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Knowledge centre for MBA students. |
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Transport Sector in Senthuran A well developed transport system will support
an economy in several ways: supports the industry by increasing the
efficiency of production, rises the demand through movement of products, facilitates
the location of an industry, helps the development of urbanization, movement
of man power, better standard of living, better education, etc. Contribution
of transport to Indian economy is very significant. Indian transport sector comprises of all forms
of transports: railways, roadways, water and air transport. Indian Railways, largest Indian public sector
undertaking and largest railway system in Asia run 12000 trains a day, with
over 63000 route kms of track. Indian Railways has around 7000 railway
stations. The total distance covered by the 12000 trains every day equals
three and half times the distance to moon. It takes a gigantic task of
carrying nearly 11 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo per
day. Indian Railways function as a major employment generator in India. Of
the 27 million people employed in the organised sector, Indian Railways
accounts for 6 per cent directly and an additional 2.5 per cent indirectly.
Totally about 1.6 million people are employed by Indian Railways. The importance of road transport to Indian
economy cannot be neglected. Road transport is vital for the movement of
agricultural products and also for industrial development. Thus, roads
quicken the rate of growth. Further, road transport functions as a supportive
system to railways. Railways can reach only certain locations, and the rest
of the link is taken care by road transport. At the time of independence
India had only 388000 kms of roads. Today, India has 2178008 km of road
length, thanks to Planning efforts. The cheapest mode of transport is water
transport, since water-ways provide ready made routes and thus no
infrastructure costs involved in developing journey routes, compared to
railway or road transport. India has both inland water and marine or shipping
transport facilities. India possesses about 14150 kms. of navigable inland
water-ways. Notable Indian water-ways are : Ganga, Brahmaputra, Godavari,
Krishna, Delta Canals, Mandovi, Zuari, Buckingham Canal and back-waters and
the west coast canals of Kerala. Considering the geographical sea-base
benefits of India, there is much scope to improve this mode of transport in
the country, especially the coastline transport. The costliest mode of transport is by air,
since airline industry is highly capital-intensive. In India, most passengers
are infrequent air travelers due to the cost aspect of this mode of
transport. They are broadly classified into business and leisure travelers.
Air transport was nationalised in India in the year 1953. Since then, for a
long time, air transport was monopolized by the government players - Air
India operates international flights and Indian Airlines operates domestic
flights. However, in the recent past India has allowed private players also
to participate in the domestic aviation segment, with adequate restrictions
imposed upon them. One of the major hurdles in the aviation industry is the
lack of adequate airport infrastructure. Inspite of the low airport
infrastructure, there are over 25 international airlines operating from
India. International services to India are guided by bilateral air services
agreement with around 80 countries. Aviation industry in India is fragmented with
relatively less interdependence with other similar agencies within the country
and outside. Thus they face global competition from mega airline operators.
About 50 to 60 per cent of Indias air space is controlled by defence and the
balance by civil. The lack of co-ordination and in the grab of security,
civil aircraft have at times follow very circuitous routes, to avoid defence
installations, thus causing immense loss of time and fuel, which can be to
the tune of several hundred crores in a year. |
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