Sir M Visvesvaraya designed flood prtection system

New Delhi: Brilliant, intelligent, prudent, and many more adjectives together are little to praise Sir M Visvesvaraya who served the nation with dedication till his last breath.

Today is birthday of Sir M Visvesvaraya's birthday. Nation celebrates this day as Engineers Day in his respect. He was a great engineer.

He was born to Srinivasa Sastry and Venkachamma on September 15, 1861 at Muddenahalli, Chikkaballapur Taluk, Chikballapur in Karnataka.

His father was a great Sanskrit scholar. He was also an Ayurvedic practitioner. His ancestor, who belonged to Mokshagundam near Giddalur in the Prakasam District of present-day Andhra Pradesh, migrated to Mysore state around three centuries ago.

At the early age of 15, his father passed away. At the time of this tragic incident, he along with his mother was living in Kurnool of Andhra Pradesh.

Despite all odds, Sir Visvesvaraya studied at primary school at Chikkaballapur. For further studies, he went to Banglore and completed his high school.

Continuing his studies, Sir MV did his BA from the Madras University in 1881. Later he moved to Pune where he studied civil engineering at the College of Science, Pune. The College is now known as the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP).

Having availed engineering degree, Visvesvaraya had joined Public Works Department (PWD) in Mumbai. On invitation, he joined Indian Irrigation Commission. It was the time when he started implementing his schemes and plans. An extremely complicated system of irrigation was implemented by him.

He designed a system of automatic weir water floodgates. They were first installed in 1903 at the Khadakvasla reservoir near Pune.

These gates were very useful to dam. Later, such sort of gates was made at the Tigra dam in Gwalior and the Krishnaraja Sagara (KRS) dam in Mysore.

Sir Visvesvaraya's flood protection system to protect the city of Hyderabad from floods made him an icon and a celebrity.

He was also actively involved in developing a system to protect Vishakapatnam port from sea erosion.

KRS dam across the Cauvery River was build under his supervision. At that time the dam created the biggest reservoir in Asia.

Under the aegis of the Mysore government and his supervision, several institutions came up there.

He opted for voluntary retirement in 1908. Sir Visvesvaraya was appointed first minister of the princely state of Mysore. He gave great contribution to the state as a minister.

His contribution was given due respect and he was the nation's highest honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1955.
Several honorary doctoral degrees like D Sc., LLD, D Litt were conferred on him by various universities in India. He presided over the The Indian Science Congress Association.

A temple of The Hanuman deity that is located at Muddenahalli was discovered by mother of Sir Visvesvaraya.


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