Beyond the dense urbanism of Mumbai (Bombay) or the IT centers of
Bangalore and Hyderabad lies the Ganges River basin--today home to over
one-quarter of India's billion-plus population--a space historically
defined by a mythological constellation of terrestrial sites imbued with
celestial significance. Not only is it one of the most densely populated
river basins in the world, but it also undergoes dramatic physical
changes with the onslaught of the wet monsoon, where over one-meter of
rainfall occurs in the span of three months.
This book focuses on the intersection of these two observations. It is
an atlas of built and unbuilt projects designed to transform the river
into a giant water machine.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, this mythical watercourse
has functioned as a laboratory to test and build a new civilization
around the culture of water. Jointly authored by people and nature, the
Ganges River is today a monstrous water machine in which the entire
basin became a workshop of human-made experience, defined by a
hydrological system best described as a supersurface: a surface
engineered from the scale of the soil to the scale of the nation.
Everything from diffuse urban projects and green revolutions to colossal
public works programs and architectural transformations constitute the
genesis of the Ganges Water Machine. Whether to thwart massive peasant
uprisings or to redirect monsoonal rains to productive ends, never
before has a river that inspired the realization of unbelievable
architectural and infrastructural projects received as little scrutiny
as the Ganges river basin.
Reaching through the very heart of some of India s most densely
populated cities, small towns, industrial zones, sacred sites, and
mountainous forests, Ganges Water Machine by Anthony Acciavatti,
composed of eight years of field and archival research, explores and
theorizes the people and infrastructures that shaped this territory.
Ganges Water Machine is an atlas of the enterprise to make the Ganges
River basin into a highly engineered landscape: it reveals the
narratives and explanations that allowed engineers and planners to
realize fantasies previously only imaginable on paper or in myth.
