Aviation, shipping and ports

Detail

A. Aviation: what air transport does

• Air transport is the fastest mode of transport.
• Passenger flights carry people.

• Cargo flights carry goods that are costly or spoil quickly, such as vaccines, chemicals and seafood. Speed matters more than cost for these goods.

• Why it matters in disasters: planes and helicopters can reach places that roads and rail cannot:

• high mountains;
• deserts;
• dense forests;

• long stretches of ocean.

• Constitutional position: Airways is Union List entry 29. Only Parliament can make laws on it.

• History: civil aviation in India began with Tata Airlines (1932).

B. Scale of Indian aviation (Class 7 data)

• India has the third-largest domestic air traffic in the world, after the USA and China.
• About 376 million passengers flew in 2024-25.
• India had 159 airports in 2025 (NCERT figure; check the latest AAI count before the exam).

C. Airports: new designs and new models

• Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru follows a "garden city" concept. It uses bamboo structures, plants and green spaces inside the terminal.
• Greenfield airports are built on empty land, not by expanding an old airport (NCERT Fig. 7.18). Two examples:
• Navi Mumbai;
• Noida (Jewar).

• Both reduce crowding at the old Mumbai and Delhi airports.

• Airport PPPs: in a public–private partnership (PPP), the government owns the asset. A private company builds, runs or upgrades it under a long lease and earns from user charges.

• Delhi and Mumbai airports were handed over in 2006.
• Six AAI airports were leased out in 2020-21: Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram. AAI is the Airports Authority of India.

D. UDAN: regional connectivity

• UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik), 2016, is the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS). It aims to make flying affordable for ordinary people in small towns.
• How it works:
• Capped fares: on UDAN routes, a fixed share of seats is sold at a ceiling price.
• Viability Gap Funding (VGF): the government pays airlines to cover the gap between their cost and the capped-fare income. This makes loss-making routes worth flying.

• The routes serve under-served airports (few flights) and unserved airports (no flights).

• Progress:

• At the 9th anniversary: 649 routes had started, connecting 93 airports. These included 15 heliports and 2 water aerodromes. The scheme had carried 1.56 crore passengers on 3.23 lakh flights [6].

• By 15 July 2026: 679 routes linked 95 airports, heliports and water aerodromes. The scheme had run more than 3.58 lakh flights and carried over 1.68 crore passengers [5].

• Modified UDAN (approved by the Cabinet in 2026): it runs for 10 years, FY 2026-27 to FY 2035-36, with an outlay of ₹28,840 crore in budget support [5].

E. National Civil Aviation Policy 2016 and open skies

• The National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) 2016 includes an open skies policy.
• Open skies means airlines of the partner countries can run unlimited flights and seats between the two countries. There are no fixed quotas.
• India offers it only on a reciprocal basis, which means the other country must give Indian airlines the same freedom. It covers two groups:
• SAARC countries;

• countries lying beyond 5,000 km from Delhi.

• Why this design:

• Nearby non-SAARC countries (for example, Gulf hubs) stay under quotas. This protects Indian airlines on short and medium routes.
• Distant markets are opened for more trade and tourism.

F. Shipping: coastline and why ships matter

• Coastline: about 11,098 km after the 2024 re-measurement (NCERT: "about 11,100 km"). It links India to West Asia, Africa and Europe.
• Ships are the cheapest mode for heavy, bulky goods over long distances, such as coal, cars and cement.
• One ship carries thousands of tonnes.
• Fuel cost per tonne-km is lowest of all modes.
• The trade-off: ships are slow. Aviation is the reverse: fast but costly.

G. Ports: major and non-major

• A seaport is a place where ships load and unload cargo.

	Major ports	Non-major ("minor") ports
Number	12 (Class 7). Vadhavan (Maharashtra) approved in 2024 as the 13th (verify)	~217 (Class 7)
Controlled by	Union government: Union List entry 27; Major Port Authorities Act 2021	State governments and maritime boards: Concurrent List entry 31

• Trap: "minor" is about who controls the port. It says nothing about size. Some non-major ports (for example, Mundra, a private port in Gujarat) handle more cargo than many major ports.
• Growth in cargo:
• NCERT: cargo handled rose 50% in the past decade (Class 7).
• Official data: major-port handling capacity rose from 871.52 million tonnes per annum (2014-15) to 1,629.86 MTPA (2023-24), a rise of 87.01% [10].

• Major ports handled 819.22 million tonnes of cargo in FY 2023-24, up 4.45% on the previous year [10].

• Vadhavan Major Port (near Dahanu, Maharashtra):

• Cost: ₹76,220 crore [10].
• Planned facilities: 9 container terminals, 4 multipurpose berths, 4 liquid-cargo berths, a Ro-Ro berth and a Coast Guard berth [10].
• Target capacity: 298 million metric tonnes per annum, including about 23.2 million TEUs of containers [10].
• It is an all-weather, deep-draft port. Deep draft means the water is deep enough for the biggest ships [8].

H. The 2025 maritime laws

Parliament replaced several colonial-era shipping laws in 2025.

• Indian Ports Act 2025:
• Passed in August 2025. It replaced the Indian Ports Act 1908 [2].
• Ports must follow global green norms and be ready for disasters [2].

• It simplifies and digitalises port procedures to improve Ease of Doing Business [2].

• Merchant Shipping Act 2025:

• It replaced the Merchant Shipping Act 1958, which had 561 sections. The new law has 16 parts and 325 clauses [3].

• It aligns Indian law with International Maritime Organisation (IMO) conventions [3].

• Coastal Shipping Act 2025:

• It replaces Part XIV of the Merchant Shipping Act 1958 [4].

• It follows global cabotage norms [4]. Cabotage is the set of rules on who may carry cargo between two ports of the same country.

• Other 2025 Acts:

• the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 2025 [4];
• a Bills of Lading law (NCERT scaffold; verify). A bill of lading is the receipt and title document for goods loaded on a ship.

I. TEU and containerisation

• Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) is the standard unit for container-ship capacity and port throughput (cargo handled in a period).
• 1 TEU = one 20-foot container ≈ 33 cubic metres.

• A 40-foot container = 2 TEU. It is sometimes called an FEU (forty-foot equivalent unit).

• Worked example:

• A port handles 1,000 twenty-foot boxes and 500 forty-foot boxes in a day.
• Throughput = 1,000 × 1 + 500 × 2 = 2,000 TEU.
• Volume ≈ 2,000 × 33 = 66,000 m³ of cargo space.

• Scale check: Vadhavan's planned 23.2 million TEU ≈ 23.2 million × 33 ≈ 766 million m³ a year [10].

• NCERT Fig. 7.21 ranks the world's top container ports by TEU (Shanghai, Singapore and others, 2024). NCERT says you need not memorise the numbers.

• Containerisation (Class 10, Globalisation and the Indian Economy):
• Goods are packed in standard-size containers.
• The containers move unopened between ships, trains, planes and trucks.
• This cut port handling cost and time sharply, because there is no repeated loading and unloading.
• Cheaper, faster transport helped make globalisation possible, with production spread across countries (cross-ref globalisation-mnc).

J. Transshipment hubs

• A transshipment hub is a port where cargo moves from one ship to another on the way to its final destination.
• Big "mother ships" drop containers at the hub.
• Smaller "feeder ships" take them onward, or the reverse.

• The hub port earns handling revenue.

• India's problem:

• Much of India's container transshipment happened at Colombo, Singapore and Port Klang.
• Official estimate: foreign ports earlier handled about 75% of India's transshipment [8].

• The cost to India:

  • lost revenue;
  • extra shipping time;
  • higher freight costs for Indian exporters.

• Vizhinjam International Seaport (Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala):

• It is India's first dedicated container transshipment port, and a deep-water port [8].
• Phase I began commercial operations on 3 December 2024, with a design capacity of 1 million TEU [9].
• The PM dedicated it to the nation on 2 May 2025. Project cost: ₹8,800 crore [7].

• It has handled over 1.43 million TEU, running at more than 130% of capacity [9].

• Galathea Bay International Container Transshipment Port (Great Nicobar):

• It is being built in mission mode [8].
• It is listed among the mega ports planned by 2047 [8].
• Advantage: it lies close to the East–West international shipping route near the Malacca Strait.

K. Maritime programmes

• Sagarmala (2015) is a programme of port-led development. It has four parts:
• port modernisation;
• port connectivity;
• port-led industrialisation;

• coastal community development.

• Sagarmala progress:

• As of 26 July 2024: 130 projects had been sanctioned with ₹3,714 crore in assistance [10].

• Under its coastal shipping part: 15 projects worth ₹849 crore were completed for coastal berths and Ro-Ro / Ro-Pax jetties [10]. Ro-Ro means roll-on/roll-off, where vehicles drive on and off the ship. Ro-Pax ships carry both vehicles and passengers.

• Maritime India Vision 2030 is the medium-term plan for ports, shipping and waterways.

• Amrit Kaal Maritime Vision 2047 is the long-term plan up to India's 100th year of independence, including mega port clusters [8].

L. Inland waterways and the colonial lesson

• The National Waterways Act 2016 declared 111 national waterways.

• NW-1 is the Ganga–Bhagirathi–Hooghly system, from Prayagraj to Haldia.

• Colonial background (Class 11, section 1.8):

• Railways began in 1853.

• Colonial roads, railways, ports and waterways were built mainly to serve British interests. The aims were to move troops, carry raw materials out to the ports and bring British goods into Indian markets.

• Orissa Coast Canal: a colonial waterway that was costly and failed. It could not compete with the railway line built along the same route.

• Lesson: waterways work only when they are planned together with rail and road, not in competition with them.
• This is the idea behind multimodal planning today.

Prelims Hooks

• Airways → Union List entry 29. Major ports → Union List entry 27. Non-major ports → Concurrent List entry 31.
• "Minor" port is about control (the state government or maritime board), not about size.
• Open skies (NCAP 2016):
• offered reciprocally;
• to SAARC countries and countries beyond 5,000 km from Delhi;

• not to all countries.

• 1 TEU = one 20-ft container ≈ 33 m³. A 40-ft box = 2 TEU.

• Indian Ports Act 2025 replaced the Indian Ports Act 1908 [2]. The Merchant Shipping Act 2025 replaced the 1958 Act [3].
• Vizhinjam (Kerala) is India's first dedicated container transshipment port. Phase I capacity: 1 million TEU [8][9].
• UDAN was launched in 2016. It uses Viability Gap Funding + capped fares. Modified UDAN runs from FY 2026-27 to FY 2035-36, costing ₹28,840 crore [5].
• NW-1 = Ganga–Bhagirathi–Hooghly, Prayagraj–Haldia. The 2016 Act declared 111 national waterways.
• Vadhavan is near Dahanu, Maharashtra. It costs ₹76,220 crore and is planned as India's 13th major port [10].

Mains Points

• The transshipment deficit is a sovereignty and cost issue:
• About 75% of India's transshipment happened abroad (Colombo, Singapore) [8].
• So India lost handling revenue and exporters paid extra time and freight.
• Vizhinjam, Galathea Bay and Vadhavan aim to capture this value at home.

• Galathea Bay also raises ecological and tribal-rights concerns in Great Nicobar. This is a GS-III development-versus-environment trade-off.

• The legal overhaul of 2025 as logistics reform:

• It replaced the 1908 and 1958 Acts with IMO-aligned, digital and green-norm laws [2][3][4].
• This supports Ease of Doing Business and helps bring down India's high logistics cost as a share of GDP.

• The Coastal Shipping Act's cabotage rules can shift cargo from congested roads to cheaper coastal routes.

• UDAN and open skies show a policy balance:

• UDAN uses subsidies (VGF) to spread flights to small towns, an equity goal [5].
• Open skies is limited by distance and reciprocity. It protects domestic airlines while opening long-haul markets.

• Airport PPPs bring private money and efficiency, but they raise questions about user charges and market concentration.

• Multimodal integration is the lesson from colonial times:

• The Orissa Coast Canal failed because it competed with rail.
• Today's waterways (NW-1), Sagarmala port-connectivity projects and PM Gati Shakti succeed only when road, rail, port and waterway are planned together.