A strategic focus on Inland Waterways and Ports, helps Connect Landlocked Czechia and Maritime India

Ports are not merely places where ships dock; they are the hinge on which modern trade turns. More than eighty percent of world merchandise by volume moves by sea, and container terminals alone account for a disproportionate share of value and logistics complexity. For landlocked states, the port at the coast and the access corridors that lead to it are a national lifeline: any friction in quay, draft, road, rail, or customs procedure is translated directly into higher import costs, lower export competitiveness, and a slower economy. This is why international agencies track port performance, and why port strategy matters as much to hinterlands as it does to coastal states.

Czechia: Inland Ports and the Long View

On a map, the Czech Republic is clearly inland. Its modern trade therefore rests on two linked ideas: good inland waterway and rail connections to seaports, and durable legal access where those connections meet the sea. The small, well-documented diplomatic anomaly called Moldauhafen—a leased lot in the port of Hamburg obtained after the First World War and retained by successive Czech states—remains a striking illustration of the practical measures a landlocked country takes to secure maritime access.

Moldauhafen and the adjacent leased parcels give Czech traders a duty-free enclave on the Elbe and a legal bridge to the open ocean via the Vltava and Elbe waterways; the lease arrangements that created this privilege were only finalised in the interwar years and remain the clearest symbol of how Czech international trade depends on a friendly and functioning port at the coast.

Inside the country, river ports such as Ústí nad Labem and Praha-Radotín (often mentioned in discussions of inland logistics) perform the routine, unspectacular labour of handling bulk cargo, containers transferred onto trains, and river barges collecting goods that will travel the Elbe toward Hamburg. Detailed cargo statistics, terminal capacities, and recent investment programmes for these Czech inland harbours are available in technical reports, including specific throughput figures and details on crane or quay upgrades.

Canal Ideas and Connectivity

For several decades, policy planners in Central Europe have debated more ambitious waterway projects—canals and new navigable links that would shorten transit times between the North Sea and the Danube, or between the Elbe basin and the industrial centres farther east. Such projects are, by design, strategic: their value is not only measured in tonnes moved, but in the flexibility they give a landlocked economy when global freight becomes congested or costly.

There have been announcements describing the approval of a first stage of a canal initiative; specific figures are not quoted here. It is well established in analysis that investments which reduce friction between inland terminals and seaports produce large returns for landlocked economies.

India: The Same Logic in a very different geography

If Czechia’s story is one of striving to reach the sea, India’s is one of harnessing it. With a coastline measured in thousands of kilometres and a dense network of major and minor terminals, India conducts the great bulk of its external trade through maritime routes. Official estimates state: roughly ninety-five percent of India’s trade by volume and about seventy percent by value is moved by sea. The country counts twelve major ports and more than two hundred notified minor and intermediate ports. These seaports are a national asset and the backbone of India’s logistics chain.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), the big container gateway near Mumbai, and Paradip on the east coast are examples of how scale and specialisation have emerged within India: Paradip’s improved operations pushed it to handle one of the country’s largest bulk volumes in recent years, while JNPT accounts for a very large share of container traffic.

India’s strategy is therefore twofold. At the coast it is expanding capacity, deepening drafts, and adding mechanised berths under flagship programmes; inland, it is deliberately shifting bulk flows to rivers and coastal shipping to reduce pressure on roads and rails. These twin thrusts—port modernisation plus modal shift to coastal and inland waterways—underscore that port performance and hinterland connectivity are inseparable.

Inland Waterways: A National Programme

India’s inland waterways story has accelerated in the last decade. Official reports indicate historic growth in cargo moved on domestic waterways: cargo volumes have risen steeply from low base years to several tens of millions of tonnes, with reported figures that reflect a sustained upward trend.

The government has introduced schemes to incentivise cargo on rivers; for example, a cargo promotion scheme offers subsidies and scheduled services to make river transport commercially attractive to shippers. The national goal is to increase the share of inland water transport in the freight mix and to operationalise dozens of waterways in the next few years, with National Waterway One—the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly system—singled out as the spine for coastal and inland bulk movement in the populous Gangetic plain.

These are pragmatic moves: barges and river vessels use less fuel per tonne-kilometre than road trucks and can relieve chronic bottlenecks in hinterland movement.

Comparing Two Strategies

The contrast is vivid. Czechia, constrained by geography, secures maritime access by legal and infrastructural means: leased port lots, river terminals, and the careful upgrading of inland nodes that plug into a northern seaport. India, by contrast, deploys the sea itself as the primary carrier and uses inland waterways where they make sense to reduce cost and emissions.

Yet the economic logic is common. Efficient quays, predictable draft, good intermodal links, and frictionless clearance are the factors that determine whether a port or a river corridor is an enabler or a choke point. If a port is inefficient, supply chains slow and costs rise; if hinterland links are weak, the benefit of a deepwater terminal is lost to congestion and delay. This is true both for a small inland port on the Elbe and for a megahub on India’s western coast.

India-Czech Cooperation and the Trade Dimension

Practical cooperation between India and Czechia is already visible in the numbers and public statements. Bilateral trade has grown from modest early post-Cold War levels into a multibillion-dollar relationship; recent bilateral trade is in the region of four billion US dollars a year, a clear sign that both sides value practical connectivity and the complementary strengths of their industrial bases.

Technology, defence supplies, and research ties now sit alongside trade in goods that inevitably move through the ports and terminals we have discussed. For a landlocked exporter, efficient transit through places like Hamburg matters not as an abstract right but as a line item on the balance sheet.

What to Carry Forward

Two modest conclusions follow. First, geography constrains, but policy and investment compensate: a landlocked country can secure maritime reach through legal rights and resilient inland terminals; a maritime country can reduce surface congestion by shifting tonnage to coasts and rivers.

Second, the practical levers are the same everywhere: deeper, cleaner drafts; faster quay operations; reliable rail and road movements; and procedures that minimise delay. For historians and policymakers alike, the small receipts of port fees and the layout of a leased lot in a foreign harbour are more than trivia. They are evidence of how nations secure access to the global market, and how the movement of goods quietly shapes politics and daily life.
 

Sources:

https://tinyurl.com/5dmst87h
https://tinyurl.com/ynuedrnw
https://tinyurl.com/mw8xhkr2
https://tinyurl.com/473d3fdv
https://tinyurl.com/5dmst87h
https://tinyurl.com/4dy9dhme
https://tinyurl.com/3ds9hn28
https://tinyurl.com/mrxuvwmz