Government readies plan for Rs. 25,000 crore national waterway grid.

The Narendra Modi government has drawn up an ambitious Rs. 25,000-crore plan to create a national waterway grid linking Ganga, Brahmputra, Mahanadi and Godavari rivers. "The plan is ready....We will soon move a formal proposal," a senior shipping ministry official said, adding that the underlying objective is to enable water from big perennial Himalayan rivers to flow into peninsular ones generally have strong seasonal flows. Nitin Gadkari, the new minister for roads and shipping in the BJP government, has given an in-principle clearance to the eight-year project, which aims to ensure high water levels in rivers through the year, improving their role in crop irrigation and making them navigable. The waterway grid will also help control floods. The proposed grid will have road linkages to ports to facilitate faster movement of cargo. According to the ministry's estimates, transportation of goods on this network could lead to savings of about Rs. 300 per tonne. "It will create a network of passageways in a large part of the country in rivers that are navigable," the official added. ET