An Indian engineer in the Middle East: South-South cooperation and professional collaboration in the 1970s

This paper tells the story of a brief but dynamic period of professional collaboration between India, Iran and a few other Middle Eastern countries in the 1970s, through the personal experiences of one of the most celebrated Indian structural engineers - Mahendra Raj. The 1970s marked a shift in the global economic and political climate due to the oil crisis, initiating a sharp rise of wealth in many Middle Eastern countries. This resulted in an increased drive for modernization of infrastructure and intense building activity. Despite the heavy presence of large Western companies and their technical know-how, an emerging class of Indian technocrats fostered a unique exchange of professional expertise between India and the Middle East. Through access to Raj's archival construction documents and oral history, the paper reveals hitherto under-documented transnational political-economic, technical and social networks of exchange within the Global South.