Group of Electric Power Experts Tour India

Following the recent session of the Electric Power Subcommittee of the U.N. Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), held in Bangalore, India, a group of some 40 experts from Asian and non-Asian countries went on a 12-day study tour of hydro-electric power stations, dams and factories in the southern and eastern parts of India.
A picture taken during the trip, as the experts were inspecting the construction of a new dam now being built on the Bhadra River to supply additional power to the industries of the Bhadravati project area. In order to provide labour to the nany unemployed of the region, the dam is built almost entirely by hand. It is a masonry dam. Granit stones and rocks are first stacked in dumps; from there they are transported close to the dam, and then teams of men carry them on bamboo poles to the work site. Even boulders weighing up to 11/2 tons are transported that way. Women carry the reddish Surki mortar to the dam, using shallow iron bowls they balance on their heads (as shown here).
On the way back, they turn the bowls upside-down, using them as sunshields. Some 12,000 workers are employed, half of them women.