ABSTRACT
It is early in the morning and Phil rides to school on one of the few city buses that run from Ernakulam to Kothad, located some 6 km on the northern outskirts of the city. Until recently Kothad was an islet in the Periyar backwaters with no roads linking it to Ernakulam’s mainland. Although it was located so near to Kochi’s urban buzz, the only way in and out of Kothad was by country boats, especially adapted to carry two small cars, a few motorbikes and pedestrians at a time. The journey across the backwaters to reach the mainland, and hence public services such as the nearest hospital, was time consuming and at times troublesome. In February 2005, a 180-metre-long bridge was built, finally connecting the islet to the city. Kothad Bridge was built to facilitate the construction of a section of a new highway that will cut across the islet, which is part of one of the state’s most, if not the most, ambitious development projects: the Vallarpadam International Container Transshipment Terminal. 1 The terminal, dubbed by the state government as the ‘hub of Kerala’s development’, was built and is now ineffectively operated by Dubai Port World Pvt. Ltd with the collaboration of the central government of India. As per the contract between the two parties, the central government was to invest nearly Rs1,000 crore (£100 million) to develop the shipping channel and railway and road links connecting the terminal to the hinterland. The International Container Terminal (ICT) Road, NH 966A, or Vallarpadam-Kallamassery Road, is the still-under-construction link between the ship terminal and India’s NH47, the national highway connecting some of the most important cities of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In short, Kothad was turned into a construction platform of a small part of one of India’s mega projects to improve Indian exporters’ competitiveness in the global market.
