Union Ports and Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Monday, 6 July 2026, marked 12 years of inland waterway development under the Narendra Modi government, citing a surge in river transport usage and a 334 per cent increase in operational waterways open for river cruise tourism.

Context

Sonowal's post, tagged #12YearsOfJalmargSeVikas ('12 years of progress through water routes'), states that over 10 crore passengers are now moved annually on India's inland waterways — a figure the minister presents as evidence of water transport becoming 'a daily reality for millions.' The post credits the transformation to the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took office in May 2014.

The minister also highlighted a 334 per cent increase in the number of operational waterways available for river cruise tourism, positioning the sector as both an economic driver and a vehicle for cultural aspirations tied to India's river heritage.

Policy Backdrop

The inland waterway push traces its formal legislative origin to the National Waterways Act, 2016, which notified 111 inland waterways as national waterways, replacing a narrower 1982 Act and providing the statutory scaffolding for large-scale investment. Before that, the Jal Marg Vikas Project — approved in 2014-15 with World Bank support — targeted National Waterway-1 on the Ganga, developing cargo and passenger infrastructure along one of India's most storied river corridors.

The Sagarmala Programme, launched in 2015, wove inland waterway connectivity into a broader port-led growth strategy. More recently, these projects have been subsumed under the PM Gati Shakti framework, which treats river navigation as a low-cost, low-emission complement to road and rail within an integrated multimodal logistics network.

The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) serves as the statutory body responsible for developing, maintaining, and regulating declared national waterways, coordinating with state governments and private operators to expand the operational network.

Stakeholders and Impact

The beneficiaries of the expanded network span a wide geography: commuters and freight operators along the Ganga and Brahmaputra corridors, river cruise operators who have seen new tourism routes open up, and riparian states that gain connectivity options beyond congested road and rail links. For communities in Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal, inland water transport has historically been an affordable lifeline that fell into neglect over decades of under-investment.

The river cruise tourism segment, in particular, has drawn private-sector interest, with operators running voyages that combine heritage, pilgrimage, and leisure on routes that were commercially dormant until recently. The growth in this segment feeds into the government's broader push to diversify India's tourism product and generate employment along river banks.

What's Next

The ministry is expected to push for the rollout of additional national waterways beyond the current operational network. Analysts tracking the sector will watch the next Union Budget for fresh allocations toward waterway infrastructure and any new tourism-linked waterway corridors that could be announced. The integration of inland water transport with multimodal logistics hubs under PM Gati Shakti remains a work in progress, with several notified waterways yet to receive full navigational infrastructure. Sustained passenger growth will depend on last-mile connectivity at river terminals and the pace of dredging and maintenance work across the expanded network.