As far as railway bridges go, you could call it short—spanning only 2.2 km. Yet, if you look hard at what it could lead to, it’s symbolic of a magnificent possibility of historical, cultural, economic and geopolitical significance in the 21st century.
We don’t have to look back far for inspiration. As India was marking its Constitution Day this week, rail safety commissioner A M Chowdhary quietly authorised the opening of a reconstructed Pamban bridge between Mandapam and Pamban stations in Tamil Nadu. However, he mentioned glaring lapses in the construction and advised safeguards.
Built at a cost of about Rs 550 crore, India's first vertical lift bridge, an engineering marvel, will connect Rameshwaram with mainland India and enable a speed of 80 km per hour across the bridge. The project is being executed by the Rail Vikas Nigam and replaces an old bridge built by the British in 1914. The new bridge has a 72.5-metre vertical, single-lift span designed to move up and down to allow ships to pass under.
For me, this brought back memories of a midnight ceremony at St Petersburg, Russia on the margins of a G20 summit, when I saw a road bridge across a river rise up and split from the middle to allow ships to pass through.
Engineering has come a long way, and the Pamban bridge represents a potential that India can exploit in the not-too-distant future to probably build a high-speed rail link between India and Sri Lanka. Why not, is what I asked myself, though I would expect engineers, environmental activists, economists and diplomats to debate and quibble on what it could imply.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest India can and should undertake a project that could eventually connect Mandapam and mainland Sri Lanka. Imagine riding from Madurai, 150 km away from Mandapam, to mainland Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's Mannar Island is only 33 km from Rameshwaram as the crow flies. A modern rail link can give ordinary humans a potential hitherto easy only for the proverbial crow.
A rail link that parallels the controversial but historical Ram Setu Bridge across the Palk Strait holds much promise. Ram Setu is a bridge-like formation of limestone shoals within the Palk Strait waters that separate India from Sri Lanka. Though there is no evidence it is man-made, there are those who believe it is and link it to the times of Ramayana.
Ram Setu, the 2022 Bollywood movie starring Akshay Kumar, portrays him as an adventurer-archaeologist investigating the origins of the structure that weaves traditional beliefs about Lord Rama with the legendary bridge.
Looking at some of the engineering and railway marvels in recent times, I see a distinct possibility that the historical/mythological Ram Setu can be reverse-swung to modern times as a train that could resemble the Eurotunnel that links France and the UK across the English channel.
The 51-km long Eurotunnel has the Eurostar train travelling at 300 km per hour and cost $14.5 billion in 1994 when it was completed. That was way above its original estimate, but India is heading towards a stage where affording such a rail link is quite possible. The upcoming 508-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train link is estimated to cost $17 billion and includes a 21-km undersea tunnel across Thane Creek, with construction taking place up to 65 metres below sea level.
True, the Ram Setu project is controversial due to environmental concerns but a modern train link similar to it is worth considering.
As railway bridges go, India's longest rail bridge (and Asia's second longest) is the Bogibeel Bridge across the Brahmaputra in Assam, about 5 km long. As road bridges across the sea go, the Atal Setu trans-harbour link connecting Mumbai with Navi Mumbai is 21.8 km long. There is plenty of engineering expertise waiting to be tapped.
The Chinese, never ones to shy away from construction marvels, have built the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge viaduct measuring 165 km on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail link. It is the longest in the world.
From all indications, there are technologies and precedents available in India and Europe to build an ambitious rail link between India and Sri Lanka.
Last year, India and Sri Lanka launched a ferry service between Nagapattinam and Kankesanthurai near Jaffna that covers a 110-km sea route in about four hours. This could well be a forerunner to a train link that can help build modern economic linkages between India and the island republic.
Given the recent political developments in Sri Lanka, in which the majority Sinhalese and the separatism-inclined Tamils have reached a historical entente towards building development and fighting corruption after two rounds of elections, there is a possibility for a reset in ties with India in which major projects that fire diplomatic imagination can be of immense utility. As I see it, if political bridges can heal colonial-era wounds between warring ethnic communities, so can a train link.
Talk of an ancient bridge dating back to the Ramayana may be contested mythology or history, but building a new-age equivalent on a similar theme could create jobs, generate incomes, and offer higher chances of regional security in a geopolitically sensitive area.
Who knows? Like the bullet train, the Japanese may want to fund it and nurture a millennial marvel.
Madhavan Narayanan
Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
(On X @madversity)