Reviving Inland waterways

Why in news?

India revives its inland waterways for freight movement with a shipment of 16 containers owned by PepsiCo reaching the new multi-modal terminal at Varanasi.

What is the background?

• The push to revive the country’s waterways as viable commercial freight corridors is one among the big-ticket infrastructure initiatives of the government.
• Rivers and canals were traditionally used in pre-modern India to transport humans and materials, and to carry out trading activity.
• Inland waterways started to decline with the advent of widespread road and rail networks.
• Long, slow voyages began to be considered incompatible with the faster pace of doing business.
• Also, presence of silt deposits led to channels becoming increasingly shallow and the commerce dried up in the traditional docks and ports.
• Hence to realise the maximum potential of this sector, the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) was established in 1986.
• Five waterways were identified by IWAI, but the investment in them remained inadequate.
• Between 1986 and 2014, India spent only Rs 1,456 crore on its inland waterways.
• In comparison, China invested Rs 1,09,000 crore from 2005-10, and Germany pumped in Rs 77,000 crore in its waterways in 2016 alone.
• However, India increased its investments to Rs 1,605 crore in this sector from 2014-18.
• The National Waterways Act, 2016 merged existing Acts to make a law to notify 106 National Waterways, including the existing five.

What is the potential?

• India has 14,500 km of navigable waterways in rivers, canals, backwaters, creeks, etc.
• About 55 million tonnes of cargo moves on waterways, but the activity is largely restricted to –

1. The Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly system
2. The Brahmaputra
3. The Barak river
4. The rivers in Goa
5. The backwaters of Kerala
6. Inland waterways in Mumbai
7. The delta regions of the Godavari and Krishna.

• Overall, waterways account for just about 3% of all freight movement in India, and the mode remains grossly underutilised.
• However, the same amount of energy can move several times more cargo (by weight) by water than it can move via rail or by road.

What are the constraints?

• There are multiple constraints in transporting men and materials perennially on inland waterway corridors.
• Periodic dredging is required to clear the silt that comes with the monsoon, so that adequate depth is maintained.
• Both fixed and floating terminals are needed at multiple points along the waterways.
• Many rivers are becoming progressively drier and many of those that retain adequate volumes are spanned by low bridges that would hinder passage of larger vessels.

What are the measures taken?

• The Jalmarg Vikas Project receives financial assistance from the World Bank to upgrade navigability on National Waterway 1 from Varanasi to Haldia, a distance of 1,380 km.
• The project seeks to develop a fairway of 3-metre depth in phases, at an estimated cost of Rs 5,369 crore.
• The project is intended to be completed by 2023.
• There are plans to develop three multimodal terminals along National Waterway 1.
• Apart from the one in Varanasi, being built for Rs 169.59 crore, there is one planned in Sahibganj in Jharkhand, and the third in Haldia.
• It also involves building a Farakka navigation lock for Rs 359 crore, to be completed by June 2019.
• The government has also tapped the National Clean Energy Fund and the Central Road Fund for the initiative, and has borrowed from the market by issuing government bonds.
• Along with that, two barges carrying 1,233 tonnes of fly ash were recently flagged off on river Ganga (National Waterway-1) from Kahalgaon power plant in Bihar.
• The barges will travel 2,085 km across multiple waterways to reach Pandu Inland Port in Assam.
• This could make our waterways establish themselves as possible for cargo transportation and make compete with other sectors.
• The journey also marks one of the longest hauls in waterways sector movement in India.
• The government called it a critical integrated movement through three waterways such as NW1 on the Ganga, the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol (IBP) route, and NW2 on the Brahmaputra.
• Also since August 2016, pilot movements have been carried out on various stretches of NW1.
• More than 15 voyages have been completed, including integrated movements through multiple waterways.
• The present journey is part of an effort by the government to resurrect the Ganga as a significant transportation artery.
• The terminal has been designed mainly for construction material, food grains, cement, and fertilisers.
• Thus the PepsiCo cargo shows that a commercial shipment can use Inland waterways as a viable, working route for transportation.

Source: The Indian Express