Cost benefit study needed before spending money on inland water transport

The term inland water transport always makes me prick up my ears. Forty years ago the editor of the paper I was working for asked me to write ‘something’ on inland water transport. 

I had never heard of such a thing. It took me two whole days. But after all that effort, the editor decided to junk it. He crumpled the sheet and threw it into the dustbin.

Ever since then I have kept track of the subject like poking a rotten tooth. So it came as a pleasant surprise that a small shop carrying 200 MT foodgrains from Patna docked at Guwahati earlier this week. It had sailed upstream up the Brahmaputra for a 1000 kilometres.

“The waterways will cut through the landlocked access which has been crippling development in the region for long,” the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways (MoPSW) said hopefully. 

But that’s not the main story. The main story is that it went through Bangladesh as a result of the agreement with it. But the distance covered was enormous: 2,350 kilometres! 

The Inland Waterways Authority of India now intends to run a regular service between the two ports. But this intention has been stated several times since the inland waterway project began in the early 1980s. 

No one so far has said anything about the cost. But on any reckoning it can’t be small because the distance is so huge and the cargo load is so small. The cost per tonne per kilometre is what will eventually determine the future of this mode of transport.

The key problem is high siltation and therefore the low draft in these rivers. This means large vessels can’t make the trip.

So until the draft is deepened by a concerted and enormously costly dredging effort — which needs to be kept up throughout the year — the initiative may well be less successful than hoped for. Indeed, it will remain, well, aspirational to put it politely.

The alternative is to use barges but those are slow and small too. Propulsion is also a problem.

That said, the importance of linking the states of the north east by a surface route other than the road through the chicken neck must be kept in view. It’s from this point of view that the cost issue needs to be addressed. 

Of course, if relations with Bangladesh turn sour it can always block the waterway. So that’s another worry: will the cost be justified if the passage can so easily be blocked.

What about the rest of the country then? Would inland shipping work there? Yes, if siltation can be taken care of and if it’s cost effective. At the moment neither seems likely even with the high cost of diesel that affects both road and rail transport.

In any case rail transport is far cheaper and even if not as eco-friendly as river transport, it’s far superior to road transport. For example, coastal shipping is talked about from time to time. 

But the fact is that given the shape of peninsular India it makes far more sense to run trains from one coast to the other than ships.

Finally, all these are alright for B2B. That means bulk consignments like coal, steel fertiliser etc.

But B2C is a different kettle of fish altogether because of the door delivery problem which no bulk transporter can solve. It’s here that the truckers score. They can do door-to-door at fairly low cost. 

So going back to the inland water transport question, even assuming that the siltation is removed, it will at best remain a marginal contributor. It would therefore be advisable to do a full cost benefit analysis before spending vast sums on a hobby horse of limited value.