Engineer’s Day 2025: Remembering the ‘architect of modern India’ M Visvesvaraya on his birth anniversary

Every year, Engineers' Day 2025 is celebrated today, September 15, in India, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania to mark the birth anniversary of Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. He was widely known as Sir MV, and was a civil engineer and statesman who held the position of Diwan of Mysore from 1912 to 1918.

He earned the “Sir” prefix from King George V as a Knight Commander of the British Indian Empire (KCIE) in 1955.

Visvesvaraya had worked as a civil engineer for the government of India and later as the prime minister of the Kingdom of Mysore. For his services, he was awarded Bharata Ratna by the government of India in 1955, the Kingdom of Mysore, and the Republic of India.

Notably, he is India's foremost engineer , renowned for his work on the Krishna Raja Sagara Dam in Mysore (Mysuru) and his role in designing a flood protection system in Hyderabad.

Engineers' Day 2025: M Visvesvaraya

Visvesvaraya was born in 1861 at Muddenahalli, Kingdom of Mysore, currently known as the Chikkaballapura district of Karnataka. He completed his primary education in Bangalore and completed their bachelor’s degree from the University of Madras.

He later studied at the College of Engineering, Pune, then the College of Science at the University of Bombay, and graduated as an engineer, receiving a Diploma in Civil Engineering (DCE).

On the occasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on his official X account and said: "Today, on Engineers' Day , I pay homage to Sir M. Visvesvaraya, whose brilliance left an indelible mark on India's engineering landscape. I extend warm greetings to all engineers who, through their creativity and determination, continue to drive innovation and tackle tough challenges across sectors." " Our engineers will continue playing a crucial role in the collective efforts to build a Viksit Bharat."

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Quotes on Engineers' Day 2025

A few famous quotes from some of the renowned engineers across the globe are listed below.

• “A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.” - Freeman Dyson
• "Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong." - Narayana Murthy
• "One man's 'magic' is another man's engineering." - Robert A. Heinlein
• "Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure." Henry Petroski