Communication & transportation has become a real challenge for policy makers simplimenters of our country. With increase in population the task is becoming still daunting. To have a probable solution to this, former president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam has recently suggested the railway ministry to consider developing in land waterways for freight transportation & promoting tourism as well. The common man’s ex-president has a pivotal point in this solution which must be understood properly before implementation.
The insight of waterways transportation is based on the aspect that it can be linked to the interlinking of rivers, so that large part of the country can have transportation through waterways, which is presently mere one percent of the transportation length. Given the situation of declining proportation of passengers & freight traffic of railways in comparison to the road traffic, railways should transform into an inland transportation system providing door-to-door service using multi-mode transportation from residence to a fast metro & then to a long distance train.
The railway vision-2030 must aim at increasing the total route length from the present 63,000 kms to considerable high length with the conversion of metre-gauge lines into broad-gauge lines through Build, Operate, Own & Transfer (BOOT) system, combining with inland waterways transportation system. Also there is an urgent need to increase railway network to North-Eastern states, which can very well be combined with inland waterways transportation, which in turn enable faster development in NE states. (India)
Apart from that there is need for developing the quality of human resource and creative leaders who can transform the conventionality to modernity. In addition to this when multiple transportation system would work, the safety system must be at par with this for which space technology for real time tracking, surveillance & monitoring with the help of high resolution remote sensing satellites may be tried. The technological revolution must be exploited to its maximum for achieving the best system to the solace, convenience & economy of the people, so that the problem can be solved & also the state can earn its fare share out of it, which can be used in many developmental areas. (A.T)
