Vizhinjam set to celebrate its storied past

The Hindu

29-04-2025

Vizhinjam has a venerable past with its history of maritime trade dating back to the second century BCE. Once again the old maritime hub is in the news with the Vizhinjam international seaport set to be commissioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.
It is believed that Vizhinjam was developed into a small port by Raja Kesavadas, who was the Diwan of Travancore during the reign of Dharma Raja Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma. However, the idea for a modern port at Vizhinjam was first mooted by Diwan Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer when he was the Diwan of erstwhile Travancore State.
British engineer
The survey was carried out in themid-1940s and was led by a British engineer who arrived in Travancore to study the sea at Vizhinjam and its shore. A Vizhinjam Harbour Special Section was founded in 1946 under the airport division of the Public Works department at the time. However, the work got stalled when the country earned independence.
However, as the commissioning of the port approaches, it seems that the authorities have forgotten the initial group who did the survey for developing Vizhinjam into a major seaport. G.G. Menon of Thiruvananthapuram, an engineer who retired from the Kerala Public Works department (PWD) and turns 103 next month, was part of the team of engineers who started the survey in the 1940s for Vizhinjam's development into a seaport as per orders of Ramaswamy Iyer.
As the seaport is now getting ready for its commissioning, the only voice which remembers the arduous task the team undertook in the mid-40s to carry out the survey by going into the sea in small catamarans with imported instruments is forgotten. Speaking to The Hindu Sasikumar Menon, his son, said no one from the State government has contacted him or invited him to the opening ceremony.
According to Mr. Menon, Ramaswamy Iyer perceived the possibility of a commercial seaport at Vizhinjam with even plans to link the Vellayani lake to the port with a channel. The survey team in which Mr. Menon was a part travelled the length and breadth of the sea in the region in small boats to survey the depth and tide variations up to one nautical mile as part of preparing layout, water availability, and other details. Though the project was dropped by the then government and the officers in the Harbour Division were relocated to other departments, it gained momentum again in 1995 when the then government took an initiative to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Kumar Energy Corporation, a Hyderabad-based company, for the development of a port on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis.
Cancelled later
It was also cancelled later. A decade after this, a feasibility study was conducted again in 2004, and it was decided to build a port at Vizhinjam, adjacent to the existing fishing harbour. Based on the study, the first global bid was floated in 2005, although the bid was not successful due to security reasons. Later, bids were floated again in 2007, 2010, and finally in 2014, which paved the way for Vizhinjam to turn into a transshipment hub to transform the whole nation, marking its own space in the global maritime trade.