Importance of Ports and other Infrastructure in the Development of India

A port is a place where ships can be boarded or unloaded. Thus, we can imagine that a port is a very
important part of national and international trade. It is a way in which goods can be transported at a
very low cost and ports connect sea and land transport. Thus it is a very crucial part of transportation
as whole. India has a very long coastline of 7516.60 km, and more than 200 ports. 1 Thus ports form a
huge share in India’s transportation system.

As good as one can imagine the number of jobs that ports provide directly, which include the people
who handle all the machinery on the port, for example cranes, and other people who manage the
incoming of ships and their departure as well. Then there are people who load and unload, company
and seller/supplier representatives, etc. Now these are the people who directly get employed at the
port, but ports indirectly influence the employment of people in the nearby area too, as companies
and industries altogether are situated near ports to have ease of transportation. This increases the
chances of employment. The number of ports increases the amount of investment into industries as
it provides cheaper mode of transportation to the industries, and transportation being one of the
largest costs, it saves the industries a very high amount of money.

Ports are also more environmentally friendly than may other means of transportation, for example
railway. They are also much more energy efficient, mathematically speaking, they can be twice as
much efficient than rail transport and ten times as much as road transport. 2 Thus we can see that
ports can help reduce pollution and energy consumption of a nation.

Ports also encourage exports to other countries. Exports form a very important part of a nation’s
economy, as they bring in money from other countries to a nation’s economy. This thus brings
foreign currency. India has a very big share in the world’s agricultural produce in terms of land
dedicated for agriculture, and there is a great variety of crops. India holds second position in
production of fruits and vegetables. It exports 8.23 lakh tonnes of fruits worth Rs 5,638 crore and
31.92 lakh tonnes of vegetables worth Rs 5,679 crores annually. 3 This is a huge amount of income.

Various automotive manufacturers have their manufacturing facilities in India due to ample
availability of land, labour and material. Thus many Two-Wheeler and Passenger Cars are exported
from India every year into countries like African and South American countries. In 2016, automotive
exports stood at $10.8 billion. 4 The export of two wheelers in the fiscal year 2020 was at 3.5 million
units, which has always seen an increasing graph. Almost 6,77,310 passenger cars were exported
from India in the same year. Thus we can see that exports bring a lot of money into the country. 5
And since products like automobiles are heavyweight products, air transport can accommodate a
very limited amount of export units as compared to seaways. The same can be said for road
transport as automobiles being the products which have bigger unit size than many other products,
road transport can move less number of units as compared to seaways. Thus ports play a very
important role in the exports in the automobile industry.

We can see that many industries depend upon ports for exports. This forms a huge portion of India’s
GDP. In 2019, exports were 18.4% of India’s GDP. Hence, we can see that ports, which play an
important role in exports, are an inseparable piece of infrastructure from India’s development path.

1
https://www.ibef.org/industry/ports-india-shipping.aspx

2
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214241X15000413#:~:text=Ports%20are%20also%20important%20for,but%20also%20a%20social%20function .

3
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/indias-farm-exports-rise-23-24-in-march-june-2020-despite-pandemic/articleshow/77609656.cms?from=mdr#:~:text=%E2%80%9CAgricultural%20exports%20as%20a%20percentage,9.9%25%20in
%202018%2D19.&text=%E2%80%9CIndia%20holds%20second%20position%20in,worth%20Rs%205%2C679%20crores%20annually.
4
https://www.ibef.org/automechanika-dubai/download/Article-2_Supplement.pdf

5
https://www.statista.com/statistics/608494/export-trends-automobile-industry-india/