It was very difficult to do anything other than engineering, medicine, finance, law, and science in India pre-2000s. Then, with the software and internet and mo

It was very difficult to do anything other than engineering, medicine, finance, law, and science in India pre-2000s. Then, with the software and internet and mobile revolutions, in the late 90s and 2000s, software and electronics were substantially more lucrative than pure science or other branches of engineering. Things are becoming more like the US nowadays- with liberal arts being a viable option as the middle class is becoming richer and as children of the first wave of software nouveau riche come of age and their wealth providing some cushion for the liberal-arts and creative types. There were not enough well-paying jobs (copywriter, creative, real estate agent, retail manager, etc. like in the US) like in the US for people with generic qualifications like English literature, etc. One way out for people with those qualifications was to write banking or governmental entrance exams for jobs. But these too leaned quantitative and had math components making them harder for liberal arts graduates. From what I've heard from the few people I've met from USSR and China, the situation was similar there too.