Engineers Day - Remembering Sir MV, An Engineer and Statesman Par Excellence

 Engineers Day - Remembering Sir MV, An Engineer and Statesman Par Excellence on His Birthday

Images - Courtesy Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai

Every year, India celebrates 15th September as Engineers day as a befitting tribute and in reverence to once in a century engineer and a nation builder par excellence, Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (Sir MV), who was born on this date in 1861 as per the official records as entered in his passport, while most scholars say that he was born on 15^th September, 1860.  

 

In the annals of human history very few people have had the honour of celebrating their own birth centenary; from amongst those few who have, there are no parallels to the veritable and a nation building life that Sir M Visvesvaraya lived for all of 102 years (died on 14^th April 1962) during which his achievements, both as an engineer and as an administrator, were truly incredible. Sir M Visvesvaraya, popularly referred to as Sir MV, was an engineer par excellence, statesman, visionary, a staunch votary for industrialization, proponent of education and women empowerment, a visionary who started the Mysore Bank which later became the State Bank of India, the man who improved transportation, and the father of planned economy etc. Sir MV has made enduring contributions, not just as a civil engineer with the British Government -  two plus decades in the Maharashtra province - but also for the development of the state of Mysore, where he worked as the Chief Engineer and the Diwan of Mysore and for his many other contributions in regions of the sub-continent including Karachi and Hyderabad, which are now in Pakistan and also in Aden, which is now in Syria. Sir MVs works as a great nation builder remain eternally etched in the annals of Indian history. There, are very few fields of thoughts and constructive endeavours, of technical advancement and nation building, in which Sir MV has not made a significant contribution in his nearly eight decades long service to the nation. It is therefore no wonder that Sir MV was bestowed with the highest national honours the Bharat Ratna in the year 1955, which he shared with Pandit Nehru and Bhagwan Das.

 

The year 1960 marked the centenary of Sir MV. The then government of Mysore (now Karnataka from 1^st November 1973) befittingly decided to felicitate Sir MV, publicly, on his attaining 100 years on 15^th September 1960, for his invaluable contributions to the state of Mysore. They planned to organise this event as a mega event at Lal Bagh, Bangalore. Pandit Nehru, the PM of India, had given his consent to personally felicitate the centenarian MV at Lal Bagh on 15^th September 1860. Unfortunately, Feroze Gandhi the son-in-law of Nehru – husband of Mrs Indira Gandhi – died on 8^th September 1960, just a week before MV attained his centenary. This created some doubt whether Pandit Nehru would attend the felicitation function of Sir MV in Bangalore given the personal tragedy in his family. Nehru, who had greatest of respect and regard for MV, decided to overlook his personal tragedy to be with the centenarian MV on this historic day. Nehru flew down to Bangalore and paid befitting tribute to Sir MV at the Lal Bagh where public function was organised by the Mysore State to honour MV. Nehru, in his felicitation address said: “You. Sir, have been …  always young in mind, young in outlook, and looking as young people should, to the future. You have not lost yourself in the past ……..you have always looked to the future and you have always built for that future and you have reminded us always of this modern world of science and industry and technology ……. And, so many of us …. feel old when we look at your young self…..We in India have an unfortunate reputation for talking a great deal and not living up to what we say. You Sir, have been a great exception to that rule for you have thought, talked little, and done much...” This in nut shell summarises the admiration that Pandit Nehru, the Prime Minister of India had for Sir MV, notwithstanding some of the difference of opinions that they both had when it comes to development and industrialisation.

Considering the admiration that Pandit Nehru had for the centenarian, it was no wonder that he chose the occasion of the centenary celebration of Sir MV to announce at Lal Bagh, on 15^th September, 1960, setting up of a museum in honour of Sir MV in the city of Bangalore. The outcome was the establishment of The Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum (VITM) Bangalore, which came up under Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Sir MV passed away on 14^th April, 1962 at the age of 102 years and just three months later, on July 14, 1962, Nehru came to Bangalore to inaugurate the VITM. Addressing the audience, Nehru recalled the undying belief that MV had in science and technology. He said “Without science you perish, without spirituality you perish also…. We see in Dr Visvesvaraya a man of vision, a man of creative activity, a man looking ahead and a man who built around himself, and around others, a tradition of looking to science and technology, which was very, very necessary for India. Others were working to that end, but he was pre-eminent in it”

 

The extraordinary interest that Nehru had for personally opening the VITM, as a befitting tribute to Sir MV, is seen from a letter that Nehru wrote to Nijalingappa. Earlier, Nehru had written to the then CM of Mysore, Mr S R Kanthi, expressing his desire to visit Bangalore to open the Visvesvaraya Museum, some time in middle of July, 1962. But then things changed and Kanthi was soon to make way for Mr Nijalingappa to be the CM. Nehru was so emotionally attached with Sir MV that he did not want any delay in the opening of the VITM, which was to be a national tribute to MV.  Nehru wrote to Nijalingappa “I see from the newspapers that you have been elected Leader of the party, and consequently you will become the Chief Minister of Mysore. My congratulations and good wishes. I had written to Kanthi about my visiting Bangalore in the middle of July principally for the Visvesvaraya Museum …….”. With this letter to Nijalingappa, Pandit Nehru, reminded of his desire to be present for the opening of the VITM. Accordingly, Nijalingappa made all arrangements for the opening of the VITM, and Pandit Nehru opened the first phase of VITM on …. July, 1962. However, the second phase and the expanded VITM was opened by his daughter in the year 1965.  

 I was privileged to have had the honour to be posted as the Director of the VITM Bangalore in January 2011, which incidentally happened to be the 150^th official birth centenary of Sir MV. Being a native of Karnataka, I grew up listening to the legendary tales of Sir M Visvesvaraya, from my school days, and I also vividly remember a Kannada film “Bangarada Manushya” – a block buster film - where another legend of Kannada film industry, late Dr Raj Kumar, eulogises Sir MV for his extraordinary contributions in building the Krishna Raj Sagar Dam (Kannambadi) in a song, which became very popular ad continues to be so even today. The year of my posting in Visvesvaraya Museum was quite providential since it was also the official sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Sir MV. It provided me an opportunity to conceive developing an exhibition on the life and works of the legend, under the title “Sir MV – The Legendary Nation Builder”. This exhibition based on research and drawing on a range of historical sources and images, archival materials, documentary, visual and audio – highlighted the extraordinary nation building contributions of Sir MV and helped in illuminating the contributions of Sir MV to the nation. Painstaking curatorial efforts were made to collect the materials from across the country. The exhibition was opened at VITM on 15^th September 2011, on his 150^th official birth anniversary, in the presence of the family members of Sir MV - Satish Mokshagundam the great grandson of Sir MV, his wife and his mother. This well researched exhibition with a wide ranging archival materials, and a host of original objects and memorabilia - sourced from the collections of Satish Mokshagundam and his Museum in Muddenhalli (very close to the Bangalore airport) and several other sources and archives -  became a roaring success. The exhibition was majorly covered by all the media and it was all over the news. The wide publicity and appreciation for the exhibition in the media helped the museum with an unprecedented increase in visitor foot fall to VITM.  In fact, this exhibition helped VITM to cross that magical visitor foot fall of one million visitors in a year for the very first time since its opening in July 1962. We created a special period room in the exhibition where all the original belongings of Sir MV, which included among other objects HIS Bharat Ratna Medallion, his dress etc., were displayed and this period room became the corner stone of the exhibition. The exhibition also had a large number of other rare archival material and information including a wide range of writings and correspondence of Sir MV with people like Nehru, Gandhi and who’s who of the makers of India.

The range of archival material, content and information that we had researched and collected from across the country - from various state and national archives and other sources - was mind boggling for Satish Mokshagundam, the great grandson of Sir MV, the custodian of the Sir MV Museum in Muddenhalli, the very house where Sir MV was born. Satish Mokshagundam, legal inheritor of all the belongings of Sir MV including the house, which was home to Sir MV at the time of his demise on 14^th April, 1962, openly mentioned in his inaugural address that although he is the owner and custodian of Sir MV and his belongings, he had never seen so much of archival information and content on the life and works of Sir MV all his life. Similar sentiments were expressed by a host of distinguished dignitaries who visited this exhibition.

 

Sir MV began his engineering service with the British Government in the Bombay province in 1884 and his first posting was in Nashik and subsequently he spent major part of his service in Pune and Bombay (now Mumbai), where he made unprecedented contributions in diverse fields of engineering including his greatest of innovations in building the collectors well, and introducing his patent winning sluice gates in Pune. His engineering contributions spread a vast area from Aden to Pune, Sukkur, Nashik, Hyderabad, Mysore, and several other cities and projects across India, particularly in the state of Maharashtra. Sir MV's civil engineering contributions are seen all over India, His engineering service was also used in building the Hirakud Dam, in Odisha, a Railway Bridge across Ganga in Patna, for combating floods in Hyderabad, constructing the Himayatsagar and the Osmansagar reservoirs across the rivers Musi and Easi, and in the reconstruction of Hyderabad city and preparation of the drainage scheme for the city. Sir MV was also a member of the engineering committee that was involved in construction of several buildings in Lutyens Delhi.

 

Sir MV, the man with an impeccable integrity too utopian for any of us to imagine, was known for his foresight and prophetic vision for industrial development, which he advocated was essential for alleviating poverty. He was a master in irrigation designs and was very passionate about effective utilization of scarce water resource for drinking and irrigation purpose. Block System of Irrigation, Automatic Sluice gates and Collector Well are some important innovations of Sir MV. Automatic Sluice gates, used in Pune and in KRS, Mysore enable storage of water well above the crest of the weir of the Dam. He designed the Block system of Irrigation to optimize, control and evenly distribute water supply to parched agricultural lands across number of villages. The supply was rotated within “blocks” in each village to curtail misuse and water logging. This system, devised in 1899, continues to be used even today in Deccan Canals. The collector wells can provide moderate to large quantities of naturally filtered water from the river beds.

 

Sir MV was a firm believer that development alone can bring about prosperity for people. He also believed that India could be benefited from harvesting the knowledge and experience of the prosperous nations. Visvesvaraya toured many developed countries of the world to study, understand and evaluate the success of their prosperity and for replicating the same in India. During his six foreign travels, he visited Japan, America, Canada and many European countries. An outcome of his learning from foreign visits is embodied in the establishment of several industries and educational institutes in the state of Karnataka. He also started the All India Manufacturers Association in 1941 and was its founding president. After serving for 23 years in the Bombay Province and on realising that the highest position that an Indian Engineer could reach in the British administration is Superintendent Engineer and that he will not be able to become a Chief Engineer, Sir MV submitted his voluntary retirement from service in 1907 and decided to go back to his home state of Mysore. However, his service were sought by the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1908 for combating the flood in Hyderabad.

 

Visvesvaraya served his mother state Mysore (now Karnataka) in different capacities, first as the Chief Engineer to the government in 1909 and next as the Diwan of Mysore from 1912 to 1918. He firmly believed that education is fundamental to the progress of the nation. His regime as the Dewan of Mysore witnessed unprecedented growth in the establishment of a number of primary schools. In just six years of his tenure as the Diwan Sir MV added an additional 6,500 new schools in Mysore. He pronounced a revolutionary legislation making primary education compulsory for every child, including the girl child. He also believed in social empowerment of the depressed communities and backward classes and laid special emphasis on education of girls. He was instrumental in establishing educational institutes, industries, banks, Mysore University and Agriculture Science College. He also used his personal money to help establish a vocational college (Jayachamarajendra Polytechnic College). HAL the premier aircraft manufacturing company in Bangalore, the steel, sugar and soap factories in Karnataka owe their existence to Sir MV. The Premier Automobile Company in Pune, which was the first automobile company in India, owes its genesis to Sir MV. He improved the Railway infrastructure of Mysore and established clubs and association for improvement of the state. He was associated with the premier Indian Institute of Science and promoted linkage of industries with scientific institutes. The two term sex year tenure (2012-2018) of Sir MV as the Diwan of Mysore produced outstanding results for the state the fruits of which are continuing to harvested by Karnataka even today.

 

Sir MV after laying down the office of Diwan of Mysore spent time in writing, which was aimed at development for India. He wrote two books---Reconstructing India in 1920 and A Planned Economy for India in 1934, Both these books had a profound impact on Nehru and other leaders including Mahatma Gandhi. The Mahatma, pained by the loss of lives due to floods in Orissa in 1937, requested Sir MV to find some solution to Orissa floods. Visvesvaraya, who differed with Gandhi on many counts, particularly when it came to developing industries, had great respect for the Mahatma and at his instance MV, in the year 1937, surveyed the flood affected areas of the state and collected a lot of data from the flood affected area in Orissa (now Odisha). After careful analysis of the data collected from the flood affected area, designed engineering solution to combat flood. The very next year he visited Orissa and submitted a detailed report and for the construction of a dam in the upper regions of Mahanadi river which was the cause for the floods. The task for the building of a large dam across the river Mahanadi was taken up for execution post our independence in 1948. This giant Hirakud Dam was inaugurated by Pandit Nehru in January 1957.

 

The ideas expressed by Sir MV in his book Reconstructing India served as a source for the publishing of a Hindi Pamphlet by the United Provinces, which was titled ‘The Poverty of India and its Cure’, which finds a mention of reference to Sir MV book. Sir MVs services were also sought by the Indian National Congress. In the year 1938, Sir MV was tipped to be the Chairman of a National Planning Committee of the INC, at the instance of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. However, on the advice of Meghnad Saha, the noted scientist, Netaji changed his mind and appointed Nehru to be the Chairman of the committee and with Visvesvaraya as one of the prominent members. Saha himself was a member of this committee with many other distinguished economists on this committee. The subsequent First Five Years Plan introduced in India, post-independence, is majorly influenced by this committee report. Sir MV. As expected Mahatma Gandhi was not in favour of the committee and its report and therefore the progress of the committee was at snail pace. Sir MV was frustrated with the tardy progress of the committee and he decided to put in paper from the membership of the committee. However, Nehru, vide his letter dated December 26, 1939, tried to explain the reasons for the slow progress, which Sir MV accepted and did not insist for acceptance of his resignation.

 

Sir MV was a staunch supporter of industries and he knew from his experience of his six foreign visits and his studies in Japan, Europe, USA, USSR etc. and so also his works in the state of Mysore that industrialisation and applications of technology is a sure shot solution to improving the lives of the people. He was also a votary of an organised industry. He founded the All India Manufacturers Organisation. Sir MV served as the president of this organisation and he used his reputation to invite the best of leaders for the annual sessions. In the year, 1947 just before our independence he invited Pandit Nehru to address the seventh annual session of the AIMO in New Delhi. True to his reputation of plain speaking, Sir M.V. as the President of the AIMO spoke straight and mixed no words to criticise the industrial policy of the Indian Government, which was headed by Pandit Nehru. It is said that Nehru was not pleased with the criticism leading to tense moments. Although Pandit Nehru tried his best to address all the concerns expressed by Sir MV, he remained unconvinced and went to the extent of disrupting Nehru from speaking and addressing him as Motilal Nehru. When the Prime Minister retorted that he was addressing him wrongly, Sir M.V. remained unperturbed and said that he belonged to the generation of his father, who was well known to him and therefore Motilal Nehru’s name comes to him naturally. This eased the tense moment in the audience since Pandit Nehru himself was the first to give a lofty laugh for the retort of Sir MV who he admired greatly.

 

Sir MV was instrumental in establishment of the Government Engineering College in Bangalore in the year 1917. This was one of the first engineering colleges in India. This college was later befittingly named after the legend himself and is now called the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering UVCE, which has produced some of the best engineers that India has produced. He was also the founder of the State Bank of Mysore, which later gave rise to the State Bank of India and the State Bank of Mysore, the mother Bank, later got merged with SBI

 

In recognition of the extraordinary engineering services rendered by Visvesvaraya to the British Empire he was conferred with the knighthood from the British Empire. Post the Independence the government of India conferred on Sir MV the highest national award the Bharat Ratna in the year 1955. Incidentally he shared the Bharat Ratna Award with Pandit Nehru and Bhagwan Das. After actively serving the nation for more than 100 years Sir MV breathed his last on 14th April, 1962 at Bangalore.

 

India Science Congress is one of the most premier annual science event organised every year in the month of January every year since 1913. The India Science Congress attracts the best of scientists from across India and several foreign scientists including Nobel laureates.  An exhibition accompanies the India Science Congress exhibition. A tradition was introduced in the India Science Congress to commemorate great scientists through an exhibition which was to find a prime space in the Hall of Pride stall of the India Science Congress. It was such a great honour that Sir MV, although is not a Scientist speaking figuratively, was chosen to be featured as the scientist to be given a tribute in the Hall of Fame in the India Science Congress Exhibition for the year 2015. The fame of the Sir MV exhibition, which we had opened at Nehru Science Centre on 15^th September 2014 had spread wide and fast. Therefore 102^nd India Science Congress, which was held in Mumbai from Jan 3-7, 2015 chose the Sir MV exhibition to be featured in the India Science Congress in Mumbai. Incidentally Dr Anil Kakodkar, who was the Chairman of a committee to decide on the theme for the Hall of Pride pavilion, had actually opened the Sir MV exhibition at the Nehru Science Centre, in the august presence of Mr Sajjan Jindal and Mrs Sangita Jindal, who had funded the exhibition and the printing of the catalogue. Therefore, it was no surprise that we were tasked with the responsibility to present the Sir MV exhibition at the India Science Congress. Our pavilion was visited by more than 1 lac visitors and was highly appreciated by all.  Sir MV exhibition was befittingly honoured as the best pavilion of the 102^nd India Science Congress and I had the honour to receive this award during the concluding ceremony.

 

For those of you who may be interested in reading the exhibition catalogue book you may please down load it from the Nehru Science Centre website under the New Publications section, where you will find all the publications of Nehru Science Centre, which are free for download.

 

Wishing you all a very happy engineers day.