Salman Rashid

Travel writer, Fellow of Royal Geographical Society

Sir Ganga Ram: Engineer, Angel and Visionary
23 May 2013

It all started on an idle February Friday when we took off to ride Ganga Ram’s horse pulled ‘train’ that connects the village of Buchiana and Gangapur in the heart of Punjab. The train was temporarily out of service but one thing leads to another and the following Friday we motored south of Lahore to Renala Khurd to see the lift irrigation system designed by Sir Ganga Ram.

The building of this system was to irrigate tens of thousands of acres of land that lay some ten metres higher than the newly dug Lower Bari Doab Canal (LBDC). Having established the irrigation system, Ganga Ram was to receive a vast tract of infertile land on a ninety year lease. Over the years this was transformed into some of the most productive farmlands of Punjab, bringing its owner great prosperity. In deference to the request of the builder this continues to be the only lift irrigation scheme in Punjab that charges at normal rates – similar systems elsewhere cost two times and a half as much.

Labels: Ganga Ram, People, Punjab

posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:30, ,

The Power House that Ganga Ram built
16 May 2013

At Gangapur we had been told that Sir Ganga Ram did not only have the ingenious horse-drawn train to his credit but that he had built a power station not very far south of Lahore. This power house, they had said, was to lift a canal three levels in order to irrigate a block of land higher than the canal. This was too good to be passed and so the next Friday we were on our way south to Renala Khurd famous for Mitchell’s Fruit Farms. The man at the octroi post seemed a little bemused when I asked how we could get to Ganga Ram’s power station.

‘Its built on a canal,’ I tried to simplify things.

‘Oh, that one! You should go through the bazaar and keep going until you hit the Lower Bari Doab Canal. Turn right along the canal and you cannot miss the power station,’ he said cheerfully. He was right. The neat looking brick building sat squarely across the silty waters of the LBDC. On the front the lettering said, ‘Ganga Power Station’ and below it was the year of construction: 1925. The chowkidar said we were free to look around but were not allowed to photograph. I threw in the name of my brother in law who is a Chief Engineer in WAPDA, but that didn’t help.

Labels: Ganga Ram, Punjab

posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00, ,

A Journey without Maps
13 May 2013

We tend to take for granted things and people that have always been there as we grow up. And so for most people born and raised in Lahore the well known Ganga Ram Hospital was just an institution left by some half-remembered Hindu seth who may have done better had he been a Muslim. But then also only marginally for we as a nation suffer from the disease of total disregard for our national heritage.

Only some weeks earlier I had discovered the great philanthropist and engineer, Sir Ganga Ram. Subsequently talking to friend Saleem Kailani I learnt that the man came from a village not very far from Shiekhupura that is even today called Gangapur after him. But the more interesting fact, I was told, was that he had designed and built a ‘railway pulled by horses’ that connected his village to Buchiana on the railway line from Shiekhupura to Jaranwala long before the connecting tarmac road was built. And so one Friday recently we took our aimless meander through the country to ride Ganga Ram’s horse-drawn train.

Labels: Ganga Ram, Punjab

posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00, ,