Published Paper Details:

Inland waterways is a network in the form of rivers, canals, backwaters and creeks that can be used for transportation in place of or in addition to roads and rails. Through the ages, rivers have served as effective waterways, carrying people and goods over long distances. Even today, many countries depend heavily on inland water transport, especially for large and bulky cargo, as it is cheaper, more reliable and less polluting than transporting goods by road or rail. A vast country like India with a huge network of rivers and interconnecting canals could ordinarily be an ideal place for an efficient inland waterways system as it has multifarious economic advantages ?and is the cheapest mode of transportation. But this potential could not be tapped as developing inland waterways as means of passenger and cargo transportation, as a result, ?burden on the road and railways networks went on piling and they became over stressed. The objective of this paper is to find out the growth and constraints in Inland Water Transportation in India and also find out the major problems faced by institutions involved in this sector in India. This paper presents the detailed insights about the dynamics of Inland Water ways in India. The paper presents past few years growth of Inland Water ways. We also try to analyse the government policies regarding this inland waterways. As per study done in the some countries Inland Water ways has been known as most cost effective and fuel efficient mode of transportation which attracts the attention of scholars to make some efforts relatively to study of growth and challenges of Inland Water ways related to India since attempts has been made in this paper to highlight present status, growth, opportunities and problem of Inland Water ways in India.