Visvesvaraya: Extracting Moonbeams from Cucumbers

Sunil Khilnani explores the life and work of engineer, planner and politician Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. Visvesvaraya was a frail bureaucrat who walked hunched, as if the burden of state-building literally pressed down on his shoulders. But in the popular imagination he turned an engineering degree into a superhuman world-fashioning prowess. He changed the Indian nation with practical and enduring improvements for millions of people, including innovations in sanitation, statistics, flood control, drainage and irrigation. Austere to the point of dourness, but audaciously hopeful, Visvesvaraya sought to frog-march India into modernity. Featuring Bangalore-based social scientist Chandan Gowda. Producer: Martin Williams Executive Producer: Martin Smith

You can listen to Visvesvaraya: Extracting Moonbeams from Cucumbers online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Visvesvaraya: Extracting Moonbeams from Cucumbers is an episode from Incarnations: India in 50 Lives by BBC.

This episode is 14:18 long.

This episode was published on Mar 2, 2016.

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