India marks Engineer's Day on the birthday of one dam builder
Every 15 September, India, Sri Lanka and Tanzania celebrate Engineer's Day in honour of M. Visvesvaraya. He patented automatic floodgates, shielded Hyderabad from its river, ran the Kingdom of Mysore as its chief minister and, past the age of 90, was still advising on where to put a bridge across the Ganges.
Born on 15 September 1861 at Muddenahalli in the Kingdom of Mysore to a Telugu-speaking family, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya studied in Bangalore, took a science degree from the University of Madras and qualified in civil engineering at the college in Pune. There he became the first secretary of the Deccan Club, moving among reformers such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale. In 1885 he joined the Bombay Public Works Department as an assistant engineer.
His signature invention was a set of automatic weir floodgates, first installed in 1903 at Khadakvasla Dam near Pune. They let a reservoir fill to the highest level it could reach without endangering the dam, and the design was repeated at Tigra Dam in Gwalior and at the Krishna Raja Sagar Dam at Mysore, which he designed and supervised. Around 1906 he was sent to Aden to plan its water supply and drainage. After voluntary retirement in 1908 he toured industrial nations, then won fame designing flood defences for Hyderabad, long menaced by the Musi river.
In 1912 Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV appointed him Dewan, effectively prime minister, of Mysore, a post he held until 1918. With royal funding he set up a string of enterprises and institutions, among them the Mysore Soap Factory, an iron and steel works at Bhadravathi and the State Bank of Mysore, and in 1917 helped found one of India's earliest engineering colleges in Bangalore. He encouraged private investment and pushed for new railway lines.
Britain knighted him in 1915, and independent India gave him the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian honour, in 1955. He wrote books on planning and unemployment, sat on Tata Steel's board from 1927 to 1955, and championed the Kannada language. A strict vegetarian who neither smoked nor drank, he died in April 1962 at the age of 100.
Source: M. Visvesvaraya
