Born in Muddenahalli near Chikkaballapur on September 15, 1861, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya became the reason for infrastructural progress. He was a civil engineer, a dam builder, an economist, statesman and one of the foremost nation-builders, in the literal sense of it.

Educated in Chikkaballapur and Bengaluru, Visvesvaraya joined Bombay’s Public Works Department as an assistant engineer. He worked there for 25 years. His achievement reached its height when he was a chief engineer (and later, a Diwan) in the kingdom of Mysore. He started many initiatives in that time which are successful even today – the State Bank of Mysore, Mysore University, Mysore Paper Mills, Bhadravati Iron Works and the Krishna Raja Sagar Dam.

It was his vision for development in India that he returned in 1909 to India after a year-long world tour where he studied the systems and designs which were already prevalent in the industrialised countries of the western world. On Visvesvaraya’s birthday, the nation celebrates Engineer’s Day. This man was responsible for the construction of the Krishna Raja Sagara Dam in Mysore and also was the chief designer of the flood protection system for the city of Hyderabad. 

It was the destruction caused by the Musi river which led to torrential rains, floods, killing a large number of people and leaving at least a lakh of them homeless. At least 12 such floods had been caused by this river. The sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, Mahboob Ali Khan, personally supervised rescue operations and his palace kitchens fed over 5 lakh people. He then commissioned Visvesvaraya, owing to his fame of engineering expertise, rejecting the British’s plea to send their experts. Visvesvaraya worked under two conditions: he must be paid a salary equivalent to any British expert and he should be free to employ anyone he liked. The solution was that reservoirs should be created above the city that would control floods by storing water that exceeded the river’s carrying capacity. This solution was devised after his detailed research on rainfall levels over the area and he submitted a report to recommend his plans. The City Improvement Board allocated 2 million rupees per year for the next 6 years for this flood prevention plan, and it prevented floods for many decades to come. 

However, ill maintenance by the later rulers or Government occupying Hyderabad led to this brilliant plan to fail and over 90 residential areas were affected in the torrential rains of August 2000. 

Visvesvaraya’s genius which is known worldwide also made a further contribution to building and consolidation of dams across the country. He created the Block System which is the closing of automated doors whenever there would be an overflow. 

His contributions to the society led for him to be conferred the Bharat Ratna award in 1955 by the Government of India. He was also awarded the British knighthood by King George V. Visvesvaraya also designed and patented the automatic weir water floodgates, first installed at the Khadakwalsa reservoir in Pune, 1903. He transformed the Mysore state into what was then known as the ‘model state’.

We should take inspiration from this amazing engineer and not question our life choices after getting admission into an engineering college. Like the late former President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam said, “Some of the brightest minds in the country can be found on the last benches of the classroom.”