Ministry of Jal Shakti (Water Resources) is responsible for laying down policy guidelines and programmes for the development and regulation of country's water resources. It looks into the planning, policy formulation, coordination and guidance in the water resources sector. Its primary function is to provide technical guidance, scrutiny, clearance and monitoring of the irrigation, flood control and multi-purpose projects (major/medium). The Ministry of Jal Shakti instituted Sir M. Visvesaraya Research Fellowship in the honor of the famous architecture and Bharat Ratna Awardee, Sir M. Visvesvaraya. The aim of this faculty chair is to carry out studies on water resources with special emphasis on the assessment of the effect of climate change on it, and adaptation strategies in respect of planning, design and management of water resource systems of India in general and the Ganga basin in particular.
Dr. Gourabananda Pahar, Department of Civil Engineering, specializes in the areas of hydraulics and water resources. His research interests are in the fields of Urban flood inundation, Shallow water models, and Incompressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. He graduated from Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur in 2011 and earned his doctorate from IIT Kharagpur in 2017.