Number of words: 408

He had seen the Narmada fall from a height near Jabalpur and believed it was the right site for an electricity generation project. Unfortunately, a swamiji, whose ashram was on the land proposed for the site, refused to move. The government, not wanting a religious dispute on its hands, did not support Jamsetji, who had to give up his plans grudgingly.

It is important to note that Jamsetji saw the potential for hydroelectric energy well before the world witnessed such a project come up. He dreamt of it six years before the Wisconsin hydroelectric project, the world’s first, was set up in 1882. By the time he set his eyes on the Dudhsagar Falls on the Goa– Maharashtra border, a hydroelectric plant had also been set up at the Niagara Falls on the US–Canada border.

Jamsetji planned to generate electricity and sell it in Bombay. The spinning and weaving mills, running on coal-generated electricity, would be ready customers for the project, he surmised. The black soot from the coal plants, an added nuisance, would also be done away with. Jamsetji’s dream was to light up the entire city of Bombay. He sought the help of an architect, David Gosling, who visited the Dudhsagar Falls, but was not convinced of the viability of the project.

Gosling, who spent the summers in the hill station of Khandala close to Poona, would often travel to Lonavala. He noticed that the tall peaks of the Sahyadris offered an opportunity for the generation of hydroelectric power. The only challenge was to create a dam to store water. In the case of Niagara or Dudhsagar, the natural flow was enough to work the turbines, but it wasn’t so here. Jamsetji visualized a dam that would store water and then, through artificial channels, let the water run down towards Khopoli, where the turbines would generate electricity. He selected a suitable spot at Valvan, en route to Poona from Bombay, just after Lonavala, where he found a narrow gorge suitable for a dam. He was well aware that it was going to be a feat of engineering to construct such a dam. He had to get water down from a height of nearly 1,800 feet. Generating electricity was challenging enough, not to mention ensuring its transportation to Bombay. But challenges were the intoxicant that propelled Jamsetji’s work.

Excerpted from Pg 28-29 of Tatas: How a family built a business and a nation by Girish Kuber