During the British era, several irrigation engineers had executed long-lasting projects in India. Only a handful of them are remembered — and deified. Colonel J. Pennycuick (1841-1911), the architect of the Mullaperiyar dam, is one of them. He is credited with having transformed the Cumbum Valley into a fertile belt, dotted with paddy fields, vegetables, flower gardens, coconut plantations and vineyards. To this day, his dam meets the needs of the water-deficit districts of Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Ramanathapuram and Sivaganga.
People of the valley, especially farmers, are so grateful to Pennycuick that they make offerings to his portrait on his birth anniversary, which falls during the harvest festival of Pongal. However, it may be surprising to note that he was not the first choice when the British decided to dam the Periyar in the later part of the 19th Century. History of the Periyar Project, a publication authored by the Public Works Department’s Executive Engineer, A.T. Mackenzie (published in 1898 and republished in 1963), reveals that the idea of diverting the west-flowing Periyar into Madurai had existed for long, but “merely as an idea”. In 1850, work on a small dam and a channel began. But it was abandoned because of fever that spread among workers and the demand for “excessive wages”. The project was revived 12 years later by Major Ryves.
