Aparajit Ramnath and Priyambada Jayakumar reflect upon the makers of modern India

“It’s a heavy book to carry, but it’s not a heavy book to read,” said Aparajith Ramnath, reflecting on the lives and legacies of two men who helped shape modern India: Sir M. Visvesvaraya and M.S. Swaminathan, at a session titled ‘Icons Who Helped Build Modern India’, moderated by Ramya Kannan, at The Hindu’s Lit for Life festival. 

On M. Visvesvaraya 

Mr. Aparajith, author of ‘Engineering a Nation’, an extensive biography of M. Visvesvaraya that won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize for 2025, described the pairing of Visvesvaraya and Swaminathan as a “meaningful juxtaposition” for the session. Both, he said, were keen architects of modern India, one through engineering and administration, the other through agriculture and food security.

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Visvesvaraya, India’s foremost civil engineer and the 19th Dewan of Mysore, left behind a legacy deeply woven into everyday life. From institutions like the Indian Institute of Science to the era of Five-Year Plans and the Planning Commission, his influence continues to shape the country. 

“If you’ve been a farmer near Pune, lived in Hyderabad, or even used Mysore sandal soap, you have lived a part of Visvesvaraya’s legacy,” Mr. Aparajith noted. He also spoke about how Indian engineers under colonial rule struggled to rise within bureaucratic structures, and how Visvesvaraya mastered the codes of governance, often “out-Britishing the British.”

On M.S. Swaminathan 

Priyambada Jayakumar, author of ‘M.S. Swaminathan: The Man Who Fed India’, published in November 2025, reflected on approaching Swaminathan’s life through a political lens. “There is so little written about him politically,” she said, describing the Green Revolution as “India’s first stallion of Atmanirbharta.” 

Swaminathan’s work, she noted, transformed India from a food-deficient nation into a food-secure one.

Together, the conversation revealed that nation-building was never merely about steel, dams, or grain, but about people who carried the weight of a young country with quiet resolve. 

Visvesvaraya, Mr. Aparajith noted, “lived many different lives,” an “out-and-out modernist” concerned less with identity than with the future of science and technology in India. 

Swaminathan, equally, belonged to a time when service outweighed self. “People like M. S. Swaminathan sacrificed their lives towards research and development, towards building a nation like India,” Ms. Priyambada said. 

On the parallels of the two founding figures of Modern India, Ms. Priyambada mentioned, “In recognition of September 15 being celebrated as Engineer’s day after Professor Visvesvaraya, I can only hope that one day, 7 August, which is Swaminathan’s birthday, will be remembered as Farmer’s day for all of his contributions towards the Green Revolution.”

Between engineering and agriculture, bureaucracy and soil, the session traced a shared ethic of duty — one that continues to shape how India imagines progress, long after its makers have stepped away.

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Published – January 18, 2026 01:23 pm IST