[ All Arunachal Pradesh Agricultural Engineering Association ]

Every year, young men and women from Arunachal Pradesh – many from remote hills and valleys – earn seats in prestigious national institutions such as IIT Kharagpur, NERIST, and CAEPHT to pursue a degree in agricultural engineering. They study with one dream: to return home and serve their state, their communities, and their people as engineers. Today, that dream is under threat – not because these engineers have failed, but because powerful interests are questioning their very right to serve.

A growing chorus of voices – backed by influential quarters – is pushing to exclude agricultural engineers from the Water Resources Department (WRD) and Rural Works Department (RWD) of Arunachal. This article is a firm, evidence-based rebuttal to that unjust campaign.

1. The glaring inequality: A tale of two disciplines

Let us first examine the stark disparity in employment opportunity between civil engineers and agricultural engineers in Arunachal’s government service.

A civil engineering graduate can seek appointment as an assistant engineer or junior engineer across a wide range of departments – PWD, PHE, UD, ULB, RD, WRD, RWD, and HPD – and is also eligible for posts such as junior estimator, surveyor, and draughtsman. The doors of government service are wide open to them.

An agricultural engineering graduate, by contrast, is eligible only for WRD, RWD, and HPD, and only at the AE and JE levels. Already working within a narrow window of opportunity, these engineers are now being told that even this limited space may be taken from them. The question must be asked: if an agricultural engineer is removed from these departments, what does their BTech degree become worth in the context of Arunachal’s government service? The answer is uncomfortable – and that is precisely why this issue must not be ignored.

2. RWD was born from agriculture; its own engineers cannot be outsiders

Critics of agricultural engineers in RWD often overlook one fundamental historical fact: the Rural Works Department was originally carved out of the Department of Agriculture. It was created to serve the rural heartland of this state – the villages, the farms, the fields. And yet, today, the very engineers whose discipline is rooted in that same rural and agricultural context are being questioned for their credibility to serve in it.

Consider the PMGSY – the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, one of RWD’s most critical responsibilities. Rural roads under PMGSY do not exist in isolation. They pass through agricultural land, serve farming communities, facilitate market linkages for crops, and directly impact the livelihoods of farmers. Who better than an agricultural engineer – trained in soil science, land use, rural hydrology, and agricultural land planning – to appreciate the full impact of road alignment in such terrains? Their perspective is not merely useful; it is indispensable.

3. The track record speaks for itself

Agricultural engineers have been recruited in RWD and WRD for many years. In that time, they have designed projects, executed works, supervised construction, and served in senior capacities as assistant engineers, executive engineers, superintending engineers, and even chief engineers.

And crucially – there has been no scandal, no systemic failure, no documented engineering disaster attributable to the participation of agricultural engineers in these departments. Not a single credible allegation has been raised against their technical competence. The silence of failure is itself a testimony to their competence. If they were unfit to serve, the evidence would have surfaced by now. It has not.

4. What the rest of India and the Northeast already know

Those who question agricultural engineers’ role in WRD and RWD might benefit from looking beyond state borders. Across India, state governments have long recognised the technical equivalence and unique value of agricultural engineering graduates in water and rural infrastructure roles.

Nationally, agricultural engineers serve as AEs and JEs in Irrigation and Flood Control Departments in Rajasthan, Punjab, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana.

Closer to home, our immediate neighbours have set a precedent that Arunachal should reflect upon. In both Meghalaya and Nagaland, agricultural engineers and civil engineers share recruitment seats in the Water Resources Department on a 50-50 basis. The Government of Meghalaya and the Government of Nagaland do not consider agricultural engineers to be inferior or unqualified – they consider them equally essential.

If these states – sharing our geography, our ecology, our terrain, and our developmental challenges – have found agricultural engineers indispensable, on what basis does Arunachal propose to go in the opposite direction?

5. The curriculum argument: BTech agri engineering is not a lesser degree

Critics sometimes claim that agricultural engineering graduates lack the technical foundation needed for WRD and RWD roles. This is factually incorrect. The BTech curriculum in agricultural engineering includes – among other subjects – soil and water conservation engineering, irrigation and drainage engineering, hydrology, surveying and levelling, structural analysis, fluid mechanics, engineering drawing, and rural infrastructure development.

These are not peripheral subjects – they are core competencies directly relevant to the work of WRD and RWD. Any honest comparison of the two syllabuses will reveal substantial overlap. Agricultural engineers are not generalists masquerading as specialists; they are specialists in precisely the domains these departments demand.

6. What is at stake: The dreams of a generation

This is not merely a bureaucratic or administrative matter. Behind every agricultural engineering graduate is a family that sacrificed, a student who studied through difficult conditions, and a young person who believed that their state valued their education and their service. If agricultural engineers are scrapped from these departments, their BTech degree – earned from institutions of national repute – becomes functionally worthless within the state of Arunachal.

That is not just an injustice to the engineers themselves. It is a signal to every young student of Arunachal: do not pursue this discipline, because your state will not honour it. We cannot allow that signal to be sent.

We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for fairness – the same fairness that is already extended to agricultural engineers in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Punjab, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana. We are asking the Government of Arunachal Pradesh to honour the education, the service, and the dreams of its own engineers.

The agricultural engineers of Arunachal have served with dedication, integrity, and technical competence. They will continue to do so. But they deserve a state that stands with them – not one that erases their contribution under pressure from vested interests.

Service to the soil is service to the state. Agricultural engineers are not outsiders in Arunachal’s development – they are its foundation.