'Don't make me unnecessarily famous', says Chenab bridge project engineer

'I'm just one among thousands who built the Chenab Bridge', says G Madhavi Latha, engineer behind the world's tallest rail arch. Her role involved slope stabilisation and foundation design

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Chenab Bridge in Jammu and Kashmir last Friday. Soaring 359 metres above the Chenab River—35 metres higher than the Eiffel Tower—it is now the tallest railway arch bridge in the world. As the nation celebrated this engineering feat, G Madhavi Latha, a key contributor to the project, offered a humble tribute to the many behind-the-scenes heroes who made it possible.

 

“I salute the millions of unsung heroes,” said G Madhavi Latha, a Higher Administrative Grade (HAG) professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. She served as a geotechnical consultant to Afcons, the engineering firm that executed the construction of the Chenab Bridge. “My role was to help in developing slope stabilisation schemes and design of foundations on slope,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post shortly after the inauguration.

 

 

A veteran of the project for 17 years, Latha distanced herself from headlines that referred to her as the “woman behind the mission” or someone who “performed miracles to build the bridge”. She called such descriptions “baseless” and urged the public not to single her out.

 

“Please don’t make me unnecessarily famous,” she said. “I am one of the thousands who deserve appreciation for Chenab Bridge.”

 

Currently attending a conference in Spain, she expressed gratitude to those who reached out with congratulations. “Many fathers have written to me saying that they want their daughters to become like me. Many young kids have written to me that they now want to take up Civil Engineering as their career choice,” Latha shared.

 

In a touching tribute, she said, “All glory belongs to Indian Railways,” acknowledging both the national transporter and Afcons for executing what many once considered an impossible task.

 

The Chenab Bridge is part of the ambitious Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Railway Link (USBRL) project, designed to enhance connectivity in the Kashmir Valley. Built at a cost of ₹1,486 crore, the project faced formidable challenges including harsh terrain, seismic vulnerabilities, and unpredictable geology.

 

Latha and her team played a pivotal role in steering the bridge through these obstacles. Their approach—described as “design-as-you-go”—meant adapting to real-time discoveries such as fractured rock layers and hidden cavities that earlier surveys had not detected. Her expertise in rock anchor design and slope stability was critical in ensuring the safety and success of the project.

 

She has documented this technical journey in a paper titled ‘Design as You Go: The Case Study of Chenab Railway Bridge’, published in the Indian Geotechnical Journal’s special issue dedicated to women engineers.