There are two ways of looking at India’s inland waterways transport (IWT) sector. Heavily under-used is what comes to mind first. The share of IWT among transport modes in India is barely 2 percent, as against comparable global figures of 8-15 percent; Bangladesh waterways account for an astounding 30 percent of their modal mix. India has 14,500 km of navigable inland waterways, but their use has been sub-optimal even though the modern era of IWT development in the country started way back in 1986. The Centre has notified 111 national waterways across 24 states, with a bulk of the sector’s development happening under the NDA government. The other side of the split picture is that the sector has shown some promise in the last half-decade—from moving 55.4 million tonnes of cargo in 2016-17 to 126 MT last year. Overall traffic logged a healthy 16 percent increase during 2022-23.
However, just three states—Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat—together account for over three-fourths of the traffic, which shows that other states need to pedal faster. States such as Odisha, with huge amounts of mined minerals that need to be moved at scale, seem to be missing out on an opportunity to decongest its roads and railways. The state has four notified waterways, but only two of them have picked up cargo activity in last couple of years. National Waterway (NW)-5, which connects four important stretches measuring about 623 km, has immense potential. In 2022-23, the route handled 0.4 MT of cargo, up from a mere 14,923 tonnes the year before. NW-64 too showed a similar trend. But the state’s other two routes have barely made an impression.
Odisha accounts for almost a quarter of the country’s coal reserves and its annual production is at around 185 MT. The coalfields of Talcher alone yield half the state’s production. With the Indian government deciding to double down on coal, aiming to reach the 1-billion-tonne production mark, Odisha has an opportunity to make the most of the IWT sector. NW-5 can play a big role in this as it connects Angul, the district in which Talcher is located, with the major ports of Paradip and Dhamra. Making NW-5 and NW-64 work at their optimum capacities could prove to be a game-changer for the state.
