Importance of Inland Waterways for the Northeast
[GS Paper 3 – Infrastructure, Growth and Development]
Month after setting sail on the Ganga from Patna, a vessel carrying 200 metric tonnes of food grains for the Food Corporation of India (FCI), docked at Guwahati’s Pandu port on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra.
The occasion is believed to have taken inland water transport, on two of India’s largest river systems, to the future.
Waterways in NE
- Seamless cargo transportation has been a necessity for the northeast. Around Independence, Assam’s per capita income was the highest in the country.
- This was primarily because of access for its tea, timber, coal and oil industries to seaports on the Bay of Bengal via the Brahmaputra and the Barak River (southern Assam) systems.
- Ferry services continued sporadically after 1947 but stopped after the 1965 war with Pakistan, as Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan then.
- The scenario changed after the river routes were cut off and rail and road through the “Chicken’s Neck”, a narrow strip in West Bengal, became costlier alternatives.
Significance of Inland Waterways
- The start of cargo movement through the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol (IBP) route is going to provide the business community a viable, economic and ecological alternative.
- IWT mode is widely recognized as an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective mode of transport. It aims to create for the shippers and logistic players, an alternative to the two dominant modes of transport viz. road and rail.
- India has about 14,500 km of navigable waterways which comprise of rivers, canals, backwaters, creeks, etc. About 55 million tonnes of cargo is being moved annually by IWT, a fuel-efficient and environment-friendly mode.
Government Schemes for Inland Waterways
- The Government has undertaken the Jal Marg Vikas project with an investment of ₹4,600-crore to augment the capacity of NW1 for sustainable movement of vessels weighing up to 2,000 tonnes.
- Sailors who made the cargo trips possible have had difficulties steering clear of fishing nets and angry fishermen in Bangladesh.
- Integrated National Waterways Transportation plans to link many of the national waterways to each other and also to roads, railways and major ports.Setting up of a large number of ports/terminals, riverside jetties, godowns, boat building workshops, repairing yards and ancillary industries will spur investment opportunities.
Way Forward
India is located along key international trade routes in the Indian Ocean and has a long coastline of over 7,000 km. Yet, capacity constraints and lack of modern facilities at Indian ports tremendously elongates the time taken to ship goods in and out of the country and has held back India’s share in world trade. Development of inland waterways in the NE region is sure to bring about more assimilation and integration of the region with mainland India.
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