From deadlocks to dockyards: How India’s Parliament rediscovered the sea

Tituraj Kashyap Das

(tituraj@gmail.com)

The monsoon session of Parliament has ended, but like a damp squib. Out of a scheduled 120 hours, more than 84 were lost to adjournments—an unprecedented waste for the 18th Lok Sabha. In practical terms, the country’s highest deliberative body functioned for just 37 hours and 7 minutes over 21 sittings. Yet, amid the noise and chaos, one ministry managed to sail through the storm. The Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways, helmed by Sarbananda Sonowal, the ex-CM of Assam, emerged as the unlikely star of the session, shepherding five bills into law—more than any other ministry.

It is tempting to see how the minister’s chartered course via choppy waters of disagreement, distortion and disruption aligns with favourable tides to take the bills home. Are you not inquisitive enough as to why Parliament, so prone to stalemate, became so generous to one of PM Modi’s most trusted lieutenants? And what does this legislative success reveal about India’s changing imagination of itself? The subtle undercurrent of India’s political economy and its priorities are revealed if we dig deeper into this.

The Ship Rises While Parliament Sinks

If numbers tell the story, then Sonowal has pulled off a political coup. At a time when ministries as large as Finance, Home, and Defence found their legislative calendars choked by opposition disruptions, Ports and Shipping managed not only to introduce but also to pass five bills. Among them were measures streamlining inland waterway management, green shipping frameworks, private investment in major ports, and regulatory overhauls that would have otherwise taken years to negotiate.

That Parliament devoted scarce time to the maritime sector in a session so bereft of deliberation is no accident. It reflects a strategic gamble: the government sees shipping not merely as a niche industry but as a central plank of India’s developmental state. Modi has consistently framed maritime infrastructure as the “backbone” of India’s trade-led growth, and Sonowal, with his administrative experience and political loyalty, has been entrusted with translating that vision into policy.

The Politics of Smooth Sailing

Why Sonowal? His political biography offers clues. Once the Chief Minister of Assam, he has been repositioned in Delhi as Modi’s point man for a sector that connects the Northeast’s complex geography to India’s oceanic ambitions. If the Defence Ministry looks westward to the Himalayas and Pakistan, and the Home Ministry looks inward to social fractures, then the Shipping Ministry looks outward—towards ASEAN, BIMSTEC, the Indian Ocean, and beyond.

The maritime sector’s success in Parliament is also a product of careful political choreography. When Sonowal proposed the bills in the parliament, the nature of those bills was national priorities and not polarising like the civil liberty debates. There is a natural vote bank for inland waterways. For opposition parties, blocking such bills carries the risk of being termed as anti-development. For the government, every passed bill becomes proof of efficiency amid the dysfunction. In effect, shipping policy becomes the perfect legislative currency: low cost, high return.

For centuries, India’s vast maritime potential was harnessed not for her prosperity but for the benefit of imperial trade routes. By recasting these outdated laws, Parliament is reclaiming the seas as a site of national renewal. The revival of maritime pathways, once symbols of colonial control, now stands as a declaration of India’s autonomy — to build, regulate, and profit from her own oceanic destiny. Politically, this brings political dividends to PM Modi, who has launched a sincere effort to deregulate the colonial-era laws and replace or update them with laws that reflect present-day realities, future-proof provisions and adaptation for contemporary society.

The Strategic Depth of Waterways

Beyond political theatre, the content of the bills reveals a quiet reorientation. The promotion of inland waterways, for example, is not just about ferry integration or cruise tourism. It signals a state effort to re-engineer trade flows away from congested highways and railways, using rivers as arteries of commerce. The Coastal Shipping Bill is another popular move made by Sonowal which aims at empowering the coastal communities by powering the coastal shipping possibilities and opportunities.

Similarly, regulatory reforms in green shipping signal India’s ambition to play in the big leagues of global climate negotiations. By legislating a domestic framework ahead of international pressure, the Modi government positions India not as a reluctant follower but as a rule-shaper.

The River Cruise Illusion

One of the more curious insertions in this maritime dreamscape is river cruise tourism. On paper, it promises a golden age: the Brahmaputra, Ganga, Dhansiri, and Kopili as luxury corridors for global travellers. The figures, though modest compared to Europe’s Rhine or Danube, are already impressive for a nascent sector: more than 200 cruise movements recorded in 2024–25, with traffic expected to grow by 15–20% annually.

But river cruises are as much political symbolism as economic calculation. They rebrand neglected waterways as cosmopolitan spaces, aligning India’s rural riverscapes with a globalised imagination of leisure. A tourist sipping wine on the Brahmaputra is more than a consumer; they are a political spectacle, proof that India can convert local geography into global experience.

The Invisible Cargo: Corporate Capital

Perhaps the most telling development of all is the ministry’s quiet partnership with corporate capital. In 2023, the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) signed an MoU with Numaligarh Refinery Ltd. (NRL) for transportation of over-dimensional cargo (ODC) and overweight cargo (OWC) via waterways. This was not just an operational detail but a structural shift. By enabling refinery expansion logistics through waterways, the government institutionalised a public-private pipeline of investment.

For Modi’s India, this is the preferred model: state infrastructure as scaffolding for corporate expansion, justified in the name of national growth. Parliament’s generosity towards shipping bills, then, is not kindness; it is the institutional alignment of politics and capital.

 Reading between the Bills

The Modi government’s maritime turn is both pragmatic and ideological. Pragmatic, because India’s 7,500 km of coastline and 14,500 km of navigable waterways remain underutilised. Ideological, because control of waterways embodies the larger Hindutva imagination of India as a civilizational power straddling the Indian Ocean. In this framework, Sonowal is not merely a shipping minister; he is the custodian of Modi’s “Sagarmala” narrative, in which ports and rivers are symbols of national destiny.

This helps explain why Parliament, despite being paralysed, still found time to pass his bills. The legislative generosity was not random. It was a structural necessity.

The Honeymoon and the Hangover

Yet, there is irony in calling this Parliament’s “honeymoon” with the maritime sector. A honeymoon suggests romance, ease, and temporary suspension of reality. The reality here is sobering. India’s Parliament functioned at less than one-third efficiency in its first monsoon session. Important questions of unemployment, rural distress, and press freedom drowned in adjournments.

That the shipping sector sailed through this wreckage is both a triumph and a cautionary tale. A democracy that privileges low-controversy legislation over hard debates risks mistaking efficiency for vitality. Parliament may have been kind to Sonowal, but the kindness was born of dysfunction, not deliberation.

The Last Word

In the end, the story of five bills is not about one minister’s luck. It is about the recalibration of power in Modi’s India: Parliament as a stage where disruptions dominate, while certain ministries slip through with quiet precision. Shipping, once peripheral, has become central to this choreography.

If the monsoon session was a storm, Sonowal navigated it not as a captain in high seas but as a bureaucrat on a quiet river—his boat advancing while others remained stranded. The question that remains is whether India’s democracy can afford such selective sailing.