International Trade
Direction of trade and ports as gateways
Explain the effect of partition on India's ports.
India trades with most countries and trading blocs. Asia and ASEAN countries supply most of its imports.
Most trade goes by sea and air; only a little goes by land, to neighbours like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Ports are the gateways of international trade. The British used India's ports as 'suction points', to draw out the country's resources, and built railways to link inland markets to the ports.
Partition took away two big ports, Karachi (to Pakistan) and Chittagong (to East Pakistan). To replace them, India developed Kandla on the west coast and Diamond Harbour near Kolkata.
India now has 12 major and about 200 minor ports. Their capacity rose from 20 million tonnes in 1951 to over 837 million tonnes in 2016. Ports connect their hinterlands (the areas they serve) to the world.
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