Past Imperfect Episode 30: M. Visvesvaraya’s technocratic vision with Aparajith Ramnath
Past Imperfect Episode 30 features Dinyar Patel, Associate Professor of History at SPJIMR, in conversation with Aparajith Ramnath, Associate Professor of History at Ahmedabad University and the author of Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M. Visvesvaraya.
M. Visvesvaraya was much more than India’s most famous engineer. As Ramnath details, he was a risk-taking diwan of Mysore, a liberal statesman, and a tireless advocate of mass education and industrialisation in India. Engineering a Nation provides us with a critical chapter in modern India’s development trajectory, telling us how Visvesvaraya presided over the construction of big dams, ironworks, factories, bureaucracies, education systems, and the scaffoldings of democracy. His vision for India was highly technocratic, one that embraced economic planning and top-down leadership. This technocratic vision helped lay the foundations for things like India’s IT economy—but it also, as Ramnath is careful to note, came with some significant costs.
