GUWAHATI: A barge carrying 540 metric tons of methanol left the Bogibeel terminal in Dibrugarh for Dhaka in Bangladesh on Monday, marking the first such international voyage from this upper Assam town since 1956.
Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal flagged off the vessel DLB Patkai. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma joined the ceremony virtually.
The methanol, produced by state-owned Assam Petro-Chemicals Ltd. at Namrup, is bound for Pangaon Port in Dhaka. The vessel will travel about 768 km down National Waterway-2 on the Brahmaputra River in India to the India-Bangladesh border and then, continue along the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route, covering a total distance of 1,300 km.
The voyage is being observed as a test of whether the Brahmaputra can serve as a commercially viable freight corridor linking the Northeast to overseas markets. The shipment became possible after customs and immigration complexes were set up at Bogibeel and Dhubri recently.
“Our grandparents grew up hearing the steamer whistle at Dibrugarh Ghat. For 70 years, that whistle fell silent and the ships stopped coming. Today, a ship leaves Dibrugarh for the world again. The river never failed us. What it lacked for decades was the will to revive it,” Sonowal said.
He asked the youth of Assam to dream with this river. He said under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dibrugarh, the Tea Capital of India, was reclaiming its past glory as a great river port.
“We are building it with world-class infrastructure while honouring its heritage," he further said.
Sarma called it a proud day for Assam. “Assam’s own product is now traveling to an international market on Assam’s own river. The Northeast is no longer a frontier. It is India's gateway to the East,” the Chief Minister said.
Dibrugarh was once among the busiest river ports in eastern India. Government steamers reached the town from Calcutta, now Kolkata, by 1856. In 1882, the Dibru-Sadiya Railway began operating from the Dibrugarh steamer ghat. By 1913, steamers sailed up the Brahmaputra to the town daily, carrying tea, timber and passengers.
The 1947 partition cut that route, forcing Assam’s goods to pass through East Pakistan to reach Calcutta. A 1950 earthquake disturbed the riverbed at Dibrugarh. Regular bookings from Dibrugarh Ghat stopped in 1954, and the ghat closed on October 15, 1956, as tea shipments shifted to rail.
The 1965 war between India and Pakistan suspended cross-border river trade. India and Bangladesh signed a river trade protocol in 1972. In 1988, the 891-km stretch of river Brahmaputra from Sadiya to Dhubri was declared National Waterway-2. Regular cargo service on the waterway did not begin until December 2017, when cement moved from Pandu in Guwahati to lower Assam’s Dhubri.