Engineering a Nation
About This Book
Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (1861 to 1962) is arguably the most famous Indian engineer of the twentieth century, yet he was far more than an engineer. He worked as a civil engineer, public administrator, constitutional analyst and development thinker, and his imprint is still visible across India. Sugarcane farmers in Maharashtra and Karnataka, visitors to the Brindavan Gardens beside the Krishnarajasagara dam near Mysore, city dwellers with piped water, students at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru and the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, buyers of Mysore Sandal Soap, and anyone who has lived through the Five-Year Plans all touch his legacy. Visvesvaraya was an early advocate of economic planning and rapid, large-scale industrialization, which he saw as essential to national development. Above all he was a technocrat, convinced that science and technology could solve society's most pressing problems. His ideas drew both praise and criticism in his day, and technocratic visions are again at the centre of public debate, with the same promise and the same limits. Aparajith Ramnath draws on a wide range of sources to give a balanced portrait of a man now regarded as a national icon. He examines the professional and intellectual relationships that shaped Visvesvaraya and places his work in its historical setting. Following his life, the book argues, is a way of understanding the emergence of the Indian nation itself. Engineering a Nation won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize in 2025.
ISBN: 9780670090501
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