Ganga Ram

Rai Bahadur Sir Ganga Ram Agrawal CIE, MVO (April 1851 – 10 July 1927) born in Mangtanwala, a village of Punjab Province in British India, in present-day Pakistan. He graduated from Thomason College of Civil Engineering (now IIT Roorkee) in 1873.

Early life

Ganga Ram Agrawal was born in 1851 in Mangtanwala, about 64 km from Lahore. His father, Doulat Ram Agrawal was a junior Sub inspector at a Police Station in Mangtanwala. Later, he shifted to Amritsar and became a copy-writer of the Court. Here, Ganga Ram passed his matriculation examination from the Government High School and joined the Government College, Lahore in 1869. In 1871, he obtained a scholarship to the Thomason Civil Engineering College at Roorkee. He passed the final lower subbordinate examination with the gold medal in 1873. He was appointed Assistant Engineer and called to Delhi to help in the building of the Imperial Assemblage.

Career

Engineer

In 1873, after a brief Service in Punjab P.W.D devoted himself to practical farming. He obtained on lease from Government 50,000 acres (200 km²) of barren, unirrigated land in Montgomery District, and within three years converted that vast desert into smiling fields, irrigated by water lifted by a hydroelectric plant and running through a thousand miles of irrigation channels, all constructed at his own cost. This was the biggest private enterprise of the kind, unknown and unthought-of in the country before. Sir Ganga Ram earned millions most of which he gave to charity.