IIMs didn't "destroy" engineering; they provided a lifeboat. If those 2.5 lakh aspirants didn't have the MBA route, they would have just migrated to the US or Europe for MS degrees. The IIMs at least kept that talent within the Indian corporate ecosystem.

The growth of the Indian service sector during the liberalization era required a massive influx of managers to handle global clients. The IIMs fulfilled this demand by absorbing high-IQ individuals from engineering backgrounds, effectively turning India into a global hub for management services while stunting its growth as a hardware-centric economy.

This phenomenon represents an "internal brain drain" where the state invests heavily in subsidized technical education at IITs and NITs, only for that talent to be utilized in marketing, banking, or consulting. This result is a net loss for the nation's research and development sector, as the most capable analytical minds are diverted from solving complex physical problems.

The Indian engineering curriculum often emphasizes rote learning and theoretical mastery over applied innovation. This creates a workforce that is technically proficient but professionally unfulfilled, leading them to seek the "soft skills" and strategic authority offered by an IIM degree to escape stagnant technical roles.

The shift from engineering to management is primarily driven by the disparate wage gap between core technical roles and administrative leadership. In the Indian market, the initial salary for a management graduate from a top-tier institute can be triple that of a core engineer, making the pivot a rational economic choice rather than a lack of ambition.