Transport in India — UPSC Geography Notes

1. Evolution and Organisation

First passenger train: Bori Bunder (Mumbai) to Thane, 34 km, 16 April 1853. Railways were built by the British mainly to move raw materials to ports and finished goods inland.

Indian Railways is run by the Ministry of Railways through 17 zonal railways (including Metro Railway, Kolkata); a new South Coast Railway zone (Visakhapatnam) was announced in 2019.

It has over 65,000 route km and is among the largest networks in the world under one management.

2. Gauges

Broad gauge: 1.676 m — now the bulk of the network. Metre gauge: 1.000 m. Narrow gauge: 0.762 m and 0.610 m (hill railways such as Darjeeling and Kalka–Shimla).

Project Unigauge (1992) converts metre and narrow gauge lines to broad gauge for seamless movement.

3. Distribution of the Network

Dense: the northern plains (flat land, dense population, agriculture and industry) and around industrial and mining belts.

Sparse: Himalayan and Northeastern hills, the Thar desert, forested central India and the Western Ghats — due to terrain, low demand and high cost.

Engineering landmarks: Konkan Railway (about 760 km, Roha to Thokur near Mangaluru through Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka; completed 1998) crosses rivers and Western Ghats spurs; the Chenab bridge on the Udhampur–Srinagar–Baramulla line is the world’s highest railway arch bridge (about 359 m above the river).

4. Dedicated Freight Corridors

Why: the Golden Quadrilateral and its diagonals carry a large share of traffic on a small share of track; mixed passenger–freight traffic slows goods trains and raises costs.

DFCCIL (Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd, set up in 2006) builds and runs the corridors.

Eastern DFC: Ludhiana (Punjab) to Sonnagar (Bihar), about 1,337 km, World Bank-assisted; carries coal, steel and food grains of the Indo-Gangetic belt.

Western DFC: JNPT (Navi Mumbai) to Dadri (Uttar Pradesh), about 1,506 km, assisted by Japan (JICA); built for double-stack container trains serving western ports.

The first DFC section (New Bhadan–New Khurja on the Eastern DFC) opened in December 2020; further corridors — East Coast (Kharagpur–Vijayawada), East–West (Bhusawal–Kharagpur–Dankuni) and North–South (Itarsi–Vijayawada) — have been proposed.

Benefits: higher axle loads and speeds, lower unit costs, shift of freight from road to rail (lower emissions), and freed capacity for passenger trains.

5. Modernisation

Mumbai–Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (about 508 km, Japanese Shinkansen technology, NHSRCL); semi-high-speed Vande Bharat trains (first in 2019); indigenous automatic train protection Kavach; electrification; station redevelopment; and integration with PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (2021).

Challenges: low share of rail in freight, cross-subsidy of passenger fares by freight, safety, congestion on trunk routes, and land acquisition.

Practice

UPSC-style: How can Dedicated Freight Corridors reduce India’s logistics costs? Discuss with reference to the Eastern and Western DFCs.

1. Roads

Classes: National Highways (Centre; built and maintained mainly by NHAI, set up under a 1988 Act), State Highways, district roads, rural roads (PMGSY, launched 2000), border roads (Border Roads Organisation, 1960) and expressways.

NHDP (from 1998): the Golden Quadrilateral (about 5,846 km linking Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata), the North–South corridor (Srinagar–Kanyakumari) and the East–West corridor (Silchar–Porbandar).

Bharatmala Pariyojana: approved in October 2017; Phase I of about 34,800 km covers economic corridors, inter-corridor and feeder routes, national-corridor efficiency improvement, border and international connectivity roads, coastal and port connectivity roads, and greenfield expressways.

Distribution: road density is high in Kerala, the plains and around metros, and low in the Himalaya, the Northeast, Rajasthan and Ladakh.

2. Ports

India has 12 major ports (under the Centre, governed by the Major Port Authorities Act, 2021, which replaced the Major Port Trusts Act, 1963) and around 200 non-major ports under State Maritime Boards.

West coast: Deendayal (Kandla, tidal port), Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru Port (Nhava Sheva — largest container port), Mormugao (iron ore), New Mangalore, Kochi.

East coast: V.O. Chidambaranar (Tuticorin), Chennai, Kamarajar (Ennore — first corporatised major port), Visakhapatnam (deep, land-locked harbour), Paradip, and Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port Kolkata (riverine, with Haldia dock).

Large non-major ports such as Mundra (Gujarat) handle a big share of cargo; Gujarat leads in port cargo.

3. Sagarmala Programme

Approved in 2015 to cut logistics costs through port-led development. Pillars: port modernisation and new ports, port connectivity, port-linked industrialisation (Coastal Economic Zones), and coastal community development, with coastal shipping and inland water transport.

4. Inland Waterways

Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) was set up in 1986. The National Waterways Act, 2016 declared 111 NWs (5 existing + 106 new).

NW-1: Ganga–Bhagirathi–Hooghly, Haldia–Prayagraj, about 1,620 km — longest; Jal Marg Vikas Project with multimodal terminals at Varanasi, Sahibganj and Haldia.

NW-2: Brahmaputra, Dhubri–Sadiya (about 891 km). NW-3: West Coast Canal, Kottapuram–Kollam with Champakara and Udyogamandal canals (Kerala). NW-16: Barak river (Assam).

Waterways link with Bangladesh through the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route, giving the Northeast access to Kolkata and Haldia.

Constraints: seasonal water depth, siltation, low bridges, lack of terminals and return cargo.

Practice

UPSC-style: Why does inland water transport carry a tiny share of India’s freight despite a vast river network? Suggest measures.