‘There is humanness to it’: Rajendra Kondapalli on docu on Kaleshwaram project

The massive Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS) in Telangana, which is designed to provide water for drinking and irrigation to 20 of the state’s 31 districts, is one of the world’s largest multi-purpose development projects. It includes the world’s longest aqueducts, underground surge pools, water tunnels and the biggest pumps, and the total length of the project stretches across approximately 1,832 kilometres. However, though the numbers are impressive, the public was unaware of the scale of the project. On June 25, a documentary titled Lifting A River, made by documentary filmmaker Rajendra Srivasthsa Kondapalli, was released on Discovery Science Channel and changed the way people saw the KLIS. The documentary now occupies the number one spot in India on Discovery Channels’ streaming service Discovery+.  

Rajendra Srivathsa Kondapalli is an award winning documentary filmmaker who is a native of Hyderabad but has settled in Delhi. Amid the success of his latest venture, TNM spoke to him about his illustrious career and association with the Kaleshwaram project. 

Rajendra’s career

After graduating from the Nizam College in Hyderabad, Rajendra joined Delhi University for his post-graduation. After this, he became part of India’s first science television programme, Turning Point on Doordarshan, which was presented by Girish Karnad. Rajendra quips that, since he started his career in the 1990s, it grew almost parallely with the Indian television industry. 

“My career and the television industry in India were going parallel, as they almost started together. I was there since its inception and continued my journey along with it. When the Discovery Channel came in 1996 and National Geographic in 1998 or 1999, BBC World was also there. Discovery then was looking for Indian content and was taking proposals in 2001; out of hundreds of proposals, only two were shortlisted and mine was one of them. That was kind of a proud moment. Working with all these channels is a great experience as we associate, discuss, listen and interact with them. Documentary filmmaking is entirely a different skill set, which I learned over a period of time and I’m still learning,” he shares.

Since then, Rajendra has been associated with several channels, including leading national and international networks like Doordarshan, BBC World, Al Jazeera English, Discovery Networks Asia Pacific and National Geographic, along with OTT platforms like Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar and Discovery Plus, among others.

Rajendra is perhaps best known for the documentary series India’s Mega Kitchens on National Geographic, which was a first of its kind and had the highest TRP in India in the non-fiction series category. His other documentary film for National Geographic, Inside Tirumala Tirupati, also broke TRP records. The trailer for the documentary film garnered over 15 million views, according to Rajendra. Some of his other works include The Wedding Business for BBC Worldwide and Womb of the World, a documentary on surrogacy which was only aired in Nat Geo international, it is not available or aired in India.

Rajendra’s documentaries have been nominated for many awards, including the Asian Television Award, The Indian Telly Awards, Indian Television Academy Award and the National Science Film Festival and Competition, among others. 

Each of the documentaries takes anywhere from two years to three and a half years to finish. Each one is also on a different subject, and Rajendra shares that he must first understand the matter himself, and make others understand it as well. 

The Kaleshwaram Project connection

Rajendra’s interest in the KLIS began with a newspaper cutting that he saw in 2017. When he dug deep into it, he felt that the project needed to be displayed on an international platform. He proposed the same to the Discovery Channel, who came on board. After learning more about the infrastructure needed to undertake the massive project, Rajendra was determined to showcase the engineering ‘marvels’ involved in it. “To many, the Kaleshwaram project might only be some lift irrigation project happening in between Telangana and Andhra. But I wanted to show more about the engineering efforts, the science of lift irrigation, how engineers are put into building this megastructure,” he shares.

He further adds that though there are many other megastructures around the world, the specialty of the KLIS is its multi-location nature, as the reservoirs, dams, aqueducts and other structures spread across the state of Telangana. “The scale of work, engineering efforts, the biggest Indian made pumphouse in the world, large multiple reservoirs, tunnels that are running hundreds of kilometres. This is not an easy feat,” he explains. 

Rajendra says that this project is a “celebration of Indian engineers”, and the effort that the engineers have put in should be appreciated. He further adds that only when these kinds of works are displayed to the young generation, they can be inspired by what is happening in the country.

Rajendra also explains that though the entire project is a construction-oriented mechanical engineering process, there is a humanness to it, which was brought by the passion of the engineers working on the ground. The filmmaker intertwines the two concepts in Lifting A River.

The team tagged along with the engineers as they worked on the KLIS. It took more than two years to complete shooting, along with parallel research, and one year of post-production work. A team of 7 persons was involved in the making of this documentary.

“The engineers were working in extremely challenging conditions, both over the ground and underground. While in underground areas there was no ventilation or oxygen, and everything was supplied from outside, the overground work happened when the temperature was around 45 degrees celsius.”

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He tells TNM that the scripting for Lifting A River took about four to five months, and editing took more than six months. “The scripting was done by my colleague, Poornima Rao and she did a wonderful job on it. And it’s not easy to write a script. We know how to explain and communicate but unless we do it in a layman’s language without much jargon, people won’t understand. And when it comes to science, we cannot be frivolous and should be accurate in these factual documentaries,” he adds.

A major difficulty the Lifting A River team faced was picking up the important moments from several hundreds of hours of footage and interviews, and compressing it into a 60-minute documentary. They also needed to establish a connection between each segment and make the viewer understand the complex subject. 

“We should always take ownership of our work, it’s not like we have done something and we have finished it. Until me and my team were satisfied with the video, we were not okay with it; there were debates, re-editing, rescripting, reviewing multiple times to get to the final draft. If we are not happy with the work, we can’t expect others to like it and the most important thing is not to miss anything important,” he explains.

Another challenge that Rajendra faced was his connection with Hyderabad, and that any bias he has towards his home state does not show in the documentary. “I had to put all my feelings for my native place away and had to do an unbiased factual documentary,” he says. Though he travels across the country for his work, Rajendra often visits Hyderabad for his parents. 

Lifting A River is available for streaming on Discovery+ for free. You can watch it here.

Watch Lifting a River documentary promo video here: