Excerpt from

21 August 2002

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Kosi canal navigation
Prospects of inland water transportation
A B Thapa
Apart from being a very cheap mode of transportation, the inland water transportation is the safest and the most reliable form of transportation with very little risks of pilferage, loss and damage of goods during the carriage. Such type of transportation is very convenient to move the goods and equipments that are too big and heavy.
There are some obvious advantages of inland water transportation like it opens markets for otherwise non-marketable commodities and stimulates industrial production. It also enables to attract production facilities to water-oriented locations in the interior of the country and thereby aiding their dispersal from the coastal congested areas.
Due to lack of access to sea Nepal has always been at a disadvantaged position. A free and unhindered access to the sea to facilitate trade and transit is a cherished dream of our country and a major objective of our international relation is to fulfil this dream.
It does not need to be explained that the inland waterway linking our country with the seaport would have been ideally suited to relieve us of great difficulties in handling goods particularly bulk cargos in transit.
Nepal has been expressing its intention to use the main rivers of Nepal to establish waterway linkage with the seaport. There were several impediments to the Nepal's plan to develop inland waterway. The most important being the slow progress in recovery of the Ganges navigation itself, which suffered a terrible setback immediately after the partition of India in 1947.
At present the Ganges navigation is rapidly gaining its momentum. Now we are holding discussions with India on major storage projects. There could hardly be more opportune time to raise the issue of inland waterways through India to the seaport for our use. We should press ahead with our plans to establish waterway linkage between Nepal and the seaport.
An example of the most recent navigation canal is the Main-Danube Canal in Germany, which was completed in 1990. This canal is 171 km long. The canal winds through some of the most challenging, scenic, and environmentally sensitive landscape in Germany. The Altmuhl Valley traversed by the canal is one of the most beautiful and environmentally fragile in Bavaria. It is this factor that lies behind a long and often passionate opposition to this project. However, Germany did not bow before the environmentalists opposing the canal scheme who regarded that it would be the end of the Altmuhl valley. The economic attraction of the waterway for Germany was too great.
Though the people in our country were very slow to realize the significance, the 1997 Kosi study agreement greatly helped to fill up the wide gap, that existed in the perceptions of Nepal and India on Kosi development. India agreed to bear the entire cost to carry out a detailed feasibility study of the Sunkosi dam project to provide irrigation and power benefits almost entirely to Nepal.
In the field of inland waterway both the countries could go even one step further on the request of the Nepali side. India agreed to bear the entire cost of feasibility study of a navigation canal linking Nepal with the Ganges. It is explained below how an economically viable navigation canal presented in the concept paper of WECS would be preferable to natural course of the Kosi for navigation.
The Kosi Waterway is the nearest to the Calcutta Seaport and it is well linked with the transportation system within Nepal. So there is advantage in giving priority to develop this waterway.
Unfortunately the topography of the terrain in India traversed by the Kosi river is quite steep. There is an elevation drop of about 40 m between Nepal-India border and the Ganges river in a north south stretch of just about 120 km. This makes the task of developing Kosi River channel suitable for navigation by large vessels very difficult.
The high topographical gradient makes the channel depth small due to high flow velocities. All these difficulties can be dealt with if we choose to have a navigation canal instead of following the natural course of the Kosi River.
The navigation canal would follow the shortest route to the Ganges river. The length of the Kosi navigation canal from the border near Birpur to the Ganges is expected to be only about 120 km, whereas the length of the river route to cover the same stretch would have been about 270 km. The entry point of the Kosi navigation canal into the Ganges river is near the tail end of the Ganges river where the depth and widths of the river channel are expected to be adequate for relatively big river vessels. The Kosi navigation canal to be planned to take vessels plying in the lower reach of the Ganges would be far bigger in size than any such canals along the Gandak or Karnali rivers falling into the Upper Reach Ganges.
The operation cost of the river transportation is dependant on the allowable size of the vessels plying on the waterway. So our efforts must be on planning Kosi canal waterway to be suitable for river crafts as big as possible in size. Development of deep waterway after the introduction of the Kosi navigation canal could help open up exiting possibilities that are beyond our imagination now. The 165-km long Kosi canal out of which about 120 km would be in India should be planned for operation on a par with the Farakka barrage and canal.
A recent ESCAP study has recommended the introduction of Cargo River Coasters (CRCs) along the Ganges corridor for the transportation of food grains from Patna to the southern coastal areas. It implies that after the development of Kosi canal navigation, Nepal could also look forward to extending navigation services far beyond Calcutta and Haldia ports to destinations like Dhaka, Mumbai etc.
Dr Thapa was with Water Energy Commission