BOOK REVIEW:

GEOGRAPHY OF TRANSPORT IN INDIA

Commodity flows and the regional structure
of the Indian economy

BY: MOONIS RAZA AND YASH AGGARWAL

Submitted by:
Kumar Sourabh
Roll no. 915220
Paper no. - 433
Geography of Transport and Flow Analysis
Department of Geography
This pioneering work is the outcome of a large-scale research project on commodity
flows, sponsored by the Indian University Grants Commission.
The work is based on an innovative utilization of a large data base. It may be recalled that,
in the case of India, there are two sources of commodity flow data-trade block wise and
point to point. While Berry's study was based on trade block data, point to point flow data
has been used for analytical purposes in the present study-the size of the matrix for each
commodity being of the order of (6775x6775). Along with these matrices, the authors
have also used a sum total of 53 figures and 63 tables on different fields of study to make
the study simpler, argumentative, and understandable.
The study is being designed to remove the limitations of the earlier studies and to analyse
the Indian commodity flows in relation to its regional structure on the basis of data for
1970s.As it was presented by author, the major objectives of present study were-
1. To develop a comprehensive methodology of commodity flow analysis, and
2. To undertake an in-depth analysis of commodity flow in relation to regional
structure of Indian economy.
The 3 sections of this book with their 18 chapters, had been designed to achieve aforesaid
objectives by following steps-
1. Analysing the spatial organisation of developing economies,
2. Examining the structure of transport network in India,
3. Assessing the relationship between commodity flows and economic base at
national, regional, and sub-regional level,
4. identify the pattern of regional specialisation as reflected through the commodity
flow,
5. Developing a hierarchy of national, regional , and local nodes in the spatial
system,
6. Evaluating the nature of urban-rural exchange of commodities,
7. Enquiring into nature and pattern of metropolitan and urban commodity flows,
8. Analysing the patterns of distance on the pattern of commodity flows,
9. Bringing out the nature and patterns of inter-regional interdependencies,
10. Critically examining the freight rate structure.
The name given to the first section of the book, i.e. Database, Methodology and the
Framework of Analysis, suits the nature of its five chapters which basically deals with the
background of analysis done in this book. This section basically deals with the topic like-
1. What is the nature of transport and how it develops over space,
2. What is the nature of research in transport studies,
3. What are the sources of commodity flow in India,
4. Problems related with data involved in study,
5. Different method of representation and assessment of a network, for example-
Alpha, Beta, Gama and other indexes, Cyclamatic number, Associated number
Etc.
6. Techniques for the analysis of commodity flows, for example- origin-destination
matrix,
7. Analysis of the development of Railways in colonial period, i.e. port oriented
network, and post-colonial, i.e. decentralisation or extension of existing network
to integrate the potential areas of development.
The second section of the book i.e. Commodity flows and Economic activity highlights
the role of transportation as well as commodity flow in the development of Indian
economy. It elaborates the distribution structure of various modes of transport in India
and concludes the fact that the well connected networks in India are concentrated in few
pockets, and they are usually associated with large metropolitan centres and cities.
Similarly, new industrial centres, after independence, have developed over major trunk
lines. The next chapter tries to relate the freight characteristics of commodity flow with
the economic development of the country. It has analysed that increase in economy lead
to increase in railways freight, and freight composition of railways suggest that formation
of large and self-sufficient geographical industrial complexes had not taken place so far in
Indian economy.
As this book deals with geographical analysis, so this section also tried to add some
geographical ingredients, i.e. spatial attributes. The chapters on commodity flows and the
concentration of economic activity in space, and commodity flows interrelationship and
the regional structure of Indian economy are those chapters which helped to add the
ingredient of space. Theses chapter have basically analysed the flow of characteristics of
the commodities such as origination and destination, Regional specialisation in production
of industrial and agricultural products, etc. over the Indian space. Similarly, this section
tries to evaluate the role of commodity flow in development of India. It arrives on certain
conclusions, that industrial development has direct relationship with commodity flow, and
the role of urban-bias in development.
The last two chapters of this section try to evaluate the role of distance decay function in
commodity flows and bring out some interesting facts that in case of industrial products
the influence of factors other than distance seems to be greater, the distance decay act
over the commodity according to its final composition, and raw material has more
distance decay function than the processed products.
The name of the third section has been taken from the subtitle of the book i.e. commodity
flow and the regional structure of Indian economy, and as the name suggests in this
section authors have tried to analyze the manifestation of commodity flows over the
regions of Indian economy
The authors, in this section, have analyzed the strong upward flow of commodities from
rural to urban areas, while weak downward urban to rural flow. Also the weak role of
small towns as intermediaries have emphasized. With the analysis of Indian urban system
the authors found that the weakness of the Indian urban system lies on its significant
primary, weak secondary, and bloated tertiary sector based economy. It has also been
analysed that urban settlements with agricultural and household industries are more self
sufficient than industries based settlements. More shipments from mining areas suggest
that there is absence or weakness of links between extraction and secondary production
with the subset of towns. In urban system the dominance of metropolis are well marked,
but even within the limited system of metropolis, four metropolis recognised by Berry in
1966, i.e. Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, and Madras continue to play distorting role. The
metro poles share vertical relationship with poorly developed areas, and lateral with areas
of higher level of development.
In the case of inter-regional commodity flow, the analysis has shown that in most of the
commodities, the magnitude of intra-regional flow tend to significant as compared to the
total freight and attempts to analyse the inter-regional flow without considering the intra-
regional flow wouldn’t properly bring out the complexities of inter-region flow
phenomenon. With the help of the analysis, it has been shown that India can be divide
into seven prominent sub-groups with similar receipt characterises, and five group of
functional regions with high degree of similarities in their shipment patterns.
Finally to conclude the book, authors have added a concluding chapter on the findings of
this book with following three objectives-
1. To evaluate the success of the analysis done in the book, using empirical evidence
as a frame of analysis,
2. To re-evaluate some of the existing notion about the complexities of inter-regional
flow in the light of new evidence brought by analysis done in the book, and
 3. To analyse the weakness of study in answering some questions and to speculate
on future lines of research to further extend the frontier of analysis of inter-
regional commodity flows.

CONCLUSION
The basic striking point of this book is the vast empirical analysis done by the authors.
This is perhaps for the first time that such large commodity flow matrices have been
generated and used for analysis anywhere in the world. Also, in order to justify there
points, authors have taken the references of several similar kind of earlier Studies done
the field.
In spite of the above mentioned positiveness, this study has some shortcomings also, such
as:
1. The study have undertaken the commodity flow in accordance to the railways, but
railways presents more or less a case of intra-regional flow rather than inter-
regional flows, most of the movement takes place over shorter distances. Thus,
because of this shortcoming this study fails to provide an overall scenario of
commodity flows, and hence it is a very bold kind of study which presents a much
generalised picture of commodity flows.
2. Also, such kind of vast studies which requires large scale data gathering and
processing, which is not affordable to an individual or even group of researchers.
Thus, the funding problem is proved to be major hindrance in order to justify the
outcomes of the study in present scenario.
3. Some of its findings seem in applicable in present context, mainly because of the
advancement commenced in economic and transport sectors of India

But, even after the above mentioned shortcomings of the study, the one line which can be
expressed about this book is that, it is one of the ‘must read’ kind of books, in context to
understand the commodity flow in the Indian economy.