Engineering -- specifically, computer programming with the intent of working for a body shop -- is a reliable path to comparative material prosperity and financial security in India in a fashion that it is not in the United States. That is really all there is to it.

(Engineers are not poorly paid in the US by any stretch of the imagination, but the career choice doesn't strictly dominate e.g. teaching, law, working for an arm of the local government, or generic white collar labor. By comparison, Indian engineering salaries were quite recently increasing by 50% every six months.)