© Copyright Engineers Heaven
In a country where infrastructure and industrial development remain central to progress, the role of mechanical engineers in public and private sector projects is crucial. However, beneath the surface of innovation and execution lies a web of vulnerabilities. Mechanical engineering projects — from factory setups to large-scale government tenders — are increasingly at risk of corruption.
This article explores how these technical projects become gateways for unethical practices and highlights specific stages where mechanical engineers, if not monitored, may manipulate processes for personal or institutional gain.
1. Inflated Procurement: When Machines Become Money MinesProcurement — the heart of every mechanical project — often becomes a tool for corruption. Engineers responsible for defining technical specifications may deliberately list oversized, overpriced, or unnecessary equipment.
Case Insight: A municipal water treatment project in Madhya Pradesh reportedly included motors 25% higher in capacity than required, allegedly to inflate procurement costs and secure vendor kickbacks.
Common Tactics:
Specifying only one brand/model in tenders
Falsifying technical justifications
Receiving bribes or “commissions” from vendors
Fabrication contracts involve high-value metalwork, piping, and structural manufacturing — areas ripe for malpractice. Welders, contractors, and site engineers may collude to skip steps or use lower-grade materials while billing for full specs.
Example: In an industrial estate project in Gujarat, several load-bearing frames collapsed due to substandard welding, later found to have bypassed non-destructive testing (NDT) stages entirely.
Red Flags:
Unrecorded or forged test reports
Reduced metal thickness
Fake or unchecked inspection tags
Mechanical systems like HVAC, boilers, and conveyor systems require routine maintenance. This ongoing service often becomes a grey area of exploitation.
Observation: An audit of a public sector manufacturing unit revealed payments made for routine bearing replacements — with the same bearings still intact.
Corruption Modes:
False maintenance logs
Inflated spares billing
Recycling old parts as new
With rising energy costs and green mandates, mechanical engineers lead many retrofitting and energy audit projects. But these too can be gamed.
Example: In Maharashtra, a factory claimed a 30% reduction in energy consumption via motor replacements. An RTI probe revealed no such replacements had occurred — only old labels were replaced.
Corrupt Practices:
Falsified energy reports
Misleading ROI calculations
Claiming subsidies without actual work
Testing and quality assurance (QA/QC) phases offer engineers authority to approve or reject components. This gatekeeping role is vulnerable to misuse.
Incident: A pressure vessel in an Odisha plant was certified fit without a hydro test — later bursting during trial, injuring workers.
Typical Malpractices:
Accepting bribes to overlook defects
Faking calibration or stress test reports
Accepting expired or reused parts
Public tenders and contract bids are increasingly digitized, yet many engineers still influence the process by setting biased eligibility criteria.
Real-world Note: A PSU tender required an obscure ISO certification only one vendor possessed — a classic move to eliminate competition.
Mechanisms of Corruption:
Pre-qualifying specific vendors
Leaking technical bid details
Colluding with procurement officials
Engineers managing warehouses or project inventories sometimes misuse their control for personal profit.
Risks Include:
Procuring unused spares to resell outside
Billing for items never installed
Creating false shortage to justify reorders
Ensuring safety and regulatory compliance is often the last step — and often compromised. Engineers signing off on faulty systems or misreporting safety metrics can put entire plants and workers at risk.
Alarming Cases:
Ventilation issues in textile mills being passed despite high CO2 levels
Safety audit reports reused from previous years
Corruption in mechanical engineering is not just about embezzlement. It directly affects:
Public safety
System efficiency
National economic loss
Reputation of the profession
A 2022 report by Transparency International India found that infrastructure-related corruption accounted for 32% of public complaints across technical domains, with mechanical project mismanagement topping the list after civil engineering.
What Needs to Change ?Mandate third-party validation for all testing
Public digital procurement platforms with transparent evaluation
Stronger incorporation of ethics in mechanical engineering curricula
Licensing penalties for proven malpractice
Investigative journalism in infrastructure sectors
Use of RTI to access procurement and safety data
Mechanical engineering has been the silent backbone of India’s industrial journey. But silence should not mean invisibility. To ensure accountability and safety, stakeholders — from policy makers to educators and engineers themselves — must recognize and plug these corruption leaks.
Exposing and understanding these vulnerabilities is not a witch-hunt — it's an essential step toward restoring integrity in the sector.
The Wall