The Indian
government’s ambitious plans to develop 101 rivers into an integrated Inland Water
Transport (IWT) system have triggered fierce debate. Transport
and shipping minister, Nitin Gadkari, recently introduced a new National
Waterways Bill 2015 in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, in an
attempt to gain legislative sanction for the initiative. India’s waterways are underdeveloped. Its share of
overall cargo transport remains abysmally low: 0.4% compared to 42% in
Netherlands, 8.7% in China and 8% in the US. The country has over 14,500
kilometers of inland waterways — comprising rivers, lakes, canals, creeks and
backwaters. Developing an integrated network of
rail, road and waterways could also significantly boost India’s economy. The
initiative will open up business opportunities and generate employment in the
area of dredging, barge construction and operation and terminal construction.
Five stretches of river have already
been declared as national waterways, including the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly
river system (Allahabad-Haldia-1620 km); the Brahmaputra River
(Dhubri-Sadiya-891 km). The
shipping ministry is seeking to attain a 10% share for coastal shipping in
India’s overall transport modal mix by 2020.
To achieve this , the cargo shipped
through the coastal routes needs to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of
23% from about 172 mt a year to around 600 mts by 2020. This requires
significant changes in the product mix, vessel-type mix and port-wise traffic
distribution, in addition to expanding the coastal cargo-carrying fleet to
about 950 vessels, with an average capacity of 3,000 tonnes. The development of
coastal shipping and inland waterways will provide a huge spin-off benefit for
related maritime sectors. The financial incentive scheme is a significant step
also from the point of view of checking environmental degradation, reducing
carbon emissions and addressing concerns over social costs arising from the
congestion of existing road and railway networks.
