A new port in India
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
India's bid to capture a slice of global shipping. The east-west shipping line off the southern coast of India carries around 30% of the world's cargo. As container ships get bigger, the Kerala state government wants to build a deep-water container port at Vizhinjam. But the $1.2bn project has been badly delayed by Cyclone Ockhi in 2017 and by last year’s torrential rains and flooding in the region. Fergus Nicoll speaks to Karan Adani, CEO of Adani Ports and hears the concerns from a boat owner and fish vendors concerned for their livelihoods.
Plus Stephen Ryan speaks to transgender workers on the Kochi metro in Kerala.
(Photo: A container ship off the coast of Kerala, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kevin Fong, Doctor, Space Geek and podcast presenter, |
| 0:04.7 | and in my new BBC World Service podcast, 13 Minutes to the Moon, |
| 0:09.0 | I get to meet a whole bunch of people who put humans on the moon for the very first time. |
| 0:14.4 | With music by Hans Zimmer, the first episodes available now, |
| 0:18.5 | and you can hear more about it at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:25.6 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily with Fergus Nickel in the South Indian state of Kerala. |
| 0:31.4 | As the national election process moves into its final stages, we're here to investigate a big new port facility under construction. |
| 0:40.4 | Is it a threat to more traditional livelihoods along the coast? |
| 0:44.4 | Also in the programme today, we'll meet transgender employees on the metro system in the state's commercial hub. |
| 0:55.2 | It's a beautiful, calm, hot day on the Kerala coast, |
| 1:01.2 | but the surf is still rolling in from the Arabian Sea |
| 1:05.1 | and what still looks like a beach is about to change enormously. |
| 1:14.2 | Welcome to the Viz Vijijan International Deepwater Multi-purpose Seaport, a project very much under construction. And here on the sand, |
| 1:22.9 | to talk me through what's already happening is Itimunib of Adani ports, the company charged by the |
| 1:30.5 | Kerala government with constructing this enormous project. Thanks so much for helping us get to grips |
| 1:36.8 | with what we see in front of us. And let's start with the breakwater. So we can see eight or nine cranes |
| 1:44.1 | along a huge steel framework out at sea so far. What's |
| 1:50.1 | happening? Actually, it's an 800-meter jetty that we are constructing. That will be for the |
| 1:56.0 | container's loading and unloading. In front of that, there will be a breakwater, which is 3.1 kilometre length, |
| 2:02.9 | that it will be for the protection of the jetty. We have to use our imagination now, because this |
| 2:07.7 | is going to be a huge concrete dockside, and this is where towers of containers are going to be. |
| 2:15.1 | Exactly. This will be used for the loaded and unloaded containers will be |
... |
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