my ICS Manual.' It is indeed exciting to know about the life and achievements of some of the great English engineers of British India. Reading about their history in the pages of MOOTHA PORIYALAR, through the graphic pen of Kuppu Raj, the beautiful words of Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) come surging in a flood flow into my mind: 'History, like a flickering lamp, stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes and to kindle with pale gleams the passions of former days.'

        Likewise Kuppu Raj has paid his tribute to the great India engineers of British India like K V Ramalinga Iyer, P V Manicka Naicker, U S Ramasundaram, V A Rangarajan, Dewan Bahadur R N Arogayaswami Mudalayar, N Thanikachalam Mudalayar and many others. Kuppu Raj in recalling the selfless public services of these outstanding engineers of the past has indeed rendered a unique form of public service.

        I have had the good fortune of getting to know Kuppu Raj intimately only during the last seven or eight years. Divinely blessed by a marvelous gift of comprehension and receptivity, he has been able to adjust all the new phenomena and the ever-changing currents or events in his long and varied professional life as an outstanding engineer to his solidly-wrought ideals and convictions dating back to the days of his early manhood. He has that composed, detached, uplifted mental and moral vision combined with the art of dexterous and practical management very requisite for those who are called upon to guide public activities and programmes. He is never stranded; he is never out of date. He is quite fearless and gives the message that he has no reason to fear. He has always loved youth and accepted, nay, encouraged its demands. Consequently, in mind he has always remained young and is so even today at the age of 86. A taste most truly refined, a judgement comprehensively balanced, an insight penetrating, a public passion cold, long, slow, unyielding - all these have always been and are his even today.

        What do we learn from the exemplary lives of such great and selfless engineers of the past? They have bequeathed a pure standard of life, a record of lofty ambition for the public good and national welfare as they understood them, a monument of life-long labour. Such lives speak for themselves, they need no special statues or monuments. They face the future with the confidence of high purpose and noble endeavour. They bid us to be conscious of our trust, mindful of our duty, scornful of opposition to principle and faith. They summon us to account for time and opportunity; they embody an inspiring tradition. Indeed they are time-defying milestones in the life of our nation.