"Colonial maritime infrastructure in India served imperial rather than national interests." Examine with reference to shipping and port development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Once the Suez Canal opened in 1869, India became a halfway station on Britain's sea lanes to Asia and Australia. A 1926 proposal for a fast Britain–Australia liner service calling at Bombay and Colombo shows the pattern well. Britain designed, financed and built the service for imperial links, and India was only a port of call [1].

Shipping: designed around the Empire

• Routes centred on Britain: The 1926 scheme promised to bring Australia "a week nearer" and India "five days nearer", both measured to Britain. It did nothing for trade between India and Asia [1].
• Capital and shipbuilding in Britain: The £11 million was to be raised in Britain and the 22-knot liners built there. India got no shipyard orders and no skills [1].
• Subsidies for British lines: Mail subsidies and guaranteed emigrant traffic kept British carriers profitable [1]. Indian ventures had no such support. V.O. Chidambaram Pillai's Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company (1906) was soon overwhelmed by its British rival.

Ports: channels for exporting raw materials

• Bombay, Calcutta and Madras grew as outlets for raw cotton, jute and grain, and as entry points for British manufactured goods.
• Railways ran from the hinterland to the ports, which tied each port to export trade rather than linking Indian regions to each other.
• Port calls followed imperial needs on the sea lanes (mail, coaling, emigrant routes), not Indian coastal trade [1].

The other side

• Indians did gain some things: port jobs, faster mail and commerce, and modern harbours that independent India inherited [1].
• But India used the network without controlling its routes, timetables or ship orders. Any gains were by-products, not the purpose.

Legacy and correction today

• India still depends heavily on the sea: about 95% of its trade by volume and 68% by value moves by sea [3]. Yet Indian-owned ships carried only 4.11% of India's overseas trade in 2023-24 [2].
• The Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Scheme (₹24,736 crore, running till 2036) gives 15–25% assistance only for ships built in Indian yards [4]. This reverses the 1926 logic.

Colonial shipping and ports therefore served mainly imperial purposes, even though they left India useful physical assets. The task now is to turn that inheritance into national capacity. That means subsidies that shrink over time, as under the 2015 shipbuilding policy [2], and Indian cargo for Indian-built ships. Together these would advance Atmanirbhar Bharat and SDG-9 on resilient infrastructure.