Contemporary India hosts 3,500 engineering colleges that graduate 1.5 million engineers annually. Among them are the country’s 23 globally famous IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), the first of which was established in 1961. But all this investment has provided sparse harvest.

On July 10, a bridge collapsed in Mahishi village in the Saharsa district of Bihar. Nothing exceptional in this news report. Except that it marked Bridge Collapse #13 in 21 days in Bihar (pop. 104 million). The response of the state government was to suspend at “least 15 engineers” for the series of recent bridge collapse incidents reported from various districts, including Siwan, Saran, Madhubani, Araria, East Champaran and Kishanganj. In an ingenious initiative Chief Minister Nitish Kumar instructed officials to conduct a survey of all old bridges in the state and identify those that require immediate repair.

Breast-beating liberals and soft-state socialists advance numerous reasons: upper castes oppression of the poor; rotten education system; women’s rights; deprivation of tribal communities, and dozens more. But the root cause is collapse of rule of law and accountability. Your editor offers an embarrassingly simple solution. The Bihar government’s in-service engineers should be randomly tested through the year by a panel of respected academics. If they fail testing, not only they, but the vice-chancellors and professors who awarded them degrees should be fired. Ditto departmental engineers within the administration who promoted them to positions of authority.

Admittedly, a drastic remedy. But desperate situations — 13 bridges collapsing within 21 days in the early stages of the monsoon qualifies as a desperate situation — call for drastic solutions. Even so, they are not as drastic as in neighbouring China where peremptory exile to hard labour on a state farm in the rural interiors — if not a bullet in the back of head — is normative. Time for this country’s soft establishment to develop spine.

Also read: Bihar: Quality education still a challenge, says Nitish