My dear Tejinder,
Thanks for your comments. You apprehensions are right in the email you sent about what the quality future engineers will graduate after such a draconian rule has been brought in by AICTE. It will uproot the very foundations of Engineering teaching in the first place in India at large.
While living in Canada/USA for over 22 years now, and having seen the way science was taught to our only son, who is an Electrical & Communications Engineer now from UOIT; I noticed one serious drawback of teaching science at large over here from grade 9–12 students. I could not imagine that my son did a maximum of 10–12 experiments by his hand during his entire school education in Physics and Chemistry each. It was an eye-opener for me as we used to do 60 experiments each till our Board examination and any two of the 60 experiments we would be required to do in our Board’s lab exam. And fail in Lab exam meant a fail in the subject of Physics, Chemistry or Biology, as the case may be.
Interestingly here even the Boards, school administration, teacher teaching the subject and probably the government itself are not serious to ensure school kids must do that many experiments. Though the schools are well funded and their infrastructure is best across the world. The reason for this to me I found is linked to their fear of being lapped up to fight liability cases in court if any child gets hurt while experimenting, as the school kids are under 18 years of age. Further, a teacher teaching Physics/Chemistry/Biology in schools here is not required to have a Post Graduate degree in that subject. This is not the norm back in South Asian schools.
For over 10 years I remained active through OACETT, a professional regulated body of Ontario, in the Peel Region Science Fair for its school children from grade 6–12 level. For several years in it, I functioned as a volunteer judge to evaluate the projects of the science fair participants. In comparison to what I had experienced as a science fair participant in Delhi each year of my schooling, the quality, number, and depth of the projects presented here were far lower in comparison. And the root cause I found is the inability of school kids in West to carry out experiments by their hands in large numbers at their school level.