There are hundreds of engineering colleges around us. There are hundreds of “experts” ventilating on some issue or the other. But every summer it is not uncommon for brand-new localities and brand-new buildings to run out of the most basic of human necessities: water.
Because they are so poorly designed.
The main Amba Vilas palace in Mysore in recent years has attracted more visitors than even the Taj Mahal. Yet it seems to have no such problem. At least not in a life-threatening way.The reason, it turns out, is because the engineers employed by the rajas and maharajas seemed to have a vision beyond their salary packet.
From a news report in Star of Mysore:
While Mysore, Bangalore and Mandya districts are facing severe water woes, the renowned Mysore Palace is free from water woes, as it is not affected.
Thanks to the Wodeyars for constructing 12 tanks with a capacity of 1.20 lakh litres on the roof of the Palace building.
Probably except for the members of the Royal family and Mysore Palace Board officials, none of the other would know about these large tanks which are now providing water to thousands of visitors who throng the Mysore Palace premises everyday.
These tanks are located on the third floor of the Palace building just below the ‘Gopuram’ (Dome) and each tank has the capacity of storing 10,000 litres of water. These tanks also act as natural air conditioners for the entire Palace building. Out of the 12 such tanks, 6 provide water to the Palace and the remaining 6 provide water to the Mysore Palace Board.
Palace Engineers Shivakumar and Murali said that the construction of tanks came as a big surprise to everyone as they are constructed inside the RCC of the Palace roof which will keep the building cool even during hot summer and have been designed in such a way that they provide water to everyone working in the precincts of the majestic structure.
These tanks are designed in such a way that Cauvery water is supplied directly to these tanks through rising pipes. Now, since the supply of Cauvery water has been stopped, an alternative arrangement has been made to supply water from the borewells located inside the Palace premises.
“There are 8 borewells inside the Mysore Palace premises and each of them have been fitted with 5HP motors; through them around 30,000 litres of water is to supplied to the tanks”, said Shivakumar.
***
In 2007, Vikram Sampath, the biographer of the Wodeyars recounted this story:
“The KRS dam, completed in 1931, created the biggest reservoir in Asia, second only to the Aswan dam across the Nile in Egypt. Since the outlay for the dam exceeded the state budget’s, Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar (then a mere teenager) and his sagacious mother Regent Queen Kempananjammanni sold costly diamonds, ornaments, gold and silver plates of the royal family in Bombay to provide seed capital for the project.”
Also read: Why the Queen sold her diamonds and jewels
Also view: A panoramic picture of the Mysore palace
churumuri 
That is just a provision a 3 month capacity storage tank and filling that from river or borewell.Even If every townhouse is allowed to build such a tank, where is the water to fill that storage. Some pwerpointer can say “rain harvesting” without raelizing that there ios NO rain around.Let us not deceive ourselves with such things. The engineers have to find practical solutions like desalinization and pumping up, linking of perennial and rainbased rivers, stopping the mad/foolosh growth of cities etc the ancients were creating small settlements near water resourses. We are making concrete monsters and then search for water.Utter lack of Commonsense which is engineering and abundance of irresponsible behaviour
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Ofc, the masons and architects employed by Rajas had much improved vision on the future,much beyond the now-a-day instincts
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I might be missing the point here, but isn’t this just elevated storage of water, the primary source being the same Cauvery river? How is this different from me installing a 1000 liter Sintex tank and a 6000 liter sump in my house, where three members reside?
If the water tanks had been recharged by rain, or through some sort or recycling, it would have been worth appreciating. Can someone please enlighten me as to what is unique here?
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Stupid article written by an idiot.Building large storage tanks on the roof and bringing water to it from cauvery or borewells is no super thinking of hardworking civil engineers.This article is the perfect example why Indians celebrate mediocrity.churumuri’s blogs are a waste of time.
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