The paradox is that, five centuries on, a nation with a coastline now officially reassessed at over 11,000 km, 12 major ports, and more than 200 non-major ports still hands its ocean to others. 

Nearly three-quarters of the containers India sends abroad by transhipment are sorted not at an Indian port but at a foreign one (chiefly Colombo, with Singapore and Port Klang taking most of the rest); and Indian-flagged ships carry barely 5% of the country’s own foreign trade. The nation that named the Indian Ocean pays rent to use it. That rent is a foreign tax — and it is entirely self-imposed.

Republic’s Twelve Gates

The most consequential fact about Indian port governance is also the least understood: the country runs two separate port systems, divided by the Constitution itself. “Major ports” are a Union subject, owned and regulated by New Delhi; “ports other than major” belong to the states and their maritime boards. 

The distinction has nothing to do with size and everything to do with jurisdiction. Twelve major ports — from Deendayal (Kandla) and Jawaharlal Nehru to Visakhapatnam and Paradip — sit under the Centre; more than 200 non-major ports answer to the states.

The Union system has had a good decade. The 12 major ports handled a record 915 million tonnes of cargo in 2025-26, growing 7%; average ship turnaround at the major ports has nearly halved, from 93.6 hours in 2013-14 to about 48 hours. 

In 2021, Parliament replaced the sprawling 1963 port-trust statute with the Major Port Authorities Act, freeing ports to set their own tariffs; the colonial-era Indian Ports Act of 1908 gave way to a new one in 2025. 

The major ports have quietly recast themselves as “landlords” — keeping the land and water, leasing the berths to private terminal operators who bring the cranes, the capital and the productivity. 

Private Tide, and Gujarat’s Quiet Dominion

Yet while the state’s gaze stayed fixed on its 12 gates, the most dramatic growth happened in the non-major system. 

Mundra, on the Gujarat coast — legally a minor port, run by a private operator — overtook Jawaharlal Nehru Port to become the country’s busiest container harbour, and in 2024-25 became the first Indian port of any category to cross 200 million tonnes in a single year. A port the Constitution calls “minor” now outweighs every port the Union calls “major.” 

The non-major system as a whole moved about 753 million tonnes in 2025-26 — roughly 45% of the national total, a remarkable ascent from near-insignificance at independence, though its growth of barely 1.5% last year nudged the balance marginally back toward the centre.

Behind Mundra stands a more startling fact: a single state now dominates the maritime trade of the whole republic. Gujarat’s non-major ports alone handled about 485 million tonnes in 2025-26 — some 29% of everything that crossed India’s ports, and 64% of all non-major cargo. Add the central major port at Deendayal, and roughly two of every five tonnes that cross the Indian coast pass through the harbours of just one state. 

The reason for the private tide is not mysterious: the non-major ports were born commercial, able to dredge, mechanise and expand at the speed of a balance sheet rather than a file. In the business of ports, agility beats seniority.

Sagarmala, And The Long Pursuit Of Water

The Union’s answer to this drift was Sagarmala, launched in 2015 as the flagship of “port-led development”: some 839 projects worth about ₹5.79 lakh crore, of which 272 worth ₹1.41 lakh crore had been completed by early 2025, with a second phase now targeting a further ₹12 lakh crore. 

Sagarmala reframed the port not as an endpoint but as the engine of a coastal economy — the philosophy from which the new mega-ports would eventually spring. 

The same instinct now drives two long-neglected modes. 

On the rivers, cargo on the National Waterways has climbed from just 18.1 million tonnes in 2014-15 to a record 145.5 million tonnes in 2024-25 — a compound growth of nearly 21% a year. 

Parliament passed the Coastal Shipping Act, 2025, replacing a chapter of the 1958 Merchant Shipping Act with a simpler licensing regime and a mandated National Coastal and Inland Shipping Strategic Plan. Both are attempts to move freight off the road — where two-thirds of Indian goods still travel, the costliest and dirtiest way — and onto water. 

The intent is sound; the delivery is unproven.

Foreign Tax, Part One: Colombo’s Cut

Here is the specific wound. 

Because, until very recently, not a single Indian port had the natural depth to receive the largest mainline ships, Indian containers bound for distant markets had to be first carried out in smaller feeder ships to a deep-water hub abroad, transferred to a mother vessel there, and only then sent onward. 

Nearly three-quarters of India’s transhipment cargo is handled outside the country; Colombo alone takes about 45%, with Singapore and Port Klang taking most of the rest. Roughly 5 million Indian containers a year are relayed through foreign harbours.

The detour is not free. Each transhipped box pays a handling charge of US$ 45-70 at the foreign hub, and the aggregate outflow has been put at around US$ 200-220 million a year in foreign exchange. The dependence is so deep it has become mutual: more than 70% of Colombo’s transhipment business is Indian cargo. 

Every transhipment adds days, and an extra point of failure, to the journey of an Indian export, exposing it to another country’s congestion, labour disputes, and political weather. 

Foreign Tax, Part Two: Others’ Ships

The second half of the tax is heavier still. Indian-flagged ships today carry only about 5-7% of the country’s own export-import trade — down from a commanding 40.7% in 1987-88 — so that more than 90% of India’s ocean-borne commerce now sails on foreign bottoms. 

The cause is not sentiment but cost: higher capital charges, import duties, and crew-wage structures make an Indian-flagged ship materially dearer to run than a foreign rival, and so the cargo — and the freight it earns — sails away under someone else’s flag.

The consequence is a bill the government itself now totals. 

India pays roughly US$ 75 billion a year in sea freight to foreign shipping lines — to carry cargo as critical as its crude, coal, gas and fertiliser — a foreign-exchange outflow close to the country’s entire defence budget. 

New Delhi has begun, belatedly, to answer. 

The National Shipping Board has unveiled a five-pillar roadmap to add 100 merchant vessels to the Indian fleet within five years; the government has moved to stand up a national carrier, the Bharat Container Shipping Line; and the ₹69,725 crore maritime package cleared in September 2025 is meant to bankroll the shipyards and the fleet together. 

No comparison sobers the planner faster than China. Shanghai alone handled more than 55 million containers in 2025.

Deep-Water Gambit

The correction has begun in concrete. Vizhinjam, off Kerala, was dedicated in May 2025 as India’s first dedicated deep-water transhipment port. Two greater stones follow. At Vadhavan, off the Palghar coast, the government is building a ₹76,220 crore mega-port on a rare natural depth of about 20 m, designed to handle some 23 million containers a year and rank among the 10 largest ports on earth. Some 2,500 km to the south-east, at Galathea Bay on Great Nicobar — barely 40 nautical miles from the Malacca shipping lane — a second transhipment port is planned as the eastern anchor of the same ambition.

Vadhavan advances over the objection of more than 20,000 fisherfolk and a public hearing that recorded nearly 52,000 objections, in a place declared ecologically fragile since 1991. Great Nicobar’s larger project would divert forest on a 90% forested island in the highest seismic zone on the Indian map, threaten a globally important leatherback-turtle nesting bay, and press upon the Shompen tribe of a couple of hundred people. 

Ten Structural Reforms

The deep water is necessary; it is far from sufficient. Ten reforms would do most of the work.

Firstly, finish the deep-water hubs — and treat them as strategy, not spreadsheets. 

Rebuild the Indian-flag fleet. The ₹25,000 crore Maritime Development Fund cleared in September 2025 must be paired with a genuine right of first refusal for Indian bottoms and an end to tax anomalies.

Then, revive shipbuilding as a sovereign capability. The Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Scheme (₹24,736 crore, extended to 2036) and the new Shipbuilding Development Scheme must build clusters.

Fourthly, synchronise the hinterland with the quay. Dedicated freight corridors, port-rail connectivity, and last-mile expressways must be completed in step with the harbours.

Now comes mainstream coastal shipping. The Coastal Shipping Act, 2025 must be made real to hit the 230-million-tonne target for 2030 and take pressure off rail and road alike.

Beyond that, scale inland waterways beyond the headline. Assured depth, multi-modal terminals and the Jalvahak cargo-shift scheme must convert declared waterways into working ones.

Most importantly, heal the constitutional fault line in port governance. The major/non-major divide fragments planning and investment. A national tariff and safety regulator, empowered state maritime boards, and a level playing field would let both systems compete without working at cross-purposes.

Fix the economics that keep cargo at Colombo. Tax and GST parity for Indian transhipment hubs, competitive bunkering, and cargo-aggregation incentives will actually persuade shipping alliances to re-route.

Make ports green, digital, and efficient.

Finally, build with social licence, not around it. 

(The writer is a former civil servant. Views are personal.)