The reason I sought to talk about the charter of the Californian cities, is so that we have a better perceptive and an idea as to how are we are going to convert the ports and villages of the Indian coastline into charter cities. The 8,000 km long Indian coastline has 12 major ports and 181 minor/ intermediate ports out of which 139 are operable. Indian Ports are the gateways to India's international trade by sea and are handling over 90% of foreign trade.

The major ports are located at Calcutta/ Haldia, Chennai, Cochin, Ennore, Jawaharlal Nehru Port at Nhava Sheva, Kandla, Mormugao, Mumbai, New Mangalore, Paradip, Tuticorin and Vishakhapatnam.

The 12 major Indian ports, which are managed by the Port Trust of India under Central Government jurisdiction, handle 90 percent of the all-India port throughput, and thus bear the brunt of sea borne trade. The 139 minor ports are under the jurisdiction of the respective State Governments. Dry and liquid bulk make up about 80 percent of the port traffic in volume with general cargo, including the containerised cargo, constituting the remaining traffic.

The Indian Government prioritized the expansion and modernization of ports as part of its five-year plan initiatives in 2007. It has been instrumental in redefining the role of ports from mere trade gateways to integral parts of the global and logistics chain. The Committee of Infrastructure constituted a Committee of Secretaries to recommend time-bound identification and complete connectivity projects to successfully address issues regarding port connectivity. Several projects are underway for the deepening of drafts at major ports as a part of the national maritime development program.

Although the ports in India have shown considerable improvement over years, benchmarking them against the ports in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Rotterdam reveals that there needs to be marked improvement in many parameters to get Indian ports at par with international standards.

The performance of Indian ports does not compare favorably with that of efficient international ports. On three important parameters- capacity, productivity and efficiency, Indian ports lack in comparison to some of the major international ports. In international terms, labor and equipment productivity levels are still very low due to the outdated equipment, poor training, low equipment handling levels by labor, uneconomic labor practices, idle time at berth, time loss at shift change and high mining scales and low datums.

Now we already have most of the ports in working condition, however we also have plenty of villages along the Indian coastline that are barren and not densely populated, if we are able to get the investments of private sectors into these barren villages and convert them into manamade modern cities then we can actually attract a lot of poor people who are clustering in the major cities in need of employment and better conditions to these places, hence spacing out the population of our country evenly instead of huddling in certain areas. So therefore instead of focusing on the poverty in India and how to change the rules of our country to support the poor lets move them somewhere with better rules.

Now I tried to dig in and I found out that we can have a lot of investments in these ports and villages which could boom the development of these places.

One such example is :

Magarpatta is a shining example of how urban areas can expand to accommodate the needs of urbanisation without hurting the interests of rural landowners through forced or unfair acquisition. Magarpatta is a 430 acre area located in the outskirts of the city of Pune, which itself is spread over an area of 60,000 acres. It has been part of the Pune Municipal Corporation since 1960, even though it was in the agricultural zone. Magarpatta has been developed over the past 10 years within the Pune metropolitan region as a modern sustainable urban habitat by the original inhabitants who were farming their ancestral land in that area.They have also attracted a lot of people from outside who have moved in as permanent residents. Today, with its emphasis on environment-friendly development, high quality of urban services, excellent modern facilities for education and health, and state-of-the-art working conditions, this city is home to over 35,000 residents and a working population of 65,000.

So yes charter cities can be formed in india, I found out that we already have some major projects under our belt –

• With capacities in traditional shipbuilding nations such as Japan, South Korea and Norway booked for the next few years, global fleet owners have started looking at new destinations such as China, India and Vietnam to build their ships. Indian firms are increasingly getting into ship building and repairing as shipbuilding orders are expected to rise significantly to meet the boom in seaborne trade and increased offshore oil exploration.
• India currently has a market share of just 0.5% of the global shipbuilding market. Indian yards such as ABG Shipyard Ltd., Bharati Shipyard Ltd., Larsen & Toubro, Cochin Shipyard Ltd., Hindustan Shipyard Ltd., Mazagon Dock Ltd. and Tebma Shipyards Ltd. are looking to grab a bigger share of the global market and capture the space vacated by the closure of yards in Europe and other developed countries.
• Besides the location advantage that India enjoys since a large number of vessels sail through this part of Asia, Indian steel mills have started manufacturing steel plates used in shipbuilding.Earlier, shipbuilding steel used to be imported. Essar Steel is already manufacturing shipbuilding steel and plans to increase it with the commissioning of a 1.5-million-tonne plate plant in Gujarat next year.
• The government provided a 30-percent subsidy on value of ships built by Indian yards, which would sail under a foreign flag. The industry hopes this would be extended to help compete with their overseas competitors. This subsidy is also given to certain ships built for the local market. ABG Shipyard and its competitor Bharati Shipyard, which builds sophisticated offshore platform supply vessels, have started building rigs.
• Bharati Shipyard planning Rs2,000-crore shipbuilding joint venture on east coast
• Dubai ports world to invest $2 billion in Indian operations
• Dubai-based marine terminal operator Dubai Ports World (DP World) will invest $2 billion in its India operations.DP World operates five container terminals in the country and manages an estimated 40 per cent of the country’s container terminal operations.These include Chennai and Vishakapatnam on the east coast and Kochi, Mundhra and JNPT on the West coast.
• DP World owns the terminals at Kochi and Vishakapatnam while the Mundhra, JNPT and Chennai container terminals were acquired with P&O last year.
• DP World gained control of three terminals in India last year through its $6.8-billion acquisition of UK ports operator Peninsular & Oriental.DP World is eager to gain a presence in eastern India.
• India allows 100 per cent foreign direct investment for port development projects. It plans to raise 64 per cent of the proposed investments in ports from private companies. Container traffic is expected to clock growth rates of 15.5 per cent in the next five years and cargo traffic 7.7 per cent.DP World operates terminals in 24 countries.

These are just some of the projects, if these projects can be executed on not just the recognized ports but also the non recognized villages along the coast line it would give employment, residencey to an enormous mass