Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) was set up in 1986 with an objective of development and regulation of inland waterways for shipping and navigation. In a freewheeling interaction with The Dollar Business, Amitabh Verma, Chairman, IWAI, talks about the progress the country has achieved on this front so far and discusses how inland waterways can boost exports from India.
TDB: Inland waterways hold the potential to transform transportation in India. What are the hurdles that stop us from realising this potential?
Amitabh Verma (AV): Inland waterways could have played a much bigger role in independent India. After all, the potential of waterways for shipping and navigation is immense. However, Indian policymakers have unfortunately not paid much attention to the development of this body. In our country the development of roadways and railways have always taken precedence over waterways.
While ushering the green revolution, and even for irrigation purposes, we have drawn water from waterways, and in the process, have depleted the level of water in national waterways. Secondly, while making dams for hydroelectricity or for irrigation purposes, the government did not make use of navigation locks and ended up blocking the possibility of navigation through these dams.
Moreover, road and rail bridges have been built across our rivers without leaving sufficient horizontal and vertical clearances. From 1986 to 2015, we spent about $200 million for the development of waterways and could declare only five national waterways – NW1 to NW5. The development of only three of these waterways could be taken up till 2014. China, on the other hand, has spent over $15 billion just in the last five years or so. Even when we compare India’s expenditure on railways and roadways against that on inland waterways, the expenditure on waterways is insignificant – in FY2014, the government spent $19 billion on railways and $12 billion on roadways, while for waterways the budgetary allocation was only about $40 million.
TDB: What are the contemporary dynamics of the Indian economy that are pushing the need for an efficient inland waterways mechanism?
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Esta historia es de la edición December 2016 de The Dollar Business.
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