In yet another good opportunity for the centrally-located Nagpur city, a new East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) between Dankuni and Surat was announced in the Union Budget on Sunday. The new freight corridor would immensely benefit the region as now industries and traders get direct connectivity to two regions, Dankuni in Kolkata and Surat in Gujarat. Export of cargo to Bangladesh is carried out from Dankuni station in West Bengal Apart from benefits accruing to industry, mainly, the local trade would get a major boost once the project is complete, as same would help in providing direct access to the major trading hub, that is Surat, and to Dankuni, the last station in the Eastern corridor.

 

This is the second freight corridor that is going to pass through Nagpur, the other one being North-South. The East-West corridor was announced in Union Budget presented in the Parliament on Sunday. The two corridors post completion would enhance the importance of central location for Indian Railways. Dankuni is alternate to Howrah Railway Station in West Bengal and as per Railway officials, goods enroute to Bangladesh are carried forward from this point onwards. As to Surat, it is the biggest textile hub in Gujarat. The new corridor will have a length of about 2,052 km and a dedicated freight corridor would provide several advantages over the traditional goods carried by the Indian Railways. Normally, to transport goods on railway, only bulk quantity is required, and many a times, it’s not possible to have complete load for 40 wagons of single commodity.

 

With freight corridor, now mixed nature of goods can be carried as they operate in a way similar to CONCOR. Further the other advantage is door to door delivery of goods that are transported through DFC. Here the consignee need not have to worry about loading and unloading as containers can be directly filled at site and also delivered at the recipient’s address. This is one of the main reasons for DFC taking off in a big way in the country, as it cut down transport time also and trims down paper work to a lot of extent. As per local railway watchers, the new freight corridor is quite a promising development. Given the importance of Surat, the direct and dedicated freight corridor would provide immense benefit to traders, bringing goods from the textile town. The freight is quite competitive and the goods train on the dedicated corridor is run as per time-table, unlike general goods train that gets pushed back to allow for long distance passenger-carrying trains. The East-West corridor is quite promising as it would link business and industrial belt on the route like Raipur, prominent towns in Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. From the region, orange is a major commodity that used to be sent to Bangladesh and from there, to other ASEAN countries. Although the trade with neighbouring country is right now in troubled waters, in future, if relations improve, the orange export can pick up. Also, the cotton and deoiled cake, extract of soyabean, is also sent to Bangladesh from Nagpur and other parts of Central India.