National Engineer’s Day

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Context

Every year India celebrates National Engineer’s day on September 15 to recognise and honour the achievements of the great engineer Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya.

Contribution of Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya

Sir Mokshagundam Vishveshwaraya, often referred by his initials, MV, was the first Indian civil engineer, statesman and the 19th Diwan of Mysore, serving from 1912 to 1918.
He patented and installed an irrigation system with water floodgates at the Khadakvasla reservoir near Pune to raise the food supply level and storage to the highest levels known as ‘block system’ in 1903.
The irrigation system was later installed at Gwalior’s Tigra Dam and Mysuru’s Krishnaraja Sagara (KRS) dam. Krishnaraja Sagara (KRS) dam was one of the largest reservoirs in Asia at the time.
Thus, he was the Chief Engineer of Krishna Raja Sagara dam in the north-west suburb of Mysuru city, Laxmi Talav Dam near Kolhapur in south-west Maharashtra, and also served as one of the Chief Engineers of the flood protection system for the city of Hyderabad.

He was instrumental in developing a system to protect Visakhapatnam port from sea erosion.
This dam created the biggest reservoir in Asia when it was built. Visvesvaraya gave his technical advice for the location of Mokama Bridge over Ganga in Bihar.
He was instrumental in charting out a plan for road construction between Tirumala and Tirupati.

Literary works

Apart from his contributions in the field of engineering, he was also called the “precursor of economic planning in India”,
His books, “Reconstructing India” and “Planned Economy of India” were published in 1920 and 1934, respectively.