In this episode of The Lead from DH Radio, Prof Dhruv Raina talks about Bharat Ratna M Visveswaraya, the latter's legacy as an engineer par excellence.

Ahmed Shariff: Today’s is Engineers’ Day and it is celebrated every year in the honour of Bharat Ratna Sir M Visveswaraya.  Visveswaraya has made innumerable contributions to our society and to talk about that today we have JNU’s Prof Dhruv Raina. Prof Raina specialises in the area of History and Philosophy of Science and has the honour of Heinrich Zimmer Chair for Indian Philosophy and Intellectual History, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany. Hi sir, welcome to DH Radio.
Dhruv Raina: Hi. How are you?
Ahmed: I am good, hope you are doing good too?
Dhruv: Yeah. Under the conditions.
Ahmed: M Visveswaraya is known for the Dam that he constructed across the Cauvery. could you list some of his other lesser-known but equally relevant contribution?
Dhruv: There are many. The dam in that sense was one of the last of his concrete contributions. He trained as an irrigation engineer and he dealt with the water supply and drainage issues as well. He was posted in Nashik district, he tells us in his autobiography that his first job was to build a pipe siphon across a channel on the Panjara river near Dhulia. From there he graduated on to developing a larger water supply scheme for the town of Dhulia. This meat that he had to construct a reservoir. These probably were the areas that received scanty rainfall and they had to construct a reservoir to impound the water. Then he moves on to Pune where he apprenticed with new branches of civil engineering. But his first big project came in 1893. This was to build a barrage in Sukkur in the Sind...

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