2.11 Ports, Power Plants & Infrastructure of India

Ports of India

India's coastline of roughly 7,500 km carries the great majority of the country's trade by volume. Ports are classified in two tiers:

• Major ports are administered by the Union Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways under the Major Port Authorities Act, 2021. There are twelve functional major ports.
• Non-major ports — around two hundred, of which a minority handle cargo — fall under the maritime boards of the coastal states.

The twelve functional major ports

High-value recall points:

• Jawaharlal Nehru Port is India's largest container port.
• Deendayal (Kandla) is a leading port by total cargo tonnage and is a tidal port in the Gulf of Kutch.
• Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, Kolkata is India's only major riverine port, on the Hooghly, with its deep-water dock system at Haldia.
• Kamarajar (Ennore) was India's first corporatised major port and is a major coal-handling port serving Tamil Nadu's thermal stations.
• Paradip and Visakhapatnam are principal gateways for coal, iron ore and other bulk cargo on the east coast.

Beyond the twelve, Vadhavan in Palghar district, Maharashtra, has been sanctioned as a greenfield deep-draft major port, and Galathea Bay in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has been notified for development as a transshipment port. Both are under development rather than in operation.

Coal logistics run directly through this network: imported coking coal for steel plants and thermal coal for coastal power stations arrive through Paradip, Visakhapatnam, Kamarajar and Mundra, while domestic Coal India output moves predominantly by rail.

Inland Waterways

The Inland Waterways Authority of India administers designated National Waterways. National Waterway 1 runs along the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly from Haldia to Prayagraj and is used for bulk cargo including coal; National Waterway 2 follows the Brahmaputra. Moving coal by barge reduces both road congestion and transport emissions, which is why waterway development features in coal-evacuation planning.

Power Plants and the Electricity Mix

Coal remains the backbone of Indian electricity generation, supplying the majority of the units actually generated even as non-fossil capacity grows quickly. The distinction between installed capacity share and generation share is a genuine analytical point and a plausible exam item: renewables have a lower capacity utilisation factor than coal, so their share of generation lags their share of capacity.

Thermal

NTPC Limited is India's largest power generating company. Its Vindhyachal Super Thermal Power Station in Singrauli district, Madhya Pradesh, with an installed capacity of 4,760 MW, is India's largest thermal power station. Other large stations include Mundra, Mundra UMPP, Talcher, Sipat, Korba and Rihand — note how many sit on or beside the coalfields.

A pithead station is built next to the mine so that coal travels a short distance and electricity is transmitted instead; a load-centre station sits near demand and imports coal by rail. Pithead siting is why NCL at Singrauli, MCL at Talcher and SECL at Korba each anchor a power complex.

Ultra Mega Power Projects are 4,000 MW-class stations promoted to use supercritical technology, which raises steam pressure and temperature above the critical point to improve cycle efficiency and reduce coal consumption per unit — a direct link to the Rankine cycle content in Paper-II.

Hydro and nuclear

Nuclear plants are operated by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited under the Department of Atomic Energy.

Renewables

Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan is among the largest solar parks in the world. Muppandal in Tamil Nadu is a major wind farm, and Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan lead in renewable capacity. The Solar Energy Corporation of India and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy drive deployment.

India's Panchamrit commitments, announced at COP26 in Glasgow, are the headline energy-transition targets: 500 GW of non-fossil installed capacity by 2030, 50% of energy requirements from renewables by 2030, a reduction of one billion tonnes in projected cumulative emissions by 2030, a 45% cut in the emissions intensity of GDP by 2030 against 2005, and net zero by 2070.

Transport Infrastructure

• Indian Railways is among the world's largest rail networks and carries the bulk of Coal India's despatch. Coal is its single largest freight commodity by volume.
• Dedicated Freight Corridors — the Eastern DFC from Ludhiana to Sonnagar and the Western DFC from Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port — were built to separate freight from passenger traffic and speed bulk movement including coal.
• PM Gati Shakti, launched in October 2021, is the national master plan for multimodal infrastructure integration, explicitly covering coal evacuation among its priority networks.
• The National Highways Authority of India develops the highway network; Bharatmala is the flagship highway programme.