Recent crises in critical shipping routes highlight the vulnerability of maritime supply chains, proving that ports cannot achieve true resilience in isolation. To safeguard India's economy—where nearly 95 percent of trade moves by sea—future maritime policies must expand beyond cargo volumes to incorporate backup transport routes, cybersecurity, and climate-ready infrastructure.

Recent crises in critical shipping routes highlight the vulnerability of maritime supply chains, proving that ports cannot achieve true resilience in isolation. To safeguard India's economy—where nearly 95 percent of trade moves by sea—future maritime policies must expand beyond cargo volumes to incorporate backup transport routes, cybersecurity, and climate-ready infrastructure.

Recent crises in critical shipping routes highlight the vulnerability of maritime supply chains, proving that ports cannot achieve true resilience in isolation. To safeguard India's economy—where nearly 95 percent of trade moves by sea—future maritime policies must expand beyond cargo volumes to incorporate backup transport routes, cybersecurity, and climate-ready infrastructure.

Under the latest initiatives such as the Maritime Vision 2030 and the Sagarmala programme, India’s ports have become faster. And now, they have to become independent of global trade disruptions. That is the true test. Not that note, Dr Anusha Kesarkar Gavankar, senior fellow and director of the Oceans Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, argues that efficiency alone is no longer enough, in her latest note on India’s maritime sector.

“Ports are often assessed by their cargo-handling capacity, cargo throughput, vessel turnaround time and operational efficiency,” Dr Gavankar stated. “While these are important indicators, they do not capture every aspect of a port’s performance.”

She is right. The World Bank’s Container Port Performance Index, which measures how long container ships spend in port, merely captures berth availability, crane productivity, yard operations and coordination among stakeholders. But it does not give a clear picture on whether a port can withstand a war, cyberattack, flood or shipping-route closure. This is particularly important given how the world was just months ago with the Strait of Hormuz disruption.

According to UNCTAD, ship transits fell from about 130 a day in February down 95 per cent to just six in March. Fuel prices soared, transport costs spiked, and it boiled down to a slowdown in global merchandise trade growth. Now, the UN wing projects the growth to slow from 4.7 per cent in 2025 to 1.5–2.5 per cent in 2026.

And for India, the exposure was almost direct. With nearly 95 per cent of the country’s trade by volume moving via sea, Indian major and non-major ports handled 1.60 billion tonnes of cargo in 2024–25, including about 855 million tonnes at the 12 major ports.

Yes, India has improved port operations. Average vessel turnaround time at major ports has nearly halved over the past decade. But a fast port can still become a bottleneck if roads, railways, customs, power supply, and—in recent times—shipping connections fail.

“Ports cannot be resilient in isolation,” Dr Gavankar stated. “Their ability to keep trade moving depends on the wider networks and services connected to them.”

Studies on container-port operations already established that performance depends not only on berth productivity but also on hinterland transport, information flows and coordination among port users. The World Bank’s 2025 index directly charted a two-way relationship between port performance and supply-chain stress. Simply put, weak ports amplify disruption, while efficient ports can stabilise trade.

This means that the next step in India’s maritime revolution needs to go beyond new berths in ports. We need backup transport routes, cyber-security, climate-ready infrastructure, skilled workers and coordination among ports, customs, shipping lines and logistics firms.

“Beyond cargo volumes and turnaround times, success should be measured by how well ports keep trade moving, adapt to changing conditions, and recover from disruption,” according to Dr Gavankar. And for a country, whose economy is tied so intricately to ports, this is more an economic insurance rather than an optional reform.

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