December 3, 2023

Engineer’s Day: India celebrates M. Visvesvaraya’s 160th birthday, all you need to know about the greatest engineer

Engineer Day 2021: On September 15 every year, India, along with Sri Lanka and Tanzania, celebrates the National Engineer Day to honour and honour the achievements of the great engineer Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. This day is celebrated to commemorate the great work of engineers and to encourage improvement and innovation.

This year marks the 160th birth anniversary of M. Visvesvaraya, who was born on the 15th of September 1861 in Muddenahalli village in Karnataka. He completed his school education in his hometown and then went on to study Bachelor of Arts from the University of Madras. However, he changed his career path after graduation and devoted himself to civil engineering at the Faculty of Sciences Bonny.

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Visvesvaraya commonly known as Sir MV has undertaken many complex projects and achieved remarkable results in infrastructure during his career. In 1903, he patented and installed a dam-gate irrigation system in Khadakvasla Reservoir near Pune to raise the level of food supply and storage to higher levels known as the “block system”.

It was also installed in the Tigra Dam in Gwalior and the Krishnaraja Sagara Dam (KRS) in Mysuru, the latter creating one of the largest reservoirs in Asia at that time.

An expert in irrigation techniques and flood disaster management, Sir M.V. was not only a great civil engineer, but also served the 19th Diwan of Mysore from 1912 to 1919. While serving as a Diwan of Mysore, in 1915 he was knighted as Commander of the British Empire in India by King George V.

In addition to the awards he received in engineering, he has played a pivotal role in spreading awareness about the engineering discipline and also played an important role in the founding of the State College of Engineering in Bangalore in 1917. Later on, the university became called Visvesvaraya University College of Engineering (UVCE).

For his contribution to building India, the government awarded him India’s highest honour “Bharat Ratna” in 1955.

In 2018, GOOGLE released his birthday doodles to celebrate the great work that led the efforts of Tata Steel engineers to create an armored vehicle used in World War II that could withstand bullets. Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya died in 1962, but his achievements and contributions are celebrated to this day.