A V Shankara Rao is currently the Chairman, Cauvery Technical Committee. He retired as Chief Engineer, Water Resources Development Organisation, Government of Karnataka, in 1978. Throughout his career, he was associated with planning and construction of several major and minor irrigation projects in Karnataka State.

Visvesvaraya can be compared only with himself, for there is no other like him. He is a rare combination of ancient Hindu Bhishma and modern American Ford.

P Kodanda Rao

MV – as Sir M Visvesvaraya was familiarly known played an important role in many technical projects across undivided India. Great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru wanted MV to be associated with certain projects of great importance like the Orissa floods and bridge across the Ganga. In many of these projects, MV used innovations ahead of his time. For the water supply project at Sukkur in Sind, for example, he implemented the concept of ‘collector wells’ rarely used in those days but found in textbooks on ground water hydrology today. Another example is his automatic flood gate for dams (which he patented) which permits the passage of a flood through a reservoir without the water level exceeding the full reservoir level with the ordinary spillway used at that time, the flood discharge raised the water level above the full reservoir level, submerging additional surrounding land. This gate thus was a forerunner to the present day radial gates, which, however, are not automatic. He foresaw the importance of using a reservoir for flood control considered till then only for irrigation and power generation. His recommendations later resulted in the Hirakud dam being built, taming the Mahanadi river and reducing flood havoc in Orissa. Similarly, the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secundarabad are protected from floods due to plans drawn up by MV.

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Address for Correspondence
A V Shankara Rao
170, Atignal 3rd Main
43rd Cross
8th Block, Jayanagar,
Bangalore 560 082, India.