Padma Multipurpose Bridge

In News

• Bangladesh’s Padma Multipurpose Bridge was recently inaugurated.

More about Padma Multipurpose Bridge:

• The Padma Multipurpose Bridge is a multipurpose road-rail bridge across the Padma River in Bangladesh.
• It connects to Shariatpur and Madaripur, linking the southwest of the country, to the northern and eastern regions. 
• The Padma Bridge is considered to be the biggest and most challenging infrastructure asset ever created in Bangladesh. 
• Significance:
  • Characteristics:
    • The main bridge is 6.15 km long — 9.83 km in all, including the road and rail viaducts at the two ends — and 21.65 m wide. 
    • It is high enough for the largest vessels to pass underneath.
  • Distance:
    • It will dramatically cut the road distance between Dhaka and cities to its west such as Khulna, Jessore, and Barisal. 
    • Once the railway line on the bridge is opened, Dhaka could come within three-and-a-half hours of Kolkata.
      • It will potentially revolutionize trade and communication with India.
  • Economic:
    • The bridge is expected to give an unprecedented boost to communications, trade, and the economy of Bangladesh as a whole.
    • GDP growth:
      • The government estimates GDP to increase by 1.23 percent.
  • Connectivity:
    • By providing road and rail links between the country’s relatively less-developed southwest and the more developed east, the bridge will lead to greater integration of regional markets.
  • Construction:
    • The Padma Bridge has been built by the China Major Bridge Engineering Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Railway Group.

Padma River:

• The Padma is a major river in Bangladesh. 
• It is the main distributary of the Ganges.
• The Padma River is known for heavy bank erosion, shifting channels, and sandbars that continually emerge in its course. 
• Origin & course:
  • The Ganges branches into two distributaries, the Hooghly and the Padma at Giria in the Murshidabad district of India.
  • The Padma enters Bangladesh from India near Nawabganj and meets the Jamuna (the name of the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh) near Aricha and retains its name.
  • It then meets with the Meghna near Chandpur and adopts the name “Meghna”.
• Tributaries: 
  • Its main tributary is the Mahananda.
  • Its principal distributary is the Madhumati (called the Garai in its upper course). 
• Mouth:  
  • Bay of Bengal
• Issues due to Farakka Barrage:
  • After the construction of the Farakka Barrage on the Ganges River in West Bengal, the maximum flows in the Padma River were reduced significantly. 
  • The flow reduction caused many problems in Bangladesh: 
    • Loss of fish species,
    • Drying of Padma’s distributaries,
    • Increased saltwater intrusion from the Bay of Bengal,
    • Damage to the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans.

Source: PIB