Can we only talk about our "glorious" past?

Tamilnadu government is going to be assisted by experts from Singapore on rendering the Cooum river meandering through the city of Chennai – what is the word I can use, I wonder – less of a problem , more “useful” or whatever. That there is some initiative to do something about this river may be welcome. But I can not help feeling a little (?) sad that the city which boasts of  an engineering education institution which was founded in 1857 as a Survey School – an institution which has graduated generations of engineers who created  the several hydro electric / irrigation projects which are still going strong – has to resort to experts from a tiny city state. If I want to rub it in further, our civil engineering expertise goes back to the Karikaal Chozhan period when what is now called Grand Anicut – Kallanai was built. There is a fascinating article in the Tamizh magazine published by Anna university on how divers got the big boulders deep into the riverbed while the Kaveri was flowing full by digging around the boulders and letting the water pressure push the boulders into the sand bed.
Cry thy proud Thamizhakam?