The journey of a cargo vessel does not begin when it leaves the jetty. Before a tonne of cement, steel, coal or fertiliser can be placed on a barge, it may first have to travel from a factory or warehouse to a river terminal. At the receiving end, the same cargo may again need a truck or railway wagon to take it from the river to its final destination.
As discussed in the previous article in the series, cargo movement on India’s National Waterways has increased from around 18 million metric tonnes in 2013-14 to 218 million metric tonnes in 2025-26. India has already crossed the 200 MMT target that was set by the government under Maritime India Vision 2030, and the government now wants inland waterways to carry more than 500 MMT by 2047.
However, the volume of cargo is only one part of the story. The next phase is about integrating waterways with India’s much larger road, railway and port networks so that moving goods by river becomes a routine logistics decision rather than a once-in-a-blue-moon event.
The government has repeatedly described inland water transport, or IWT, as one of the most economical modes available. It reportedly consumes substantially less fuel per tonne of cargo compared to road transport while carrying commodities including coal, iron ore, cement, fertiliser, foodgrain and others.
If the network being built around India’s rivers can combine that natural advantage with efficient terminals, scheduled services and good road and railway connections, inland waterways can take on a much larger role in Indian freight.
The idea is straightforward. Heavy cargo that can be moved efficiently by water need not travel its entire journey by road or rail.
There is a reason why governments across the world continue to invest in inland navigation despite the dominance of roads and railways. Water has the capability to move a very large weight with relatively little energy.
The comparison most frequently used by the Government of India comes from a 2014 RITES study on the Integrated National Waterways Transportation Grid. At the price level used in that study, moving one tonne of freight for one kilometre cost approximately Rs 2.50 by highway, Rs 1.36 by railway and Rs 1.06 by inland water transport.
While these figures from 2014 give an idea of the price difference, the actual cost depends on route, commodity, distance, vessel size and many other factors. Government data based on the 11th Plan Working Group Report puts energy consumption at around 0.0048 litres per tonne-kilometre for waterways, compared with 0.0089 litres for rail and 0.0313 litres for road transport.
For a country as large as India, where enormous quantities of coal, ore, cement, steel and agricultural commodities travel every year, the difference can become significant when multiplied across millions of tonnes and hundreds of kilometres.
Suppose there is a consignment that needs to be delivered 700 km away from the source. The river may offer the lowest cost for the longest part of that journey. However, unless the factory is standing directly beside a navigable channel, the cargo first has to reach a terminal.
It may be loaded onto a truck, taken to the terminal, unloaded, placed aboard the vessel, unloaded again hundreds of kilometres later and finally transferred to another truck or railway wagon. Every such transfer takes time and costs money.
Notably, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways itself has acknowledged that while inland-waterway transport is cheaper as a mode, overall logistics charges may be higher because of multimodal handling. The Jalvahak Cargo Promotion Scheme and the development of better cargo aggregation and multimodal connections are partly aimed at addressing this gap.
The current phase of the programme is therefore increasingly focused on what surrounds the river. A barge becomes far more useful if its terminal has a railway connection. A terminal becomes more attractive if a major highway connects directly to it.
A waterway also becomes more commercially viable when industries, warehouses and logistics parks develop close to its loading points. National Waterway-1 is being developed on this model.
The government has taken up a multimodal logistics park at Varanasi and an integrated cluster-cum-logistics park at Sahibganj because many industries are not located directly beside the waterway. Rail connectivity for the major multimodal terminals has also been assigned for development.
A consignment may travel the first 40 km by truck, the next several hundred kilometres by river and the final stretch by road or rail. Each mode can be used for the part of the journey where it works best.
When it comes to logistics, building terminals and maintaining navigable channels solves only part of the problem. A new freight route also needs customers.
Cargo owners want frequent and reliable vessels before shifting large quantities to waterways. Vessel operators, meanwhile, need enough guaranteed cargo before they can justify putting more vessels into scheduled service.
On 15th December 2024, the Jalvahak Cargo Promotion Scheme was launched to help break this cycle. The three-year scheme has an outlay of Rs 95.42 crore and initially covers cargo movement on National Waterway-1, National Waterway-2 and National Waterway-16, including routes using the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol.
Under the scheme, eligible cargo owners can receive reimbursement of up to 35% of the actual operating expenditure incurred on the waterway journey. Scheduled cargo services form another important part of the scheme.
Instead of expecting a cargo owner to arrange an entire vessel movement whenever goods have to be transported, scheduled services are meant to create regular and predictable sailings, much like scheduled railway freight services or shipping lines.
Initial routes include Kolkata-Patna-Varanasi on NW-1, Kolkata-Pandu on NW-2 through the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route and connections towards Badarpur and Karimganj on NW-16. The government expects the scheme to facilitate a shift of around 800 million tonne-kilometres of cargo towards inland waterways.
At the time the scheme was designed, the 800-million-tonne-kilometre goal represented around 17% of the approximately 4,700 million tonne-kilometres then moving through National Waterways. The scheme will remain active until 2027 in its market-building phase.
According to information provided by the government in the Rajya Sabha, 12.5 million tonne-kilometres had been moved under Jalvahak. Fourteen scheduled voyages had been completed on NW-1 and seven on NW-2.
The companies whose cargo had travelled under Jalvahak included the Steel Authority of India, UltraTech Cement, Tata Steel, Emami, Anand Cargo, Mangalore Minerals, ABC India, A to Z Logistics and others.
In a separate reply in the Lok Sabha, the government stated that 21 cargo shipments had been shifted from road or rail to waterways under Jalvahak since the scheme was launched.
Participation by steel, cement and logistics companies is significant for a freight ecosystem that is still being established. These industries deal with the kind of large, heavy cargo for which inland navigation has a natural advantage.
The subsidy can help persuade shippers to try the route. Regular cargo volumes, however, are what can eventually sustain scheduled services.
One of the most visible advantages of water transport is capacity. A large inland vessel can carry a substantial amount of cargo in a single movement. Where a suitable waterway runs parallel to a congested land corridor, moving bulk cargo onto water can reduce the number of long-distance truck journeys required.
The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways describes inland water transport as an alternative to road and rail that can help reduce congestion in areas where navigable waterways are available.
A river cannot deliver a consignment to every factory gate, construction site or warehouse. Roads will continue to provide flexibility that neither rail nor water can match. But a truck need not necessarily cover an entire long-distance journey when a substantial part of it can be moved by water.
This is particularly relevant for the commodities that already dominate India’s inland-waterway traffic, including coal, iron ore, iron ore fines, sand and fly ash. Five such commodities together accounted for more than 68% of National Waterway cargo in 2024-25.
Coal and iron ore do not require the flexibility of a delivery van or need to reach their destination within a few hours. A steel plant receives thousands of tonnes of raw material and is more concerned with moving large consignments reliably and economically.
That is where river freight fits most naturally alongside India’s road and railway freight corridors.
It would be wrong to view India’s inland-waterway programme simply as an attempt to take cargo away from the railways. Railways remain one of the most efficient ways of transporting large volumes over land. They also reach industrial and population centres that rivers cannot. Waterways can serve corridors where navigable rivers offer an efficient route for heavy cargo.
The infrastructure being created around NW-1 reflects this approach. The World Bank’s original design for the Ganga waterway envisaged it as part of a larger network connected with the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor and India’s highway system, allowing industries to switch between road, rail and water according to their requirements.
The Modi government is also integrating digital systems used by different transport modes. The Maritime Single Window, Sagar Setu, is linked with systems including the Railways’ Freight Operations Information System, the Unified Logistics Interface Platform for road transport and customs systems.
IWAI has separately developed the CAR-D portal for the collection, analysis and dissemination of cargo and cruise movement data on National Waterways.
For a cargo owner, the practical question is which combination of road, rail and water moves a particular consignment most efficiently.
The economic case for waterways is closely connected with the environmental case. A vessel can carry enormous amounts of weight in one movement.
Government comparisons place energy consumption at 0.0048 litres per tonne-km for inland waterways, against 0.0313 litres for roads. Under the study used by the government, the road figure is more than six times the waterway figure.
The same government comparison estimates the monetary cost attributed to air pollution at Rs 0.03 per tonne-km for waterways, against Rs 0.202 for roads and Rs 0.0366 for rail. Noise pollution from inland waterways was assessed as negligible in the cited study.
These comparisons come from earlier Planning Commission and Five Year Plan studies rather than a new 2026 emissions audit. They nevertheless help explain why inland water transport has repeatedly been included in India’s effort to create a more sustainable freight mix.
The Ministry has also introduced Harit Nauka, its green-transition guidelines for inland vessels, aimed at moving the sector towards cleaner propulsion technologies and reducing emissions as the fleet expands.
Hybrid-electric vessels have already been deployed at Varanasi, Ayodhya, Patna and Kolkata, with additional vessels planned for other locations.
Although these vessels are presently more closely associated with passenger transport, they point to the direction in which the inland-vessel ecosystem is moving. The transport mode already has a fuel-efficiency advantage, and cleaner vessels can improve that advantage further.
A river is different from a railway line or an expressway. The Ganga is simultaneously a transport corridor, a source of water, a habitat, a cultural landscape and one of India’s most important natural systems.
The Jal Marg Vikas Project was designed around what the World Bank described as a “working with nature” approach.
Instead of creating the same artificial depth through the entire Haldia-Varanasi stretch, the navigation channel follows the river’s natural gradient. Different Least Available Depths are maintained in different stretches so that large vessels can operate while reducing the amount of dredging required.
According to the World Bank’s description of the project, the planned dredging requirement was limited to around 1.5% of the Ganga’s annual silt load in the project stretch.
The approach also included using temporary river-training structures made from natural materials where possible rather than relying only on continuous dredging.
Special safeguards were designed for aquatic life. The framework included restrictions on dredging inside protected habitat areas, limits during fish breeding and spawning seasons, a 5-km-per-hour vessel speed limit in sensitive sanctuary stretches, noise-control measures, animal-exclusion devices and zero-discharge requirements for vessels.
The detailed environmental assessment also provides for measures such as propeller guards, restrictions around dolphin habitats, spill-response plans and waste-management systems on vessels.
The advantage of river transport ultimately depends on using the river efficiently without placing disproportionate pressure on the ecosystem through which vessels travel.
The Rhine or a European canal cannot simply be copied onto the Ganga or Brahmaputra. Indian rivers have their own character. The Ganga swells during the monsoon and recedes during the dry season. Its navigable channel can move. The Brahmaputra carries enormous sediment and can change course across a wide riverbed. The World Bank noted while designing NW-1 that the seasonal character of the Ganga was one of the principal reasons large cargo navigation had historically been limited to deeper stretches downstream of Farakka.
India’s waterway programme therefore relies increasingly on information rather than attempting to physically control every kilometre of river. River Information Systems, electronic navigation, depth information, vessel tracking and regular hydrographic surveys help operators find and use the navigable channel as river conditions change. The government’s IWAI Vessel Tracker and PANI Portal provide updated navigation routes, water-depth information and real-time vessel tracking.
For a freight company, the result is predictability. A low freight rate is useful only if the cargo owner can also estimate when the consignment will arrive. Coal arriving after a power plant’s stock runs low is not cheap cargo, regardless of the freight rate. Steel reaching a construction project days after it was required creates another cost. A manufacturer may therefore accept a slightly slower journey if it is scheduled and dependable.
Fixed-day cargo services are important in this context. A vessel does not have to be the fastest mode available for every commodity, but it does need to be reliable enough for industries to plan around it. Commercial success will therefore depend on more than the number of kilometres declared navigable. Operators need to know how often vessels can sail, how much cargo they can carry, whether terminals are ready when they arrive and whether another load is available for the return journey.
A regular flow of cargo in both directions improves vessel utilisation and makes scheduled services more commercially attractive. The government itself has identified a set of practical issues that need to be addressed as inland-water freight expands. In August 2026, the Ministry listed limited industrial zones along some waterways, limited availability of suitable inland vessels, inadequate first and last-mile connectivity, limited multimodal logistics infrastructure and low awareness among cargo owners and operators as among the major issues affecting growth.
These are also the areas where policy is now moving beyond dredging and terminal construction. Multimodal terminals, intermodal terminals, community jetties, floating terminals and cargo-aggregation hubs are being developed to connect waterways with the places where cargo is actually produced and consumed. On the Ganga, Brahmaputra and emerging corridors such as NW-5, the task is to create logistics ecosystems around much longer river routes. The freight village proposed at Varanasi and the logistics cluster at Sahibganj are part of that effort.
A freight highway is of little use without vehicles, and the same logic applies to rivers. As waterway traffic expands, India needs a larger ecosystem of cargo barges, operators, trained crew, repair facilities and vessels designed for Indian river conditions. The government has already begun creating a national digital registry through the Jalyan and Navic portal, a One Nation One Registration system for inland vessels and crew.
As of 30th July 2026, 9,953 inland vessels and 1,215 crew were registered on the portal, with 18 states and Union Territories onboarded. The figure covers the wider inland-vessel ecosystem, not merely large freight barges, but the centralised registry gives planners a clearer view of the vessels and manpower available across the country.
The government has also extended the tonnage-tax regime to inland vessels. Instead of tax being based purely on actual profits, qualifying shipping companies can be taxed according to vessel tonnage, providing a more stable and predictable framework for operators. The extension was announced in the Union Budget presented on 1st February 2025.
India’s waterway ambitions will ultimately require much more than government-owned demonstration vessels. Private companies will need sufficient commercial opportunity to invest in vessels, operate services and commit cargo of their own.
One of the most significant recent changes came through the National Waterways (Construction of Jetties/Terminals) Regulations, 2025. The regulations created a framework allowing private companies, public entities and joint ventures to build and operate terminals and jetties on National Waterways.
The government is also using long-term public-private partnership models for the operation and maintenance of terminals. The Jal Samriddhi portal has been introduced so companies and other entities can digitally apply for the No Objection Certificates required to construct jetties and terminals.
The early phase of the revival required government investment in basic infrastructure because the market was too small to build it independently. As freight volumes increase, private capital can play a larger role in deciding where new terminals, vessels, warehouses and logistics services are commercially viable.
Building that ecosystem has required sustained public investment. The Ministry told Parliament in July 2026 that expenditure across the Jal Marg Vikas Project and other National Waterway programmes stood at Rs 514.77 crore in 2022-23, Rs 969.63 crore in 2023-24, Rs 1,083.70 crore in 2024-25 and an unaudited Rs 1,074.48 crore in 2025-26.
The Jal Marg Vikas Project on NW-1 alone accounted for Rs 616.27 crore in expenditure in 2025-26, while another Rs 98.36 crore was spent on NW-1 activities outside JMVP. The Brahmaputra and Barak projects together accounted for Rs 232.46 crore in the same year. The spending covers a network of fairways, terminals, navigation systems, river-information infrastructure, locks, jetties, vessel facilities and multimodal connections across several states.
As cargo volumes grow and private investment expands, the value of this infrastructure will increasingly be reflected in sustained freight movement and the economic activity developing around the waterways.
For the Northeast, economics cannot be separated entirely from geography. Road and railway connectivity between the Northeast and the rest of India passes through the narrow Siliguri Corridor. The Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route gives India another way to transport heavy cargo between eastern ports and Assam using interconnected river systems.
This route has already carried cement, steel, industrial materials and over-dimensional cargo towards Assam. Its value goes beyond the freight rate charged for an individual voyage because it also adds logistics redundancy. Multiple routes into the Northeast reduce dependence on a single geographical corridor, carrying both economic and strategic value.
The importance of the system was shown by the scheduled Kolkata-Pandu services introduced under Jalvahak and the government’s continued investment in National Waterway-2 and National Waterway-16. The government has also operationalised the Maia-Sultanganj section of Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Routes 5 and 6 following successful trial movements, creating another waterway connection between India and Bangladesh.
For India’s Northeast, the value of a waterway cannot always be measured only in tonnes or rupees per kilometre. It also puts another route on the logistics map.
India is not the first large country to recognise the freight potential of rivers. The Yangtze in China, Mississippi in the United States and Rhine in Europe have long carried enormous volumes of cargo.
A World Bank study of inland-water transport recorded 2.2 billion tonnes on the Yangtze in 2017, around 330 million tonnes on the Rhine and approximately 285 million tonnes on the Mississippi.
Europe provides another useful example of how waterways fit into a larger transport system. The European Commission says around 45,000 km of inland waterways form part of Europe’s transport system, with traffic concentrated particularly along the Rhine and Danube corridors. Inland water transport accounts for around 3.5% of total EU freight traffic.
India does not need to reproduce those systems river by river. Seasonal water patterns, population density, industries and existing railway and highway networks differ considerably. The useful lesson is more basic that is where sufficient cargo, navigable water, terminals, ports and multimodal connections come together, rivers can carry enormous volumes of freight for decades.
India’s task is to identify and develop the corridors where those conditions either already exist or can reasonably be created. That is already happening on the Ganga, western industrial waterways and, increasingly, the Brahmaputra and proposed NW-5 corridor in Odisha.
India has already crossed an important milestone. The Maritime India Vision target was to take inland-waterway cargo beyond 200 MMT by 2030. The country reported 218 MMT in 2025-26, reaching that level several years ahead of schedule.
Under Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047, the government wants traffic to cross 500 MMT and inland waterways’ share of the freight mix to rise from around 2% to 5%.
Reaching that target will involve more than adding tonnes to the annual cargo figure. More freight will need to travel longer distances, scheduled services will need to become more regular, industries will need to plan logistics around river terminals, and private companies will need to invest in vessels and jetties.
Can rivers replace roads or railways? They cannot, and there is little reason to expect them to. A truck can leave a factory and reach a warehouse that may be nowhere near a river or railway line. A freight train can move enormous quantities quickly across a fixed national network. A barge can carry heavy bulk cargo using far less fuel along a suitable waterway.
India’s opportunity lies in using all three more efficiently. The government’s current policy reflects that approach. Multimodal terminals are connecting rivers with highways and railway lines. Logistics parks are being planned near waterway terminals. Scheduled services are being introduced. Cargo owners are being encouraged to try the new routes. The tax regime is being changed to attract vessel investment. Private companies can now build terminals. Digital systems are beginning to connect water, road, rail, ports and customs.
For decades, much of India’s heavy freight had essentially two options over land: railway wagons or trucks. India is now restoring a third. The 218-million-tonne cargo figure shows that the revival has already moved far beyond the planning stage. The challenge now is to turn growing traffic into regular, commercially viable freight movement.
Coal, steel, cement, minerals, agricultural produce and industrial equipment can then move through whichever combination makes the most economic sense: road where flexibility is required, rail where rail works best, and water wherever a river can carry the load more efficiently.
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