Globalisation And The Changing Face Of Port Infrastructure

Inefficient ports can stall a country's trade growth and also increase the costs of transportation. Rising inefficiencies in ports have therefore forced the governments all over the world to deregulate the port system. The port sector in several developing countries has been undergoing revolutionary transformation from a subsistence infrastructure resource into a more capital intensive, commercially oriented facility during the last two decades. In India, awareness towards the impact of port infrastructure on economic development in general and international trade in particular has increased in recent years partly as a result of rising trade transportation costs. One of the objectives of this book is therefore to understand the role the port plays in India's economic development. The book tries to quantitatively evaluate the structural metamorphosis in Indian port sector. The main emphasis of the book is on performance evaluation, technological change, total factor productivity growth, market concentration, and competitiveness of Indian ports for the last two and a half decades. This book deals with these vital issues and questions through a detailed analytical framework. Above all, one protracted objective of this book is to create a ground for discussion on various aspects of port development and the resultant policy action.

Shipping and port systems are vital to societies and lifestyles around the world. In the late twentieth century, however, assumptions concerning the robustness of these systems were severely shaken by economic shocks triggered by oil crises. This volume explores how many of the consequent uncertainties have been resolved, and how adapted systems have been shaped to meet the challenges of the new millennium. To explore these issues, contributors focus on issues such as: · economic integration of emerging economies - in particular China · sectors as diverse as the high-speed ferry and offshore oil industries · pollution problems generated by shipping Contributors' investigations, such as those into the homogenisation of the container industry and the port cluster concept and 'model' vessels for the offshore oil industry, make for a rewarding book that will be of interest to academics working in many fields including transport studies, marine and coastal studies and economic geography. Professional organizations and policy-makers will also appreciate the book.

Being an island nation, the ocean is never too far from Sri Lanka. Situated right at the center of the world's busiest sea lanes of communication, the geography connects the country with the Indian Ocean, and its destiny is linked to this strategic body of water. For centuries, the Indian Ocean has been part of Sri Lanka's strategic, security, and political narratives. However, over the years, the country's involvement in the affairs of the Indian Ocean has retracted due to domestic and regional circumstances. Its consciousness of its ocean identity declined when it took an inward orientation which gave greater visibility to its South Asian identity, and its own imagination began to pivot towards the Indian hinterland. However, with the rising importance of the Indian Ocean in geopolitics, and with the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka's consciousness of its ocean identity has grown. Successive governments have formulated policies that would have paved its way to become the hub of the Indian Ocean, making the ocean the center of its economic development, maritime security, and defense relations. Amidst this backdrop, this book explores historical and contemporary perspectives on Sri Lanka's relations with the Indian Ocean.

India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are civilisational partners and belong to a shared geography. They not only share land and maritime borders, engagements between India and ASEAN have expanded from trade and investment to culture, science and technology, connectivity and sustainable development. The year 2022 marks the 30 years of partnership between ASEAN and India. In the last three decades, ASEAN and India have elevated their relations from the sectoral level to summit level to comprehensive strategic partnership level. The book Thirty Years of ASEAN-India Relations: Towards Indo-Pacific, presents rich prescriptions for the future. It covers a wide range of topics in the fields of economics, geography, history, archaeology, international trade, tourism, migration, and infrastructure for transport. The authors of the chapters are from diverse fields of academic disciplines from India and the ASEAN. Published to commemorate the 30th anniversary of ASEAN-India relations, this book is a valuable resource for practitioners and scholars who are interested in economic integration. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Seaports, as part of urban centers, play a major role in the cultural, social and economic life of the cities in which they are located, and through the links they provide to the outside world. Port-cities in Europe have faced significant change, first with the loss of heavy industry, emergence of Eastern European democracies, and the widening of the European Community (now European Union) during the second half of the twentieth century, and more recently through drivers to change including the global Sustainable Development Agenda and the European Union Circular Economy Agenda. This book examines the role of modern seaports in Europe and consider how port-cities are responding to these major drivers for change. It discusses the broad issues facing European Sea Ports, including port life cycles, spatial planning, and societal integration. May 2019 saw the 200th anniversary of the first steam ship to cross the Atlantic between the US and England, and it is just over 60 years since the invention of the modern intermodal shipping container – both drivers of change in the maritime and ports industry. Increasing movements of people, e.g. through low cost cruises to port cities, can play a major role in changing the nature of such a city and impact on the lives of the people living there. This book brings together original research by both long-standing and younger scholars from multiple disciplines and builds upon the wider discourse about sea ports, port cities, and sustainability.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

This book gives an account of how the U.S. freight transportation system has been impacted and “globalized,” since the 1950s, by the presence of the shipping container. A globally standardized object, the container carries cargo moving in international trade, and it utilizes and fits within the existing transportation infrastructures of shipping, trucking and railroads. In this way it binds them together into a nearly seamless worldwide logistics network. This process occurs not only in ocean shipping and at ports, but also deep within national territories. In its dependence on existing infrastructural systems, though, the network of container movement as it pervades domestic space is shaped by the history and geography of the nation-state. This global network is not invariably imposed in a top-down manner—to a large degree, it is cobbled together out of national, regional and local systems. Heins describes this in the American context, examining the freight transportation infrastructures of railroads, trucking and inland waterways, and also the terminals where containers are transferred between train and truck. The book provides a detailed historical narrative, and is also theoretically informed by the contemporary literature on infrastructure and globalization.

South East Asia has undergone important economic, social and political developments in the last decade. The emergence of China as Asia’s largest pool of cheap labour has resulted in remarkable changes in the volume of foreign direct investment it commands, while the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis has undoubtedly influenced managerial practices in the majority of the countries in the region. In response, South East Asian governments and businesses have sought ways of attracting new investors while intensifying their efforts to retain existing industries. This important new volume overviews the development of South East Asian management practices, focusing on human resource management (HRM) as an indicator and measure of change. Written by prominent scholars of the region, the book focuses on reform in the human resource (HR) managerial domain, documenting recent changes and assessing current practices from both macro and micro perspectives. A consistent structure and content is used throughout, with each chapter incorporating ‘real-life’ local organizational and manager case studies, plus vignettes to give ‘voice’ to practitioners and developments. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in management, HR or the political, social, cultural and economic profiles of the countries of South East Asia.