The Maritime State of India

Today India has eleven major seaports. Kandla, Bombay, Kochi, New Mangalore and Nhava Sheva are located on the west coast of the country and Calcutta, Paradip, Madras, Vishakhapatnam and Tuticorin located on the east side.

Kandla Port

Nhava Sheva was established in 1982 under the control of the Nehru administration. Each of the eleven ports is a direct responsibility of the Ministry of State for Surface Transport and managed by the semi-independent port trusts which are supervised by specially appointed boards like the navy and the port industry government departments.

In 1995 India had three shipping corporations owned by its government. The most important of them all was the Shipping Corporation. 443 vessels were operated by the other 60 companies with a total of 6.3 million gross tons registered at the end of the year which is 1.7 percent of the world's total amount of gross tonnage. The share of Indian vessels in the country's trade market is about 35 percent which means that 40 to 50 percent of the capacity sits unused. The global slump in the end of 1980s caused many financial difficulties to most of the shipping companies. For example in 1987 the leading Scindia Steam Navigation Company collapsed.

India's inland waterways in length are well over 16 000 kilometres and 3 600 of them can be used to navigate large ships but in fact only 2 000 kilometres are being used. Today Inland Waterways Authority regulates and maintains the inland waterways of the country and gives annual report to the central government for development of the waterways.