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Business News/ Opinion / Against the flow
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Against the flow

India must create an integrated water transportation system that is inter-modal, modern and cost effective

File photo. Even though maritime traffic has continued to grow over the centuries, inland waterways have declined in relative importance for transportation with the advent of the internal combustion and jet engines. Photo: AFPPremium
File photo. Even though maritime traffic has continued to grow over the centuries, inland waterways have declined in relative importance for transportation with the advent of the internal combustion and jet engines. Photo: AFP

Great civilizations in human history arose in river valleys. The Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia between the mighty Tigris and Euphrates evolved around 3500 BCE, the Egyptian civilization on the Nile about 3000 BCE and the Indus Valley civilization began about 2500 BCE. These civilizations chose a riparian base so that they could get fresh water for agricultural and human needs, till fertile lands replenished each year by floods and to transport goods and people to nearby habitations.

While the history of human water transportation may go back nearly 50,000 years, the earliest recorded instance of ship-building is during the Mauryan Empire in 4th century BCE Lothal, in modern-day Gujarat, was a major city of the Indus Valley civilization and is believed to be the world’s first dock and also possibly where navigation as an applied science was born. Lothal was the base for travel on the Sabarmati river and probably provided a coastal connection all the way up the Persian Gulf.

Even though maritime traffic has continued to grow over the centuries, inland waterways have declined in relative importance for transportation with the advent of the internal combustion and jet engines. In the US, a mere 100 years ago, ferries were the only mode of transportation between Manhattan and Northern New Jersey. Ferries do still operate in some cities of the world. The Staten Island Ferry that links Manhattan to Staten Island offers the best view of the Statue of Liberty and carries 60,000 commuters a day. Star Ferry in Hong Kong, founded in 1888 by Parsi merchant Dorabjee Mithaiwala, links Kowloon to the island and carries nearly 26 million passengers a year. The largest system of ferries in India is operated by the State Water Transport Department of Kerala in nearly 1,900km of an integrated water system made up of navigable rivers, backwaters and man-made canals in central Kerala.

Cargo transportation in inland waterways is an important method of moving bulk goods and containers inland from the coast. Water-based transportation is generally considered the cheapest form of transportation. China has over 110,000km of navigable rivers, streams, lakes and canals. The main navigable waterways are the Yangtze, Heilong Jiang and the Xiang rivers. This system carries nearly 2 trillion tonnes of freight each year to more than 5,000 inland ports. China uses this to transport bulk cargo, textiles, vehicles and hardware. The river system is interlinked to road and rail and offers a (nearly) seamless inter-modal form of transportation. The US uses its inland waterways, primarily on the eastern side of the country and dominated by the Mississippi river, to transport grains, oilseed, fertilizer and coal.

Nearly everyone agrees that inland water transport (IWT) is cheap and environmentally friendly. The water share of India’s total transportation pie is pitifully low—less than 1% versus 15-30% for other countries. Steps should be taken to improve this. India has about 14,500km of navigable waterways. Of this, 4,300km have been designated into five National Waterways under the maintenance and oversight of the National Water Authority of India (NWAI). National Waterway (NW) 1, for instance, is the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly river from Allahabad in the west to Haldia in the east. NW 2, 3, 4 and 5 are on the Bramhaputra, West Coast Canal, Godavari and Mahanadi, respectively. These waterways are governed under the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) Act of 1985, a separate law for each of the waterways, and the Indian Vessels Act, 1917 (amended in 2005). Other waterways are under the purview of the states. The National Waterways Bill, 2015, was tabled in the Lok Sabha this summer by Nitin Gadkari, the minister of road transport, highways and shipping. Gadkari’s bill proposes to add another 101 new waterways to the national list.

Nearly every river that you know from the Aai in Assam to the Zuari in Goa has been added to the current list of five. It is an impressive expansion, particularly given the woeful track record of the IWAI in implementing the first five National Waterways to their fullest potential. Gadkari should reverse course on this centralization. The bill correctly subsumes the existing national waterways bills into one and allows for adding new national waterways as required in the future. However, it should limit its current ambition to only a few more water systems and focus on dramatically improving the implementation on a dozen or so national waterways. The focus should shift from the number of such NWs to creating an integrated water transportation system that is inter-modal, modern and cost effective in operation. Channel upgrades including the maintenance of a minimum depth of 2 metres, modernization of fleet with separate pusher and barge units and the integration of IWT into intermodal transport and logistics networks should be the main priority. Building riverine empires can wait.

P.S. “maajhi jo naav duboye use kaun bachaye?" If a boatman sinks a boat midstream, who can save it, from the famous song Chingari koi Bhadke in the film Amar Prem.

Narayan Ramachandran is chairman, InKlude Labs.

Comments are welcome at narayan@livemint.com. To read Narayan Ramachandran’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/avisiblehand

Note: This article has been revised from an earlier version to reflect the correct expansion of IWT.

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Published: 12 Jul 2015, 08:47 PM IST
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