Interpreting Rivers for Dams: Engineering Education, Economisation, Knowledge Creation and Indian Hydro-Engineers 1860–1960

This paper argues that two analogous processes of engineering education in British India as well as the conceptual articulation and propagation of rivers as economic units set up the path to the construction of the large multipurpose dam. This paper focuses on the Multi-Purpose River Valley Development (MPRVD) whose embrace into the colonial engineering vocabulary has been seen as a ‘seismic shift’ away from a previously established register of ‘perennial irrigation schemes’. Advancing a networked analysis, this paper will unveil the conceptual and incremental build-up that led to the implementation of this as well as other large dam projects. The story of the construction of these dams is deeply intertwined with engineering education, technological exchange and the rise of macroeconomics. Much of the evolution of this engineering vocabulary hinged on expertise that was very much performative. The production and performance of this expertise was framed by a waterbody’s materialities. How engineers understood environmental realities and envisioned futures was premised in these materialities