Port and Development: A Study of Calcutta Port in India (An Old and Rare Book)

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A port is essentially an economic infrastructure. What is the nature of its relationship with economic and social development? What are the issues that usually confront port development? The book discusses the relationship of port infrastructure with development and the issues concerning port development, Calcutta Port being a case study. It provides an in-depth account of Calcutta Port in relation to economic development of its hinterland region and some policy and other issues. While the phenomenon of the declining share of Calcutta-Haldia Port in the total volume of cargo handled by major ports of India is attributed by trade circles to physical constraints like deficiency in drafts and other supply constraints like low productivity, labour unrest and detention of ships, this work shows that the root of the problem lies in economic factors like low and undiversified economic growth of the hinterland of the port (including factors such as the absence of a petrochemical complex) and in some transport policy issues.

This book which is a product of an extensive research on Calcutta Port for over a decade and a half is a revised and updated version of the author's Ph.

D. dissertation on Economics of Haldia Port.

Sachinandan Sau is Reader in Economics at the Department of Economics with Rural Development, Vidyasagar University. He got his Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy and Doctorate of Philosophy (Arts) degrees in Economics from University of Calcutta. While serving a college as lecturer in Economics he was granted four years' teacher fellowship by University of Calcutta under the Faculty Improvement Programme of the University Grants Commission, during which he completed his M.Phil. And Ph.D. works. He was a Visiting Fellow at and is associated with the Centre for Urban Economic Studies, Department of Economics, University of Calcutta as Research Associate (honorary) and is a guest lecturer in Urban Sociology at Department of Sociology, University of Calcutta. He is a member of the Expert Committee on Encyclopaedia Asiatic (VaL VII The Economy). He is the founder Managing Editor of Economic Development Review which was later renamed as Vidyasagar University Journal of Economics. He has presented his papers at large number of national and international Seminars and Conferences, and has got over 15 research articles published in edited volumes and learned professional Journals including Economic and Political Weekly.

Port, as an economic infrastructure, attracts a lot of attention today. World Development Report 1994 focuses on importance of infrastructure including port infrastructure and discusses various issues. But port literature remains under- developed though academics, mainly from disciplines like history and geography, and the professional experts have participated in its development. There is hardly any serious analytical empirical work concerning port in relation to different stages and phases of regional and national economic development and the related issues. The present work is an attempt to fill in some of the gaps in the existing literature.

A Ph.D. Thesis entitled Economics of Haldia Port Complex was written by the author and submitted to the University of Calcutta in 1982. The work needed to be updated. It was also felt necessary to broaden the theme to capture the dynamic role of port and to discuss in detail the inter- relationship between port and development and the issues related thereto. The present work has developed out of these ideas, where Calcutta Port in India has become the case study.

I want to express my feelings of immense debt, so good have they been to me, to Prof. Biplab Dasgupta and Prof. P. N. Roy who inspired me all the time and to Prof. Div. Kumar Bose who took great interest in this work and offered his illuminating suggestions. I also thank Prof. P. S. Das and Prof. S. K. Datta for going through the preliminary draft and making useful suggestions.

I should like to express my gratitude to Calcutta Port Trust, Indian Institute of Port Management and Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, Calcutta. These organisations have made my study and collection of data prompt and productive.

Transport has always been crucial to the evolution of mankind. Kipling, the novelist, observed, "Transport is civilisation". Indeed, in the early days of civilisation water transport, and hence ports and harbours, played a crucially important role in both inland and overseas trade. In the modern age importance of ports has, no doubt, declined relatively. Roads, railways and airways have registered tremendous growth. Even in this age ports handle the bulk of world trade, particularly in bulk cargo, and in many a country they have got an important role to play in inland trade.

Concept of Port

A port is essentially an economic concept², an economic 2 infrastructure which serves to handle coastal and overseas traffic and thus is a sine qua non for economic development. Ports are a sub-system of the total transport networks and a meeting place of other modes of transport³. Thus a port is defined as a place where the mode of transportation changes from land to water-borne transport system.

In fact, the word 'Port' (commonly used in English and French) is derived from the Latin word 'portus' which means 'a gateway'. A port is thus a gateway for entrance from surface water to the land and also a place of rest for sea-going vessels during this transitional stage. It is also described as a complex system involving harbour docks, approach channels, waterways and roadsteads, serving as a transition stage between water and land transport. Ports are also described as the major crossroad of traffic in ideas, peoples and goods.