he engineering prowess of Sir Arthur Cotton, put to the best use in the 1850s, became a major boon for farmers of Godavari and Krishna deltas, the rice bowls of Andhra Pradesh. Born on May 15, 1803, he has a museum named after him, besides around 3,000 statues of his installed across East and West Godavari districts.
The museum near the barrage is a heritage structure, which is maintained by the Irrigation Department. The nearly 100 images and 15 machine tools used for the construction of the barrage (from 1847 to 1852) are cleaned up once a year. The old tools, including the plough machine (locally called ‘shutter lifting machine’, which was made in 1830) of the UK-based Rapier Company, which was imported by Sir Arthur Cotton for the construction of the barrage, have been kept intact. The machine was used to lift the anicut shutters for release of water into the sea after floodwaters reached a certain level. The ‘lushkars’ (workers) then used caulking material between the flaps to arrest water leakage.
The legend’s great-grandson Robert Charles Cotton and his wife Nicolette Anne Cotton visited the museum near the Dowleswaram Barrage in November 2009.
Incidentally, farmers of Konaseema offer ‘Tharpanam’ (homage) to Sir Arthur Cotton every year by chanting a ‘sloka’. And, each irrigation office in the region has a photograph of Cotton with the lines: “Dedicated to the great engineer.”
“The magnitude of the work, the quickness of its execution and the productivity of engineers in the 1850s can best be realised when juxtaposed with similar works executed after technological advances, mechanisation, modern management practices and improved communication facilities,” writes A. Krishnaswamy, special administrator, Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage, in his foreword to the 1987 reprint of the monograph, The Engineering Works of the Godavari Delta , by George T. Walch, a retired chief engineer for irrigation, Madras, published in 1896.
Meanwhile, the State government has appealed to the Centre to declare Rajahmundry as a Heritage City under the Amruth scheme and initiate measures to develop Cotton’s Museum and guesthouse on the Bommuru hilltop, the place where Sir Arthur Cotton relaxed while the construction of the barrage was on.
