Prime Minister Narendra Modi last Friday officially opened the world's tallest railway arch bridge, the Chenab Bridge in Jammu and Kashmir. As the country hailed the achievement, longtime contributor Professor G Madhavi Latha praised thousands of "unsung heroes" and cautioned against making her "unnecessarily famous."
Afcons, the engineering firm that built the bridge, hired Dr Latha as a geotechnical consultant. "I congratulate the millions of unsung heroes," he remarked. In a LinkedIn post following the inauguration, she noted, "My involvement was to help establish slope stabilisation techniques and design of foundations on slope."
The headlines portraying her as the "lady behind the mission" and someone who worked "miracles to create the bridge" were discussed by Dr Latha, who has been associated with the Chenab Bridge for 17 years. They were referred to be "baseless." She said, "Please don't make me overly famous." "I'm among the thousands who should be grateful for Chenab Bridge."
The professor from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, who is currently in Spain for a conference, thanked everyone who wrote congrats. "I've received letters from a lot of fathers who wish for their daughters to follow in my footsteps. "A lot of young children have written to me expressing their desire to pursue a profession in civil engineering," she stated.
She declared, "All glory belongs to Indian Railways," and she gave the Indian Railways and Afcons credit for completing what many have deemed an impossible undertaking.
Dr G Madhavi Latha is a distinguished geotechnical engineer who teaches at the IISc, Bengaluru, as a Higher Administrative Grade (HAG) professor.
Due to challenging terrain, seismic hazards, and unpredictable geology, the Chenab Bridge, which is a component of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Railway Link (USBRL), presented numerous construction obstacles. Using a "design-as-you-go" methodology, Dr. Latha and her group assisted the project in navigating these obstacles.
This required adjusting to real-time discoveries that had been overlooked by previous surveys, such as concealed caverns and cracked rocks. Dr. Latha offered advice on slope stability and rock anchor design, two aspects that are essential for a construction of this size.
In a paper titled "Design as You Go: The Case Study of Chenab Railway Bridge," which was published in the Indian Geotechnical Journal's special women's issue, she also described her technical path.
The bridge is 35 meters higher than the Eiffel Tower, rising 359 meters above the Chenab River. At a cost of Rs 1,486 crore, Indian Railways constructed the world's tallest railway arch bridge. It is the largest civil engineering task Indian Railways has ever faced, according to the government. Engineers describe the bridge as a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking and anticipate that it would greatly improve connectivity in the Kashmir Valley.
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