I believe that opponents of Sethusamudram should try to offer Tamil Nadu a better alternative project, rather than this canal. Tamil Nadu should instead be offered a project to extensively develop its road network, for land transportation. Rail network should be augmented too.
Road-based trucking is much faster than slow shipping, and can easily deliver directly to end-user sites. This is much more suitable for Tamil Nadu's booming auto parts industry, with Just-in-Time delivery requirements.
Sethusamudram was pitched as offering faster shipping from coast-to-coast, like Gujarat to Kolkata, but with better land transport networks such shipping would not be necessary. Furthermore, such shipping routes would have to hug the Indian coastline, thus increasing coastal pollution. This would be ecologically damaging, hurting not just the tourism industry but also the fishing industry.
Furthermore, choosing shipping transport over land transport would bypass development of interior areas, allowing prosperous coastal cities, with backward and impoverished interior areas. Do we want to be like Israel or Australia?
Common man wants bijli-sadak-pani, and development of land transport industry would help that. Besides truck transport favours small businesses with lower startup costs, and creates economic ripple effects with eateries and motels and pump stations to all service the drivers. This produces much better trickledown effects for the masses. Shipping companies are big compani
RE:Land Transport vs Sea Route
by san man on Sep 26, 2007 07:11 AM Permalink
(cont'd) Shipping companies are big companies which would not produce trickledown of wealth, and would instead bypass the common man, depriving him of economic opportunity. The only beneficiaries would be DMK cutting their deals with the big shipping companies, and grabbing their cut of the money. Any resultant failure to bring development to the masses would then be blamed as usual on the evil Brahmin/Shylock "conspiracy", and milked for more votes.
