Legacy Cast In Water

KCR’s most ambitious venture, the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project, is nearing completion

- M.S. Shanker

In the mid-nineteenth century, a British engineer, Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton, had turned the barren plains of the Godavari basin into the rice bowl of Andhra Pradesh by laying a network of canals from the river. Sir Cotton’s statues today dot the landscape in Andhra and his name is still mentioned in prayers by millions of people in the two Godavari districts. More than 160 years later, Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is looking to cast a similar legacy in the mammoth structure of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project, India’s biggest and costliest. Some say, the world’s costliest irrigation project. But KCR’s pet project is more than just statistics.

It’s a dream and hope of millions. The pride of a young state. And it’s about to be completed in August, three years after the foundation stone was laid.