The 53rd Engineers Day – September 15, 2020

After topping the Poona College of Engineering he was directly recruited by Government of Bombay and appointed as Assistant Engineer in Public Works Department

He created automatic sluice gates which were later reused for Tigra Dam (in Madhya Pradesh) and KRS Dam (in Karnataka) as well. For this patent design, he was supposed to get a recurring income in the form of royalty, but he refused it so that the government could use this money for more developmental projects.

Between 1895 and 1905, he worked in different parts of India:

• In Hyderabad, he improved the drainage system.

• In Bombay, he introduced a block system of irrigation and water weir flood gates.

• In Bihar and Orissa, he was a part of the building railway bridges project and water supply schemes.

• In Mysore, he supervised the construction of KRS dam, the then Asia’s biggest dam. He was offered Dewan ship (Prime Minister position) of Mysore in 1908 and given full responsibility for all the development projects.

• Under his Dewan ship, Mysore saw major transformation in the realms of Agriculture, Irrigation, Industrialization, Education, Banking and Commerce. He was conferred with India’s highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna in 1955 for his contribution towards engineering.

Achievements of Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya

Though there are several achievements in the life of Sir MV and each cannot be described but out of the most recognizable ones is the Block System of Irrigation; a scheme prepared by him at the illustration of the then president of the Indian Irrigation Commission. He wanted to make irrigation mechanism more popular and profitable in the Bombay Presidency and to yield a practical return on the expenditure that the Government had incurred on them at that time. During his stay in the Bombay Presidency, he got closer to some of the gems like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mahadeo Govind Ranade and Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

Another notable task accomplished by Sir MV was the system of automatic weir water floodgates first installed in the year 1903 at Khadakvasla reservoir near Pune, designed and patented by him. These gates were first used to control the floods of the Mootha Canal flowing through Pune. Similar gates were later used in the Krishnasagar dam in Mysore, Tigra Dam in Gwalior and other large storage dams.

The works of Sir MV were highly successful and notable. He worked as Chief Engineer’s position at Hyderabad in 1909 and designed a flood protection system for protecting the city of Hyderabad from floods and consequently earned a celebratory status.———- by Newspaper ‘The Hindu’..