Doctors vs Engineers

Indian parents see these two are the only two professions they want their children in. I thought it would be fun to compare these two as well.
So what are the differences - for doctors the duration of the course is much larger, but then again you hardly find any qualified doctor come unemployed slowdown or recession or whatever. For doctors the effort during the course is much more intense than in engineering colleges. Doctors get more respect in the society than engineers - they apparently are in a noble profession and they save lives.  Lets face it - there are too many engineers around, being a computer engineer is the most ridiculous cliché for an Indian now.
So why is this so and why is it that there are still more people rushing to engineering colleges than to a medical school ? Well firstly, the seats are much less - so getting into a reasonable medical school is a herculean task. Also the investment needed in terms of money, time and effort may be much more. Another thing is that the students who simply do not have much brains can somehow survive engineering but surviving medical school without a brain sounds much more improbable. So the reason for this is obvious - engineers baring a select few working on the most critical projects are not working on something as critical as a person's life. So they can afford to have relatively incompetent people in the team but incompetent doctors are much more risky.
About the pay I guess its the whole demand and supply thing - what doctors do has been made into a obscure knowledge and common people are not supposed to treat themselves or others. While in case of engineering everyone will give it a shot, we have mechanical and chemical engineers getting into software development and we have commerce graduates as well. Soon enough we will have secondary school drop outs trying their hand at it perhaps !! Another thing is the work hours. The dearth of qualified doctors makes it necessary to overwork the few ones around. While engineers would do a 50 hour week 70 for a doctor is not very rare. So obviously they need to be compensated for their longer hours.
The thing is more about what you are good at, I think money, social standing, personal life, peace of mind or stability are important and as long as you take care of them in some moderation you should go for one more thing without which everything else don't add up to much - it is whether you love it. If you love it and are good at something then only can you respect yourself and without which the rest don't mean much at all.