Chapter 19: Transport
By the end of June the rain has been falling for three days, and the road out of the village is no longer a road. It is a strip of soft mud with two deep ruts down the middle. A trader’s small truck tried it yesterday, slid sideways and had to be pushed out by eight men. So the sacks of vegetables picked on Monday are still standing under a tarpaulin on Thursday, going soft. Six kilometres away there is a metalled road that stays firm through the whole monsoon. On that road the same sacks would have reached the town market in forty minutes. The distance is not the problem. The surface is. A crop only becomes something you can sell when a vehicle can reach it in the season it ripens, and a great many villages in India lose that reach every monsoon. Follow one of those sacks once it gets out. By evening it can be on a national highway, by the next morning in a railway wagon, and within the week in the hold of a ship leaving a port. Transport is what connects a field to a market, a mine to a factory, and a factory to the world.
Diagram
Fig. 19.A1 Caption: A crop reaches the market only if a vehicle can reach the crop. Brief: Photograph or illustration of a rain-soaked unmetalled village road with deep wheel ruts and a loaded cart or small truck stuck in it; label the unmetalled surface and the standing water, and show a firm metalled road in the distance for contrast.
19.1 Importance
Transport is the carrying of people and goods from one place to another, and a transport system is the whole set of routes and vehicles that does this work for a country. It is often compared to the arteries and veins of the human body, and the comparison is a fair one. Blood vessels do not make anything; they only move what the body has made, and a body dies when they are blocked.
A transport system does the same job for an economy. It carries raw materials, fuel and machinery to the points of production, and it carries finished goods away from the factory to the points of marketing and consumption. Nothing is created in the journey, but without the journey nothing that is created can be used.
What A Transport System Does
The main ways in which transport matters to a country are the following. (a) It allows resources to be used where they happen to lie, by linking regions that hold raw materials but few industries with regions that have the factories and the markets waiting for them. (b) It aids the process of industrialisation and urbanisation, because a factory can only stand where its raw material can be brought in and its finished goods can be sent out. (c) It removes scarcity of goods during a crisis, since supplies can be moved quickly from an area that has a surplus to an area that has run short. (d) It helps in minimising the effects of natural disasters, by carrying rescue workers and relief into an affected area and carrying the injured out of it. (e) It brings homogeneity and national integration in thought and culture, because people who can travel easily meet one another and carry ideas in both directions.
The Three Mediums Of Movement
India is a vast country, and a country of that size needs a transport system that is both efficient and cheap. It has every mode of the modern transport system, and these fall into three mediums: land, air and water. Fig. 19.1 sets out how the modes are classified.
Flowchart
Fig. 19.1 Caption: Every mode of transport moves through one of three mediums — land, air or water. Nodes: Means of Transport → Land / Air / Water; Land → Roads, Railways; Air → National, International; Water → Inland (Rivers, Canals, Backwaters, Creeks, etc.), Seas and Oceanic Routes
The rest of this chapter takes these branches one at a time, in the order the chart gives them, and asks of each what it carries well, what it carries badly, and what decides where it can be built.
19.2 Roads
Roads Before The Road Network
India had paved roads from ancient times, as the ruins of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa show. The earlier emperors connected their capitals with other parts of their territories, and the Mughal rulers were noted for building roads. Sher Shah Suri built the famous Grand Trunk (GT) road to strengthen and consolidate his empire, and this road connected Kolkata and Peshawar.
Road transport in its modern sense, however, was quite limited in India before the Second World War. After India attained Independence, a 20-year road plan to improve the condition of roads was initiated in 1961. Since then the road network has expanded manifold.
According to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), India has a huge network of roads, making it the second largest road network in the world. This network includes both paved and unpaved roads, and it is categorised as National Highways, Expressways, State Highways, major District roads, Rural roads and Other roads. Fig. 19.A2 sets out the classification.
Flowchart
Fig. 19.A2 Caption: The road network is classified by who builds and maintains a road, and by the job it does. Nodes: Indian road network → National Highways / Expressways / State Highways / major District roads / Rural roads / Other roads; Other roads → Border Roads, International Highways
Reach, however, is still uneven. About 40 per cent of the villages in India lack access to all-weather roads and remain isolated during the monsoon season, which means the network as a whole reaches far more places in the dry months than it does in the wet ones.
One further class sits above all of these. Freeways are the highest class of controlled access highways and are designed for high speed vehicular traffic. NHAI has only two freeways in India, the Eastern Freeway and the Western Freeway (or Coastal Freeway), both built to reduce traffic congestion in the island city of Mumbai. Only cars and public buses are allowed on them. The Bandra Worli Sea Link, a part of the Western Freeway, is the longest bridge above water in India.
19.2.1 National Highways
The main roads which are constructed and maintained by the Central Government are known as the National Highways. These are main highways running through the length and breadth of the country, connecting every major city, and they are the backbone of road infrastructure. National Highways in India are designated as NH followed by the State highway numbers, and the longest of them is NH7, about 7,770 km in length.
What The Highways Actually Carry
The National Highways represent only 1.7 per cent of the total network length, but they handle about 40 per cent of the total road traffic. A very small part of the network, in other words, does a very large part of the work, which is why money spent on it goes further than the same money spent anywhere else on the network.
Traffic on the National Highways has been growing because of industrialisation in the country. The Government is taking steps to use the latest technologies and improved management techniques to provide hindrance-free traffic movement. This is being done by widening roads, by grade separation, and by the construction of bypasses, bridges and rail-road crossings.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) was constituted in 1988 and is responsible for the development, maintenance and management of National Highways. It was made operational in February 1995, and it is currently undertaking developmental activities under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) in phases. All the phases combined together are aimed at improving more than 25,000 km of arterial routes of the National Highway Network to international standards.
19.2.2 Expressways
Expressways constitute the most significant feature of land transportation. They are highways planned for high-speed traffic, having few intersections, limited points of access or exit, and a divider between the lanes carrying traffic in opposite directions. They usually have six to eight lanes.
Access Control Is The Difference
The major difference between a highway and an expressway is access control. On an expressway, roads are not multiples: there is a controlled access where a vehicle can enter through a limited place and no further. On a highway, by contrast, multiple roads merge with or cross the highway at many places, and every one of those points is a place where traffic must slow, wait or turn across the flow.
Besides this, expressways have several facilities such as access ramps, lane dividers, telephone booths, CCTV cameras and mobile radars. Together these give high speed, greater safety, comfort and convenience for both drivers and passengers, and lower vehicle operating costs.
Two Major Projects Undertaken By NHAI
The first is the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ), the largest express highway project in India. It connects India’s four largest metros, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, and thus forms a quadrilateral of sorts. Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kanpur and Surat in the north, and Bengaluru, Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar in the south, are also served by this network.
The main economic benefits of the Golden Quadrilateral Project are the following. (a) It interconnects many major cities and ports, so goods made inland can reach the coast without changing route. (b) It provides an impetus to truck transport throughout India. (c) It enables the industrial growth of all the small towns through which it passes. (d) It provides vast opportunities for the transport of agricultural produce from the hinterland to major cities and ports for export.
The second is the North-South-East-West Corridor (NS-EW), the largest highway project in India. It consists of four or six lane expressways which connect Srinagar to Kanyakumari, a distance of 4,000 km, and Porbandar to Silchar, a distance of 3,300 km. Jhansi, in Uttar Pradesh, is the junction of the North-South and East-West Corridors. Delhi-Agra and Bengaluru-Krishnagiri are common stretches between the Golden Quadrilateral and the North-South Corridor, while Akbarpur-Kanpur and Udaipur-Chittorgarh are common stretches between the Golden Quadrilateral and the East-West Corridor.
Map 19.1 shows both projects on one sheet, along with the numbered National Highways they use.
Map
Map 19.1 Caption: India: National Highways and the Golden Quadrilateral. Brief: Political outline of India showing the full extent of India as officially defined, at scale 1:20,000,000; show National Highways with their numbers, the Golden Quadrilateral, the North-South Corridor and the East-West Corridor in separate line styles with a key; label the cities named in the text, the Tropic of Cancer and the surrounding seas; no thematic shading.
The Major Expressways Of India
The major expressways of India are the following. (a) The Bundelkhand Expressway is a 296 km long, four-lane expressway, expandable to six lanes and access-controlled, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It connects Gonda village on NH-35 in Chitrakoot district with Kudrail village on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway in Etawah district, and it was inaugurated on July 16, 2022. (b) The Purvanchal Expressway, India’s longest expressway, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 16, 2021, and connects Ghazipur to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. The 341-kilometre-long expressway reduces the travel time from Lucknow to Buxar in Bihar from seven hours to nearly four hours, and from Lucknow to Ghazipur from six hours to three and a half. (c) The Purvanchal Expressway also establishes a direct link between the NCR and eastern Uttar Pradesh, almost as far as the Bihar border, and carries 18 flyovers, seven railway over bridges, seven long bridges, 104 minor bridges, 13 interchanges and 271 underpasses. It covers the districts of Lucknow, Barabanki, Amethi, Ayodhya, Sultanpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Azamgarh, Mau and Ghazipur. (d) The Agra-Lucknow Expressway is a six-lane expressway built to reduce traffic on already congested roads and to reduce pollution, and it has increased connectivity of towns and commercial centres north of the Yamuna. It has cut the travel time between Agra and Lucknow to just 3.5 hours from the 7 hours earlier, and it has automatic traffic management systems aimed at reducing road accidents and helping even at times of fog. (e) The Yamuna Expressway is a six-lane, controlled-access expressway which connects Greater Noida with Agra, and it was formally inaugurated in 2012. Its main features are the following. (i) It provides a fast moving corridor that minimises travel time and connects with the main townships and commercial centres on the eastern side of the Yamuna river. (ii) It has reduced the travel time between Delhi and Agra to two hours. (iii) It enables farmers in Western Uttar Pradesh to move their agricultural, horticulture and dairy products to major cities. (iv) It has telephone booths and CCTV cameras installed at every 5 kms. (v) Mobile radars have been installed to ensure that commuters comply with minimum and maximum speed limits. (f) The Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway was India’s first expressway, opened in 2001, and it has cut the journey between Ahmedabad and Vadodara to less than 1 hour. It was India’s first 4-lane and dual carriageway expressway project and includes minor bridges and canal crossings, with interchanges at Nadiad and Anand. (g) The Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway opened for the public in 2008 and is a part of the Golden Quadrilateral Highway project. It has reduced travel time between Gurgaon and Delhi from 60 minutes to approximately 20 minutes, and its special features include SOS telephones at every 1.5 km and CCTV surveillance. (h) The Mumbai-Pune Expressway is India’s first 6-lane, concrete, high-speed, tolled expressway, and it connects Mumbai with Pune. It has reduced the travel time between these two commercial cities from 4-5 hours on the old NH4 to 2-3 hours on the Express Highway. (i) The Noida-Greater Noida Expressway is a six-lane highway which connects Noida, an industrial suburb, with Greater Noida, a new suburb, both in Uttar Pradesh. (j) The Delhi-Noida Direct Flyway is an eight-lane expressway which connects Delhi to Noida, an industrial suburb. (k) The Panipat Expressway is a 10-km elevated highway at Panipat in Haryana. It is a six-lane expressway built to decongest traffic on the busy Delhi-Amritsar route. (l) The Bengaluru-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor is a 4 to 6 lane, 111 km expressway in Karnataka that connects Bengaluru with Mysore.
Two of these are shown in the chapter’s photographs. Fig. 19.2 shows the Purvanchal Expressway running straight across open country, and Fig. 19.3 shows an interchange on the Yamuna Expressway from the air, where the shape of controlled access becomes visible.
Diagram
Fig. 19.2 Caption: Purvanchal Expressway. Brief: Photograph of the Purvanchal Expressway from a height; show the divided carriageway, the central divider and the absence of any junction along the visible stretch.
Diagram
Fig. 19.3 Caption: Aerial view of Yamuna Expressway. Brief: Aerial photograph of an interchange on the Yamuna Expressway; emphasise the looping access ramps that let vehicles join and leave without crossing the main carriageway.
What The Time Saving Is Worth
The saving is not really a saving of hours; it is a change in what the road can be used for. A driver who reaches Lucknow in three and a half hours can return the same day, so one truck now does the work of two, and the cost of moving each tonne falls without a single new truck being bought. This is why a controlled-access road repays its high construction cost: it does not merely make a journey pleasant, it multiplies the capacity of every vehicle already using it.
19.2.3 State Highways
The State Highways are constructed and maintained by the State governments. These highways provide linkages with the National Highways, district headquarters, important towns, tourist centres and minor ports within the state. Besides this, these arterial routes provide connectivity to important towns and cities as well as to the National Highways or State Highways of the neighbouring states.
19.2.4 District Roads
District roads are important roads within a district connecting areas of production with markets. They also connect small towns with one another, or with the State Highways and National Highways. They connect Taluka headquarters and rural areas to the District headquarters within the state.
19.2.5 Rural Roads
The rural roads in India form a substantial portion of the road network, constituting about 80 per cent of the total road length in the country. Most of them were initially sand roads. They provide vital links by moving agricultural produce and the finished products of small-scale industries from the producing centres to the marketing centres.
Table 19.1 sets the classes side by side by length.
19.2.6 Other Roads
The other roads include the Border Roads and International Highways.
The Border Roads are built by the Border Road Organisation (BRO), which was set up in 1960 for strengthening defence preparedness and for accelerating economic development through the improvement of roads along the northern and north-eastern boundary of the country. This organisation has constructed the world’s highest road, from Manali in Himachal Pradesh to Leh in Ladakh, at an average altitude of 4,270 metres, which is well above the height at which most of India’s hill towns stand. Apart from the construction and maintenance of roads in strategically sensitive areas, the BRO undertakes snow clearance in high altitude areas and the construction of airfields, buildings and permanent bridges.
Fig. 19.4 shows the southern portal of the tunnel, cut into the mountainside.
Diagram
Fig. 19.4 Caption: The entrance to the Atal Tunnel, on the Leh-Manali Highway. Brief: Photograph of the tunnel portal with the snow-covered Pir Panjal slopes rising behind it; show the approach road and a vehicle for scale.
19.2.7 Advantages Of Roadways
Roadways are the harbingers of economic development. The main advantages of using road transport are the following. (a) It is through the roads that every village and hamlet can be reached, because a road can be laid to a single settlement in a way no other mode can. (b) The construction cost of roads is much lower than that of a railway line. (c) Roads can be constructed even in areas of difficult terrain and in places where railway lines do not exist. (d) Roads offer door to door service, and thereby reduce the cost of loading and unloading; they also help farmers to move their perishable products quickly to the markets. (e) The movement of goods is safer through road transport, as the chances of pilferage are lesser than in the railways. (f) Road transport supplements the other modes of transportation, since it provides the link between railway stations and ports and their hinterlands. A hinterland is the inland area a port or a station draws its goods from and sends its goods to.
19.2.8 Disadvantages Of Roadways
Against those advantages stand the following weaknesses. (a) Many roads are unsurfaced and are therefore not suitable for regular vehicular traffic. (b) Roads are not properly maintained, and poor road surfaces cause heavy loss in the form of wear and tear of vehicles. (c) There are multiple check-posts and toll tax and octroi duty collection points on the roads, which bring down the speed of the traffic, waste time and cause irritation to the commuters. (d) Many roads have inadequate capacity, weak pavement, unbridged level crossings, and a lack of wayside amenities and safety measures. (e) The traffic on Indian roads, especially in cities, is too high, and the same road is used by all types of vehicles, from high speed cars, trucks and two-wheelers to animal driven carts, cyclists and even animals. This mixing increases traffic time and causes congestion, pollution and road accidents.
19.3 Factors Affecting Development Of Surface Transport
A road or a railway line is not laid wherever someone wishes it. Surface transport — the transport that moves on land, that is roads and railways — has to be built across real ground, paid for out of real budgets, and cleared by real governments. Where any one of those three gives way, the route is delayed, made costlier, or never built at all.
19.3.1 Roadways And Railways
Geographical Factors
The ground itself sets the first limits, in the following ways. (a) Terrain decides the cost before anything else does, because building roads and laying railway lines are cheaper and easier in flat plains areas. Hilly or plateau regions, in contrast, are more difficult and costly to develop, since they need specialised construction such as bridges and tunnels. (b) Climate affects both building and upkeep, as extreme weather conditions such as heavy rainfall, high altitude and forested regions can impact the quality and cost of construction and maintenance. (c) Land features can close off a route altogether, since marshy, flood-affected or heavily forested areas limit land transport development and create challenges.
Fig. 19.A3 shows why the same length of route costs so differently in two kinds of country.
Diagram
Fig. 19.A3 Caption: The same distance is a different job on flat land and in the hills. Brief: Two side-by-side cross-sections of equal horizontal length; the upper one across flat plain with the route running straight along the ground, the lower one across a hilly profile with the route carried on a bridge over a valley and driven through a tunnel in a ridge; label bridge, tunnel, embankment and cutting.
Economic Factors
Money decides which of the possible routes is actually built, in the following ways. (a) Economic development influences the demand for surface transport services and also ensures better availability of funds for projects, so growth and transport tend to pull each other along. (b) Rich agricultural regions and areas with natural resources have a higher potential for railway development, because there is a steady bulk of goods for the line to carry. (c) Insufficient funding, budget overruns due to material price fluctuations, and a lack of private sector participation can all slow down development.
Environmental Impact
Building a route also changes the land it crosses. Regulations and assessments are necessary to mitigate negative impacts on forests, wildlife and water bodies, so that a project is judged not only by what it carries but by what it disturbs.
Challenges For Railways
Two further difficulties press on the railways in particular. (a) Operational efficiency suffers where operations are inefficient, where there are staffing issues, and where maintenance costs are high, and all three affect performance. (b) Safety concerns arise from poor infrastructure and other factors, and these can in turn hold back the development of the system.
19.4 Railways
The Railways constitute the principal mode of transportation for freight and for passengers. They bring together people from the farthest corners of the country for conducting business, and for sightseeing, pilgrimage, education and much else.
How The Network Grew
Railways were first introduced to India in 1853, when a line was constructed from Mumbai to Thane covering a distance of 34 km. Since then Indian Railways have grown into a vast network. By 1947, the year of India’s independence, there were forty two rail systems, and in 1951 these systems were nationalised as one unit, becoming one of the largest networks in the world. Indian Railways operate both long distance and suburban rail systems.
At present it is one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting over 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tonnes of freight daily. It is the world’s largest employer, with more than 1.4 million employees. The railways traverse the length and breadth of the country, covering 7,137 stations over a total route length of more than 66,030 kilometres.
An average of a little over nine kilometres sounds like a station within walking distance of everywhere, and that is exactly what an average hides. In a city the stations stand a kilometre or two apart, while on a long stretch of line through thin country they may be thirty kilometres apart. The figure is real, but it describes the network as a whole and no single place on it, which is the standing danger of any national average.
The growth of Indian Railways in the past 150 years has been phenomenal, and its huge size has put pressure on the centralised management system. To ease this pressure, the railway system has been divided into 18 zones, and these divisions are the basic operating units. Table 19.2 gives the zones and their headquarters.
Map 19.2 shows the lines themselves, with the junctions the zones are worked from.
Map
Map 19.2 Caption: India: railways. Brief: Outline map of India showing the full extent of India as officially defined, at scale 1:20,000,000; show the rail routes as lines with junction and terminal stations marked and named, the Tropic of Cancer, state outlines and the surrounding seas; the key must distinguish rail route from coastline; no traffic or gauge data to be shown.
19.4.1 Track System
Based on the width of the track, the Indian Railways are divided into three categories. Gauge is the distance between the two rails of a track, and a wagon built for one width cannot run on another. Fig. 19.5 shows the widths side by side, and Fig. 19.A4 sets out the three categories with the share of the network each holds.
Diagram
Fig. 19.5 Caption: Rail gauge. Brief: Four stacked end-on views of a track on its sleepers, drawn to relative scale and labelled Narrow Gauge 610 mm (2 ft), Narrow Gauge 762 mm (2 ft 6 in), Meter Gauge 1000 mm (3 ft 3⅜ in) and Broad Gauge 1435 mm (5 ft 6 in); mark the measured distance between the inner faces of the rails with a dimension arrow.
Flowchart
Fig. 19.A4 Caption: The three gauges, and the share of total route length each accounts for. Nodes: Track system, by width between rails → Broad Gauge (1.676 m, about 85 per cent of route length) / Metre Gauge (1 m, about 11 per cent) / Narrow Gauge (0.762 m and 0.610 m, about 4 per cent); Narrow Gauge → mainly confined to hilly areas
Broad Gauge
In broad gauge the distance between the rails is 1.676 m. Its total route length accounts for about 85 per cent of the total length of rail route in the country, and almost all the main routes are broad gauge. The broad gauge system links the major ports of India with the interior towns and industrial centres, and it handles 85 per cent of the total goods traffic in terms of tonne-km. It is also called the India gauge. A tonne-km is one tonne of goods carried one kilometre, so it measures both the weight moved and the distance it was moved.
The broad gauge railway line on the west coastal lowland, known as the Konkan Railway Line, is an engineering marvel of the Indian Railways. It is a 760 km long rail route connecting Roha in Maharashtra to Mangalore in Karnataka, and it crosses 146 rivers and streams, nearly 2000 bridges and 91 tunnels. It also passes through a 6.5 km long tunnel, which is Asia’s largest tunnel. The states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa are partners in this project.
Metre Gauge And Narrow Gauge
In metre gauge the distance between the rails is one metre, and it accounts for about 11 per cent of the total route length. In narrow gauge the distance between the rails is 0.762 m and 0.610 m, and it accounts for about 4 per cent of the total route length. Narrow gauge is mainly confined to the hilly areas, where a narrower track can be curved more tightly around a slope.
Suburban And Metro Networks
Many cities have their own suburban networks to cater to commuters. At present suburban networks operate in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Lucknow. The last three of these cities do not have separate suburban tracks and share the tracks with long distance trains. New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai have their own Metro networks.
Suburban trains that handle commuter traffic are mostly Electric Multiple Units (EMUs). They usually have nine coaches, or sometimes twelve to handle rush hour traffic.
What The Railways Carry
Indian Railways carry a huge variety of goods, ranging from mineral ores, fertilizers and petro-chemicals to agricultural produce, iron and steel. Ports and major urban areas have their own freight lines. In this way the railways help in accelerating the development of industry and agriculture, since a factory and a port that are joined by a dedicated line can each work to the other’s timetable.
Private Participation And Faster Trains
The Indian Railways has begun the formal process of private participation for the operation of passenger train services in phases. It proposes to begin with a dozen of the 109 Origin-Destination (OD) pairs of routes, through the introduction of 151 modern trains. These 151 trains would be over and above the trains already existing, and they would run on the routes where the demand for trains is already higher than the existing capacity. The safety clearance of trains will be done by the Railways, and the driver and guard of the trains will be Railway officials.
The objective of this initiative is to introduce modern technology with reduced transit time, to boost job creation, and to provide a world class travel experience to passengers. It also aims to reduce the demand-supply deficit in the passenger transportation sector.
The Tejas Express is India’s first semi-high speed fully air-conditioned train, introduced by Indian Railways from Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus to Karmali in Goa on May 24, 2017. It features modern on board facilities with doors which are operated automatically. The Tejas Express trains are among the fastest trains in India, along with the Rajdhani Express, Gatimaan Express, Shatabdi Express, Vande Bharat Express and Duronto Express, and they get the highest priority on the Indian railway network. At present four Tejas Express trains are running on different routes. Fig. 19.6 shows a train of the Indian Railways on a main line.
Diagram
Fig. 19.6 Caption: Indian Railways. Brief: Photograph of an electric locomotive hauling a train on a main line; show the overhead electric wires, the ballasted track and the signal gantry if visible.
19.4.2 Advantages Of Railways
The main advantages of rail transport are the following. (a) Railways constitute one of the most efficient and cost-effective forms of transportation, and they help in the easy movement of bulky goods and perishable commodities to distant places. (b) Railways transport raw materials to the production units and finished goods to the markets. (c) Railways have brought the villages closer to the cities and have helped to transfer new ideas and innovations to the rural areas. (d) Railways help in reducing suffering during natural calamities. (e) Railways act as an integrating force, knitting the whole country into one whole with a huge network running throughout the country. (f) Railways facilitate the easy movement of police, troops and defence equipment. (g) Railways provide a comfortable journey, as the trains have enough space to stretch legs and move in the corridors, and at night one can sleep comfortably on the berths provided in the trains. (h) Rail travel is safer and more comfortable for families with babies and elders.
19.4.3 Disadvantages Of Railways
Against these stand the following limits. (a) Rail transport lacks flexibility of routes, because train tracks cannot be laid in every region of the country, such as the hilly areas or remote forested areas. (b) Train travel can be very long and tedious, especially when compared to air travel. (c) Train tracks cannot be laid in every industrial region, so trains have to travel to a station where the cargo is loaded from one form of transportation to another. Most industrial locations have roads leading to them, but not all of them have train tracks leading to them. (d) The trains which run on coal produce a lot of air and noise pollution. (e) Trains cannot cross the oceans, as they are limited to land travel and cannot normally haul products from one continent to another.
19.5 Air Transport
Air transport in India started with a 10-km airmail operation between Allahabad and Naini in 1911. It made real progress, however, only after India attained Independence. At present India has both domestic and international airlines, and they carry passengers, freight and mail.
From Two Corporations To One Airline
Air transport in India was managed by two corporations, Air India and Indian Airlines. The two entities were merged into one in 2007 and the merged airline is called Air India. With this merger, Air India became the 16th largest airline in Asia, serving 100 domestic destinations and 70 international routes, and serving over 100 cities.
The Tata group took over the management and control of the airline after it purchased Air India from the Government of India in January 2022. The transaction for the purchase of Air India includes three entities, and Fig. 19.A5 sets them out.
Flowchart
Fig. 19.A5 Caption: What the 2022 purchase of Air India actually contained. Nodes: Air India group → Air India (flag carrier and premier full-service airline) / Air India Express (low-cost carrier, short and medium-haul international destinations) / AISATS (ground handling and cargo handling services)
The Tata group has taken over Air India with the purpose of making it affordable, and of ensuring that it contributes to boosting ‘Ease of Living’ for citizens. Apart from Air India there also exists a number of private scheduled operators, such as Inter Globe Aviation Ltd. (Indigo) and Vistara, providing a wide choice of flights and connectivity to various parts of India and abroad. Fig. 19.7 shows an aircraft of the type flown on domestic routes.
Diagram
Fig. 19.7 Caption: Indian Airlines A320 Airbus. Brief: Photograph of an A320 Airbus in Indian Airlines livery on the apron; show the fuselage markings and the boarding position clearly.
19.5.1 Pawan Hans
Pawan Hans Helicopters Ltd. (PHHL) was established in 1985 with the primary objective of providing helicopter support services to the oil sector in offshore exploration. It also operates in hilly and inaccessible areas, and makes available charter flights for the promotion of tourism.
19.5.2 Advantages Of Airways
The main advantages of air transport are the following. (a) Air transport is particularly significant for a country like India, in which, owing to her vast size, long distances have to be covered between important cities. (b) It is the fastest and most comfortable mode of transport, and it connects the far flung and remote areas of the country. (c) The speed and ease with which aeroplanes can cross mountain barriers, sandy deserts, large expanses of water or forests make air transport indispensable, since none of these obstacles has to be crossed at all. (d) Air transport is of particular importance during natural calamities, when it is used to air-lift people from the affected areas and to air-drop food, medicines and other necessary things to calamity affected people.
19.5.3 Disadvantages Of Airways
Against these stand the following limits. (a) Air transport is costly. (b) It depends on weather conditions, and flights are often delayed due to bad weather. (c) Air transport is run on petroleum, which is a non-renewable source of energy. (d) Air transport can carry only a small tonnage, and it has high freight charges.
19.6 Water Transport
India is endowed with an extensive network of waterways in the form of rivers, canals, backwaters and creeks, and with a long coastline that is accessible through the seas and the oceans. Water transport can be divided into two categories, (a) Inland Waterways and (b) Oceanic Waterways.
19.6.1 Inland Waterways
Inland waterways include rivers, canals, backwaters and creeks which are deep enough to allow ships and boats to navigate safely. These waterways must also be free of barriers such as waterfalls and rapids, because a boat cannot climb a fall or hold a line through broken water.
Why Peninsular Rivers Are Poor Waterways
The rivers of Peninsular India are not ideal for navigation, for three reasons. First, these rivers are seasonal, as they are rain-fed, so the water that carries a boat in one season is not there in another. Second, they are comparatively shorter than the rivers of northern India, so a boat cannot travel far on any one of them. Third, these rivers are marked by a number of waterfalls, and each fall breaks the route into pieces.
The Ganga, by contrast, is navigable from its mouth right up to Allahabad, and the chapter gives three reasons for it. (a) The Ganga is a perennial river, fed by monsoon rains in the rainy season and by the melting of snow on the lofty mountains during the dry season, so it never runs low enough to strand a vessel. (b) It is joined by the Yamuna, Son, Ramaganga, Gomti, Ghagra, Gandak and Kosi, which increase the depth of water in the Ganga, and that depth is more than 10 metres up to Allahabad. (c) The slope of the Ganga is gradual and the river bed is free from stones and silt, so the current is steady and the channel is clear.
How Much Of It Is Used
Of the total navigable length of 20,236 km, 17,980 km of river and 2,256 km of canals can be used by mechanised flat bottom vessels. A flat bottom vessel sits shallow in the water, which is what allows it to work a river that is only a few metres deep. Even so, freight transportation by waterways is highly underutilised in India compared to other large countries like the United States, China and the European Union.
The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) is the statutory authority in charge of the waterways in India. It is responsible for building the necessary infrastructure in these waterways, for surveying the economic feasibility of new projects, and for their administration and regulation. The IWAI has declared 106 National Waterways in 2016, in addition to the existing five.
The Five Operational National Waterways
The five operational National Waterways are the following. (a) National Waterway No. 1 (NW-1) comprises more than 1620 kms of potentially navigable waterways: the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly River System, which connects Haldia, Kolkata, Farakka, Munger, Patna, Varanasi and Allahabad. (b) National Waterway No. 2 (NW-2) is the river Brahmaputra, connecting Dhubri, Pandu (Guwahati), Tezpur, Neamati, Dibrugarh and Sadiya, stretching to about 891 kms, and it was declared a National Waterway in 1988. The NW-2 connects the North East region with the Kolkata and Haldia ports through Bangladesh and the Sunderbans waterways. (c) National Waterway No. 3 (NW-3) runs from Kollam to Kottapuram in Kerala. It comprises 168 km of the west coast canal along with the Champakara canal and the Udyogmandal canal, and it was declared a National Waterway in 1993. It is one of the most navigable areas in India and has much to offer to potential tourists. (d) National Waterway No. 4 (NW-4) connects the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry. It comprises the Kakinada-Puducherry stretch of canals and Kalurelly Tank, and stretches of the rivers Godavari and Krishna, 1028 km in all. (e) National Waterway No. 5 (NW-5) comprises the Talcher-Dhamra stretch of the river Brahmani, the Geonkhali-Charbatia stretch of the East Coast Canal, and the Charbatia-Dhamra stretch of the Matai river, along with the Mahanadi delta river system, 585 km in all. It was declared a National Waterway in 2008, and coal moving from Talcher to Dhamra and Paradip Port is the most important cargo on this waterway.
India’s first multi-model terminal on the river Ganga was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2018 in Varanasi. He also received there the country’s first container cargo transported on inland waterways from Kolkata. This was the first of four multi-model terminals being constructed on National Waterway No. 1. Its objective is to promote inland waterways as a cheap and environment-friendly means of transportation, especially for cargo movement.
Besides the National Waterways, the deltaic regions of the Godavari, Krishna and Mahanadi rivers, the Barak river, the Mandovi and the Juari rivers of Goa, and the backwaters of Kerala are also used as inland waterways.
What Keeps A Waterway Working
Navigability of rivers and canals depends on the regular flow of water and on an appropriate depth in which the craft can sail easily. Both of these can fail. Seasonal fluctuation of water, shallow depth, undulating river beds and their silting, and reduction of the water level due to diversion for irrigation are some of the major problems of the inland waterways. The last of these is worth pausing on: water taken out upstream for fields is water no longer available to float a barge downstream, so two uses of the same river pull against each other.
19.6.2 Oceanic Waterways
A port and a harbour are not the same thing, and it is worth telling them apart before going further. Ports are man-made commercial places built along the coastline, whose location is chosen where the water is navigable and close to land facilities and infrastructure; harbours, on the other hand, are natural or created places connecting a piece of land with a large water body, and natural harbours are surrounded by land on most sides but have an entrance point to the sea. The main purpose of a port is the loading and unloading of cargo ships, while harbours are used mainly for providing safe parking or anchorage to ships. Ports are therefore very large, with buildings and warehouses for storing goods and a well-built transport system behind them. The two overlap when a natural harbour is given all the facilities of a port, and then it serves as one: Mumbai is a natural harbour and also the biggest port in India.
India has a long coastline of 7,517 km, forming one of the biggest peninsulas in the world. It has 12 major ports and 187 notified minor and intermediate ports. Oceanic waterways are the sea routes that link these ports to one another and to ports abroad.
Oceanic waterways play an important role in the transport sector of India’s economy. Ocean routes handle 95 per cent of India’s foreign trade by volume and about 70 per cent by value. The gap between those two figures is itself a lesson: ships carry the heavy, cheap goods, so their share of weight is far larger than their share of worth. Besides international trade, these routes are also used for transportation between the islands and the rest of the country.
19.6.3 Ports
Major ports handle over 80 per cent of all cargo traffic. The ports of India have been classified into Major, Minor and Intermediate type.
19.6.4 Major Ports
Map 19.4 shows where the major ports lie and the sea routes that run out from them.
Map
Map 19.4 Caption: India: major ports and sea routes. Brief: Outline map of India showing the full extent of India as officially defined, at scale 1:20,000,000; mark and name each major port on the east and west coasts, draw the principal sea routes out from Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai with their distances labelled in nautical miles, and show the Tropic of Cancer and the surrounding seas; no cargo tonnage to be shown.
The major ports of India are the following. (a) Kolkata, in West Bengal, is a riverine port located on the bank of the Hooghly River, and it handles diversified commodities coming from South East Asian countries, Australia and New Zealand. (b) Haldia, in West Bengal, has been developed on the river Hooghly to relieve pressure on Kolkata. (c) Paradip, in Odisha, is located on the coast of Odisha and handles iron ore and coal. (d) Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh, is India’s deepest landlocked port and handles crude oil and petroleum products. (e) Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, is the second largest port in terms of volume of traffic handled and is the oldest artificial harbour on the east coast of India. It handles petroleum products, crude oil, fertilisers, iron ore and dry cargo. (f) Tuticorin, in Tamil Nadu, is located on the east coast of India and handles mainly coal, salt, edible oil, dry cargo and petroleum products. (g) Kandla, in Gujarat, is a tidal port and a free trade zone located at the eastern end of the Rann of Kutch. It handles crude oil, petroleum products, edible oil, food grains, salt and cotton. (h) Mumbai, in Maharashtra, is a natural harbour on the west coast and is also the biggest port of India. It handles the maximum traffic, over a fifth of the total traffic of ports, which includes mineral oil and dry cargo. (i) Jawaharlal Nehru (Nhava Sheva) Port, near Mumbai, is the biggest ultra-modern seaport off Mumbai. It is equipped with modern facilities having mechanised container berths for handling dry cargo, and service berths. (j) Mormugao, in Goa, is a natural harbour situated at the entrance of the Zuari estuary, and it occupies fifth position in terms of total traffic handled. (k) New Mangalore, in Karnataka, is located on the west coast of India. It handles the export of iron ore from Kudremukh and imports of petroleum products, fertilisers and edible oils. (l) Kochi, in Kerala, is a natural harbour, and it handles the export of tea, coffee and spices and the import of petroleum oil and fertilizers. (m) Ennore Port is located about 24 km north of Chennai Port. It is the first port in India which is a public company, being a corporate entity, Ennore Port Ltd., and not a Port Trust like the other major ports of India. It is a satellite port meant to decongest the busy Chennai Port and to improve the environmental quality there.
19.6.5 Advantages Of Waterways
The main advantages of water transport are the following. (a) Inland water transport is an environment friendly and cost effective mode of transport. (b) Compared to rail and road transportation, inland water transportation is a fuel-efficient mode: one litre of fuel moves 24 tonne-km on road, 95 tonne-km on rail and 215 tonne-km on inland water transportation. (c) It is most suitable for carrying heavy and bulky material, which is the cargo other modes find hardest. (d) It is a fuel-efficient and eco-friendly mode of transport. (e) Travel by ships and cruise liners is comfortable, as it provides a lot of space and other facilities such as catering, medicines, doctors, communication, entertainment and sports. (f) Water transport is safe and has less traffic in comparison to road and air transport.
Fig. 19.A6 puts the fuel figures side by side.
Graph
Fig. 19.A6 Caption: How far one litre of fuel moves one tonne of goods, by mode. Brief: Vertical bar chart with three bars; x-axis labelled mode of transport, with the categories road, rail and inland water; y-axis labelled tonne-km moved per litre of fuel, scaled 0 to 250; values 24, 95 and 215 respectively, each printed above its bar; data from the advantages of waterways given in this chapter.
The number explains why a country with rivers keeps trying to move coal and containers onto them, and it also explains why this has not simply happened. Fuel is only one cost, and the barge only wins where the water actually goes where the cargo is going, all year, and at a depth that will carry it. A mode that is nine times as fuel-efficient on the stretch it can serve is still useless on the stretch it cannot reach, which is why the road keeps the last few kilometres in almost every journey.
19.6.6 Disadvantages Of Waterways
Against these stand the following limits. (a) Water transport depends on weather conditions. (b) It needs long travelling hours, which causes sea sickness. (c) Water transport is limited to the areas where rivers are navigable and where oceanic routes exist, so it can never offer the door to door reach that a road does.
19.7 Summary
- A transport system carries raw materials, fuel and machinery to the points of production, and finished goods to the points of marketing and consumption; it creates nothing itself but makes everything else usable.
- Transport matters to a country in several ways.
- It allows resources to be used in regions that hold them but lack industry.
- It aids industrialisation and urbanisation.
- It removes scarcity of goods during a crisis and reduces the effects of natural disasters.
- It builds national integration by bringing people into contact with one another.
- Every mode moves through one of three mediums — land, air or water — and land transport means roads and railways.
- India’s road network is the second largest in the world and is categorised as National Highways, Expressways, State Highways, major District roads, Rural roads and Other roads; about 40 per cent of villages still lack all-weather roads.
- The classes of road differ in who builds them and what work they do.
- National Highways, built and maintained by the Central Government, are 1.7 per cent of the network length but carry about 40 per cent of the road traffic.
- Expressways differ from highways in one thing above all, access control, and this is what gives them speed, safety and lower vehicle operating costs.
- State Highways link the National Highways with district headquarters, towns, tourist centres and minor ports within a state.
- District roads join areas of production to markets, and rural roads, about 80 per cent of the total road length, carry produce from the fields to the marketing centres.
- Border Roads, built by the BRO since 1960, serve defence preparedness and economic development along the northern and north-eastern boundary.
- The NHAI, constituted in 1988, runs two major projects: the Golden Quadrilateral joining Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, and the North-South-East-West Corridor joining Srinagar to Kanyakumari and Porbandar to Silchar.
- Whether a road or a railway line gets built depends on terrain, climate and land features, on economic development and funding, and on government policy, land acquisition, population density, urbanisation and defence needs.
- Indian Railways began in 1853 with a 34 km line from Mumbai to Thane, were nationalised as one unit in 1951, and are now divided into 18 zones because a single centralised management could not carry the size of the network.
- Track is classified by the width between the rails.
- Broad gauge, 1.676 m, accounts for about 85 per cent of route length and handles 85 per cent of goods traffic in tonne-km.
- Metre gauge, one metre, accounts for about 11 per cent of route length.
- Narrow gauge, 0.762 m and 0.610 m, accounts for about 4 per cent and is mainly confined to hilly areas.
- Air transport is the fastest mode and the only one that ignores mountains, deserts, water and forest, but it is costly, weather-dependent, run on a non-renewable fuel, and able to carry only a small tonnage.
- Water transport divides into inland waterways and oceanic waterways; inland routes need regular flow, sufficient depth and freedom from waterfalls and rapids, which is why the Ganga serves and the rain-fed, short, fall-broken peninsular rivers do not.
- Ocean routes handle 95 per cent of India’s foreign trade by volume and about 70 per cent by value, and the major ports handle over 80 per cent of all cargo traffic.
- Each mode is best at a different job: roads reach every village door to door, railways move bulk overland cheaply, airways move urgency, and waterways move the heaviest cargo for the least fuel wherever the water happens to go.
Flowchart
Fig. 19.A7 Caption: What is being moved, and where to, decides which mode carries it. Nodes: A load to be moved → is there a navigable river, canal or sea route to the destination? yes and the load is heavy and bulky → water transport (least fuel per tonne-km, weather-dependent, no door to door reach); no → is the journey long and the load bulky, with track at both ends? yes → railways (cheap in bulk, but fixed routes and a transfer at each end); no → is speed or unreachable terrain the whole point, with a small load? yes → airways (fastest, costly, small tonnage); no → roadways (door to door, reaches every village, and completes the last stretch of almost every other mode’s journey); water, rail and air journeys → back to roadways for the first and last few kilometres
What This Chapter Cannot Tell You
The figures here are national totals, and a national total is silent about places. The chapter can say that about 40 per cent of villages lack all-weather roads, but not which districts they lie in; it can give the length of each class of road, but the table carries no year, so it fixes no date to the picture.
Nor does the chapter measure the costs of transport against each other in the same units. It lists advantages and disadvantages for each mode, and gives fuel efficiency for three of them, but a real choice of mode also turns on time, handling, tolls and the price of the goods themselves, and none of those figures appear here. ## 19.8 Check Your Concepts
- Using the figures given in this chapter, work out how many times further one litre of fuel moves a tonne of goods on rail than on road. Show your working, and then give one reason why goods are still sent by road over the same distance.
- Look at Table 19.1. The National Highways have the smallest length of the three classes shown. Explain, using another figure given in this chapter, why length alone is a poor guide to how important a class of road is.
- Haldia was developed on the river Hooghly and Ennore about 24 km north of Chennai Port. State what both these ports were built to do, and say what would have to change at the older port for a second port beside it to become unnecessary.
- Set out, step by step, why the same length of road or railway line costs far more to build in a hilly region than in the plains, and say what this difference does to the connectivity of hill areas.
- Transport is the backbone of a country’s economy. Give reasons to support your answer.
- Give two points of difference between highways and expressways.
- Give a geographical reason for each of the following:
- Railways bind the economic and cultural life of the country.
- Railways are not common in North-East India.
- North India is better suited for railways and roadways.
- Give a geographical reason for each of the following:
- The Ganga is navigable from its mouth right up to Allahabad.
- The Peninsular rivers are not ideal for inland water transport.
- Mumbai is a harbour and a port.
- Instead of developing road transport, India should focus more on the development of Metro rail. Do you agree with this statement? Give reasons to support your view.
19.9 Case-Based Questions
- Refer to Map 19.1 and answer the following:
- Name four cities that are connected by the North-South Corridor.
- Give any two reasons in support of the NHAI’s highway projects.