Читать книгу Economic corridors in Asia : paradigm of integration? A reflection for Latin America - Varios autores - Страница 32

India has vast networks of highways covering the length and breadth of the geography which have helped in developing the industry and also providing employment opportunities. Since the liberalization of the economy in 1990s, it was felt that there was a need to emulate the export-ordinated industrialization through liberalized procedures and improvements on the ease of the business economy. To meet the infrastructure deficit, a number of initiatives were taken by previous governments and subsequently, India has embarked on the Golden quadrilateral project to promote seamless connectivity across the north, south, east and western regions of India. Given the fact that there have been issues related to the cost efficiency, hidden costs and also challenges with regard to available skilled labor, it was imperative for India to bring the different economic centers including the older ones such as Surat and Kolkata and integrate them with new centers such as Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kochi. This seamless integration through the highway network would create a lifeline and also help in the equitable distribution of resources, manpower and industries.

In order to promote the industrial sector and also work on the integrated inland and highway networks, India has started work on building highway networks, and also developing ports. As part of this project, it has announced the Sagarmala project. However, the earlier Sethusamudrum project was proposed between India and Sri Lanka so that the Indian ports could be engaged for the transit shipment which was destined for East Asia. The project was criticized because of religious aspects as it was believed that construction of such a project would destroy the Setu (bridge) which was built by Lord Rama while attacking Lanka and fighting the war with Ravana who had kidnapped Rama’s wife –Sita. The project was shelved because of concerns from both countries regarding the viability and economic sustainability of such a project.

Following the debacle of the Sethusamudrum project, India under the new regime of Modi proposed the Sagarmala project. This project is aimed at building small and medium size ports along India’s coastline. The conceptualization was achieved in 2015 and reference was made under the National Perspective Plan (NPP). The objective was to undertake comprehensive development of India’s coastline and maritime sector through sustained efforts which included foreign investment, Public-Private partnership as well as the participation of the private sector in the development plan. According to rough estimates and the volume of exports, 95 per cent of India’s trade (excluding oil imports) is undertaken through sea ports. The economic zones have been created or are in the developmental phases to promote economic activities including services in ports such as Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), Sikka Port, Mundra Port, and Hazira Port, etc. (Sagarmala Project, n.d.).

MAP 1: NATIONAL HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

Source: Created by author based on the Ministry of Surface Transport and Shipping website (n.d).

These efforts are meant to address structural challenges but there are challenges with regard to labor efficiency, skill and wages. For instance, the operational efficiency of Indian ports lags in terms of the global average as it is four days of turnaround time required for offloading or loading of cargo while the international average is 1-2 days. A few select private sector ports like Gangavaram and Mundra have clocked a turnaround time of 48 hours. Another challenge that the port infrastructure faces in India is with regard to connectivity to the last mile. More than 87 per cent of Indian freight have to face ‘idle time’ (time between offloading and transit) because of capacity constraints and the lack of connectivity between production and consumption centers. Along the coastline the transport and ferry services are still better, and freight transport have also improved, but its share is only six per cent of the transport. Freight costs can be reduced through ‘shifting movement of industrial commodities like cement, coal, iron ore, and steel to coastal and inland waterways’ (Sagarmala Project, n.d.).

In order to address these intrinsic bottlenecks and problems in capacity, the Sagarmala program addresses issues such as port modernization and new port development. This involves reducing structural problems, bureaucratic interference, and ‘capacity expansion of present ports and the development of new Greenfield ports. Port connectivity proposes enhancing the connectivity of the ports to the hinterland, optimizing cost and reducing time of cargo movement through multi-modal logistics solutions including domestic waterways (inland water transport and coastal shipping). Port-linked industrialization through promoting port-proximate industrial clusters and coastal economic zones to reduce logistics cost and time of export–import (EXIM) and domestic cargo. Coastal community development is further aimed at promoting sustainable development of coastal communities through skill development & livelihood generation activities, fisheries development, coastal tourism, etc. (Sagarmala Project, n.d.).

Apart from the Sagarmala program, one of the elements of faster connectivity has been the freight corridors. India has been working on a number of freight corridors with economic assistance from Japan. Japanese assistance in terms of soft loans is existent in Ahmedabad-Mumbai High Speed Rail, and $100 billion Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (Mohammad, 2018) parts of Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor with twelve new industrial townships, or the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC) (Price Waterhouse Coopers -PWC, 2015). ‘In order to accelerate the process Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL), a special purpose vehicle was established under the administrative control of the Ministry of Railways, to undertake planning & development, mobilization of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of the dedicated freight corridors’ (PWC, 2015). The proposal of dedicated freight corridors across the country, marks a strategic turning point in the history of the country’s railway that has essentially run mixed traffic across its network. Once accomplished, the dedicated freight corridors are aimed at improving customer orientation and catering to market requirements. Creation of rail infrastructure on such a scale – unprecedented in independent India – is also expected to drive the establishment of industrial corridors and logistic parks along its alignment (Dedicated Freight Corridor, 2018). ‘The cost for these dedicated freight corridors along the eastern and western routes, spanning 3,360 route km, has been estimated at $ 12 billion’ (Dedicated Freight Corridor, 2018)⁵.

The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor would be of 1,856 km and is proposed to be divided into two sections. The ‘first section covers an electrified double-track segment of 1,409 km from Dankuni in West Bengal (state) and Khurja in Uttar Pradesh (state). The second section would be a single line segment of 447 km between Ludhiana – Khurja – Dadri. The corridor would cover six states of Eastern India and three states from North India’ (Roy, July 2018). The project would facilitate transportation of coal for steel, finished steel, power plants, food grains, and cement. Along with the freight lines, logistics parks have also been planned. In comparison to the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, it is expected to be a ‘1,504-km-long route and the Western Freight Corridor traverses the states of Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. It is proposed to converge with the Eastern Corridor close to Dadri. This would facilitate the shipping of food grains, iron and steel, fertilizers, and cement, along with other commodities. Along with it, logistics parks in vicinity of Mumbai have been proposed. Additionally, other parks have been proposed closer to Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Jaipur and Delhi-National Capital Region’ (Roy, 2018). So far as per the reports ‘306 kms of Western Dedicated Freight Corridor has been completed and a trial run has been launched’ (The Economic Times, 2019).

With overall progress of over ‘35% achieved so far, these corridors seek to bring a paradigm shift in railway freight operations in the country, thus providing relief to the heavily congested Golden Quadrilateral’ (Make in India, 2018). Furthermore, Indian Railways under its special purpose vehicle has planned on building four more dedicated freight corridors. ‘The DFCCIL has been assigned the task of conducting preliminary engineering and traffic surveys for the proposed projects. Next in line are East – West Corridor (Kolkata – Mumbai) which will be approximately 2,330 route km in length; North – South Corridor (Delhi – Chennai) of approximately 2,343 route km; East Coast Corridor (Kharagpur-Vijaywada) close to 1,100 route km; and the Southern Corridor (Chennai - Goa) of approximately 899 route km’ (Razdan, 2016).

It is expected that nearly 35 per cent of work for these dedicated freight corridors be completed by the end of March 2019. However, the major challenge for these freight corridors has been the issues of land acquisition and also building separate infrastructure to address the bottlenecks with environmental issues and bureaucratic inertia. The problem forced the Indian Railways to build freight corridors along the existing lines of passenger traffic and also these freight corridors pass through existing railway stations. This has both advantages and disadvantages. The extension of railway tracks through the railway station in a way slowed the works but on the other hand the freight corridor existence along the passenger train routes helped in undertaking electrical and related works at a relatively faster pace. Beyond the objective of integrating India’s economic centers, port development is seen as a prerequisite for developing India’s production centers.