Chennai: Madras IIT caught headlines on Friday after a student extended his support to Palestine while receiving an engineering degree at his convocation. The student, Dhananjay Balakrishnan of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, who won the Governor's Prize, said on Friday that engineers must be aware of the nature of the work of the companies they are hired for since some of them work for imperial Israel.
"There is a mass genocide going on in Palestine. People are dying in large numbers, and there is no end in sight. Why should we bother by this, you may ask? Because STEM as a field in itself has historically been used to advance the ulterior motives of the imperial powers such as Israel," Dhananjay could be heard saying in a video which was widely shared.
He said that engineering students work hard for top-level jobs at tech giants, which offer them very lucrative space and great benefits.
"However, these tech giants control various aspects of our life today, as you know, better than anyone. Many of these prestigious companies are also directly and indirectly implicated in the war against Palestine for providing state-of-the-art technology that's used to kill citizens," he said.
"There are solutions. I don't have all the answers, but I do know this. As Engineers graduating into the real world, it is our job to be aware of the consequences of the work we do. And, also to intricate our own position in these complex systems of power imbalance, he said.
"I hope that we can incorporate this awareness more into our daily lives attempting to understand what we can do to leverage your best," he said.