India’s Panama Canal

Indian Prime Minister That’s an AP photo with the caption: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and guests at the start of construction of the canal: “I’m more than happy.”

Since a picture speaks a thousand words, I will not have to comment.

The picture appears in a Spiegel article on the Setusamudram Canal.

The canal will be 167.5 kilometers (104 miles) long and 300 meters (984 miles) wide. Work is moving along quickly, and the estimated €450 million project should be done by 2008. The sailing time of more than 30 hours will be shortened through the canal, container ships will save a considerable amount of diesel fuel and a few ports will flourish with the increased shipping traffic.

Here is a graphic which illustrates the story:
Setusamudram Canal

Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

6 thoughts on “India’s Panama Canal”

  2. I personally, don’t like this idea. Their are so many bottlenecks in our transport network that can be fixed before we do something of this scale. Also, this will hurt Sri Lanka. I believe that with countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and even Pakistan the only way for them to take an active role in our development would be if they had a personal interest in it. We should pursue lopsided trade agreements with these countries. It will initially hurt the indian economy, but in the long term will make us more competitive, and more importantly restructure these neighboring economies so they become dependent on India, and India’s growth.

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  3. Atanu,
    I think this would be an environmental disaster to the gulf of Mannar.By the way , what kind of traffic do they expect ?If one looks at the Asian map, ships from ports like Singapore don’t have to pass through this canal to go west

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  5. As usual the politics of the canal project dominates discourse; the crux of the issue is the project’s commercial viability. From my recent post on dredging the Sethusamudram canal business:

    The Indian government has just taken a gamble. If the project can achieve the objectives that the government has set for it, it may even mitigate the damage it is causes the environment. And for the time being at least, New Delhi can count on high oil prices to keep it from looking silly. [The Acorn]

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