Our Coastal Shipping: (7)
A Critical Look At Our Transhipment Policy
I read a story in 1980. A rich African chief wanted to be famous. He called one big consultant from Europe for the job. The project was presented to the chief on nearly 300 pages of documents with expensive leather covers. Then the consultant rigged a big bamboo tower on a river with a huge plastic ball filled with stones to create the biggest splash in the world, in front of a huge crowd of reporters (specially brought in by him). The project's cost was 5 million dollars, those days. The chief & his people were very happy with the glorious outcome of this project.
Our government's consultants were Dutch Frederic R Harris. Our polity & bureaucracy wanted a mega transhipment port in Vallarpadam & the consultants were paid to validate it at any cost. No bidder displayed any serious interest in this imbecile drama except 'P &O' who had their hands full in Nhava Sheva, Colombo, Chennai, & Mundra. It was strategic for them to remove this irritation & partake in the orgy too. Being the sole bidder, they had a five years right to honeymoon on the old port & further more usage of the port equipments, with a few noodle-strap strings attached, like a pittance of a penalty of 10 Crores on defaults on a mega project of 1200 Crores.
Transhipment is an uncalled-for, dumb & passive activity. Direct calls reduce costs and transit times. We need efficient transport systems from places of excess production to places of consumption. By arbitrarily developing a big transport system, defying the above logic, shall not make a consuming place – a producing place or vice versa. To pledge to become a great transhipment port sounds like a pledge to stay dumb on the macro context of the nation. There is nothing wrong with the drafts, facilities, or capacities - current & future, in Vizag, Mundra, Chennai or Nhava Sheva. A few metres can always be dredged to accommodate Suezmax or even Malaccamax vessels and box handling areas can be increased with a cost. The reason why so many big main line ships do not call these ports is that the volumes are insufficient – not because of drafts or port facilities. Since there is not enough volume to bring in a direct call, it makes commercial sense to collect volumes into a doable frequent lots and send that on a small vessel, just sufficient for the collected lot. It makes sense to build a doable lot in a port with captive import & export volumes like Nhava Sheva or Chennai to get at the advantage of the economy of scale for transhipment or distribution hub. Look at what China has done to Shanghai or Shenzen for transhipment. Trying to do that in Vallarpadam with politically, spiced bravado of utter ignorance is an impeccable recipe of failure right from the word 'go'. We need transhipments for old handicapped ports like Kolkata, Haldia, Kandla or even Kochi itself (handicapped by anti-market & anti-people ideologies and having small volumes of exports/imports) from bigger ports like Nhava Sheva or Chennai – not the other way round. We need to build or expand port facilities where we need them – not develop ports like Vallarpadam & expect industries to come there for the captive cargo or transhipment.
Vallarpadam Mega-project is a thunderous and putrid degasification of an irresponsible & megalomaniac bureaucracy & polity belching out the stench of unaccountability on a bloated diet of little Indian's sweatshop. A political cheap gimmick: Vallarpadam is a bad dream. Millions of dollars be it private or public, are being poured into this leaky bucket. The home truths about Cochin: Cancerous Unions, insignificant local import & export volumes to assist in economy of scale, improbability of hinterland industrialization due the perverted anti-market and anti-people ideologies, illogical idea of feeding from small port to large port rather than large to small, a perennial & costly need to continuously dredge the silting, shelving & politicizing the 'Sethusamudram Project'.
We depend on Singapore or Colombo - not because of physical infrastructure or geographical advantage alone, but because of efficiency & cost. If we can develop similar if not same, efficiency and cost for the transhipment of containers in Ennore, Tuticorin, Nhava Sheva, Mundra or Vizag, irrespective of domestic or international, we shall not only reduce costs of transports but also spruce up Indian national tonnage & coastal shipping. Geographical advantage of Vallarpadam, Vizhinjam or Colachal as promulgated by many is just an excuse to hide our own incompetence. Even Chennai, Ennore or Tuticorin have similar geographic convenience without the other out-weighing baggage.
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