Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Century-old Sethu project set to take off

By S. Annamalai

MADURAI MAY 19. The MoU signed between the Tuticorin Port Trust and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) last week for undertaking a feasibility survey of the 142-year-old Sethusamudram project has rekindled hopes of a dream coming true. Expectations ran high when the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, made an announcement in Rameswaram a few years ago that the project would kick off in a few months' time. Later, the Government announced that another feasibility study would be undertaken before formally taking up work on forming the canal. This came as a disappointment for the people of southern districts as another study would mean further delay. Now that the MoU has been signed, they are hopeful that the project would at last come through.

The feasibility survey, to be done by NEERI, will be the seventh of its kind ever since Commander A. D. Taylor of the Indian Marine drafted a proposal for a ship canal across the `Thoni Thurai Peninsula' in 1860. It was modified several times in the course of a century, with Sir Robert Brislow, Harbour Engineer, Government of India, drawing up a feasibility report in 1921. The Government of free-India formed a five-member expert committee, with A. Ramaswami Mudaliar as chairman, in 1955. This committee concluded in 1956 that the Sethusamudram canal project was technically feasible and financially viable. It stated that ``the Sethusamudram ship canal project and the Tuticorin harbour project are closely inter-related and they should be executed as part of one and the same project and should be completed during the Second Five Year Plan.''

A technical committee, headed by Dr. Nagendra Singh, which had C. V. Venkateswaran, retired Development Advisor, Ports, as Chief Engineer, submitted another feasibility report in 1968. The Nagendra Singh Committee insisted that the project be taken up in the Fourth Five Year Plan and completed in five years by which time the Tuticorin port would also be ready. However, the Sethusamudram canal project was put in cold storage in 1980 as it was ``technically viable but economically costly.'' In the same year, James Issac Koilpillai, former Chief Engineer and Adminstrator, Tuticorin Harbour, prepared a report reiterating the technical feasibility and economic viablity of the project, hoping that it would be included at least in the Sixth Plan.

Another committee, constituted with H. R. Lakshmi Narayanan, Development Advisor, as chairman in 1981, recommended in 1983 that the Sethusamudram canal would be economical and would provide sufficient returns.

Later, the Pallavan Transport Consultancy Services, appointed by the Tamil Nadu Government in 1994 to update the scheme, reappraised the cost-benefit ratio and the economic rate of return in 1996.

The Estimates Committee of the seventh Lok Sabha, in its report sent to the Ministry of Shipping and Transport, has said that ``it (Sethusamudram canal) is a dredging project and can be taken up by the Dredging Corporation of India. It is felt that the project is economically viable and technically feasible and should be undertaken as soon as possible as a national project in the national interest.''

All the feasibility studies have clearly spelt out the advantages accruing out of the project for the country and the southern region, in particular. Besides strategic advantages, the distance travelled by ships between the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal and between ports will be minimised, resulting in saving of several crores of foreign exchange.

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