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Along the banks of the Godavari River, near the city of Rajahmundry in the eastern India state of Andhra Pradesh, stands a museum built in the memory of Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton. As commissioner for irrigation there in the 1840s, Cotton brought water to Andhra’s parched lands, turning them into India’s rice bowl.
An engineer in the East India Company’s army, he did this by restoring and expanding an ancient network of dams and canals along India’s great southern rivers: the Kaveri, the Krishna and the Godavari. Motivated by a belief that science would pave the way for rural capitalism,
