Article - 21 Week 30
WE DESERVE TO BE PROUD OF OUR NATIONAL CARRIER:
The Singaporeans are proud of NOL. The Chinese are proud of China Shipping and COSCO. Shamefully, no Indian is proud of SCI. It is not a question of ownership by government, rather questions of management with clarity, responsibility, accountability and essentially misplaced incentive systems.
TOI reported last week " The CBI recently charge sheeted four senior officials of Shipping Corporation of India and partner at shipping agency JM Baxi for causing loss….According to CBI the loss to SCI would runs into Crores….."
My constructs should not be construed as a defense for the people allegedly involved in the wrong doings, in both from SCI or Baxi. SCI is a PSU and Baxi is one of the oldest agency houses in India. The Press report is just a kowtow of the official locus standee. CAG or CBI can never go to the bottom of the problems. Eventually they would take off tangentially on some scapegoats to please the public. A few near-innocents would be exemplarily sacrificed to mask the bloody face of our system. The system is such that even when you fully man it with characters like the mythically honest Harishchandras, the touch of the the Dracula's teeth (our bureaucratic system), would transform the Harishchandras into the Laloos & the Pawars with unthinkable ease. There are huge disincentives and tremendous incentives in plunging into corrupt ways in our system. The system just can't work cleanly or efficiently. Heavily dependent on processes and with complete distrust on the people who work for it, the checks & balances churn mountains of hierarchies, approvals, unions, procedures, check lists, notifications, and dog-eared files. The files refuse to budge. It becomes self-protective and pragmatically right to hold back the files than push them forward. Pushing them forward entails huge risks to the person sticking his head out. The only way we can get things done by some one in government is when the incentives offered (we call it corruption) far outweigh the risks. Risks are further reduced when agency contracts of SCI are wrenched out by people with connections. If things go wrong, there would be people in high positions, who can protect the wrong-doers. That is how the system works. The people are the just the cogs in the wheel. The CAG findings are merely filing & documentary fissures, not the real problems. When you go deeper, you would bump across many names in many ways and no one name shall be the sine qua non. So witch-hunting is no solution to such ignominy. There are strong contemporary views that the government in general should not do business. That is not entirely true either. In countries like Singapore and even (a few) China the government-run corporations are mostly more efficient and profitable than the private corporations.
Good performers are either ignored or punished by our system. The non-performers are rewarded with promotions, perks, increments, and bonuses with the sole criteria of the number of years in service and no adverse remarks in the HR files. In fact the performers tend to have immense chance of being in the bad books. It is a pseudo-egalitarian system. While performers and non-performers are measured on a stick heavily in favour of the non-performers giving it the mask of egalitarianism, rigid caste(hierarchy) system within the government system makes it impossible for lower grade workers to draw incentives in line with the higher officials. One a peon always a peon with paltry remuneration & once an IAS officer always a big officer with the best of incentives - albeit both being graduates. The mere faulty selection system (Mostly Ratta and vomiting back) is the foundation of the caste system. This caste system is like the unsaid Mannu Code - unquestioned like a holy cow.
The questions to ask are :
1- Is the Chairman of SCI selected basis his merit of running a company efficiently?
2 - How does he continue despite consistent poor performance?
3 - Does he have a really free hand in decision making?
4 - Does he have to keep the Politicians personally appeased?
5 - Can the same person be the Chairman and Managing Director?
6 - Then who is he accountable to and in what manners?
7 - How are the performances rewarded?
8 - How are the non-performers dealt with?
9 - Does SCI follow industry norms like private shipping companies in awarding agency contracts?
10 - What is the wisdom of engaging agents in Indian Ports and ICDs where the company is overflowing with non-floating staff?
11 - Whether the mission of the company is to serve the nation or serve it's office bearers and politicians (To siphon funds in all possible manners)?
It's time we stop punishing scapegoats and demand honest answers to simple questions in our minds.
Article - 20 Week 29
BLOOD IN YOUR HANDS:
Chlorine gas leaks from MbPT. Spews out a blanket of death-gas on an unsuspecting sleeping neighborhood. Though criminally & ecologically sinister in its evolution and effect, it scarcely evokes any genuine surprise or anger to find fault and seek remedy. Aren't we too insensitive to such problems, after what we have experienced in Bhopal tragedy, the ICD fires in Tughlakabad, the frequent fires in port warehouses and buildings and the great shockers of 26/11 and serials blasts? We don't even murmur about the dirty beaches around Mumbai pelted with oil spills. They kill our marine life, specially fish and make our beach experiences repugnant.
Interestingly the perpetrators of such man-made ecological debauchery are unseen and unheard. All we consume and believe are the stories on the scapegoats like Warren Anderson or extended foreign hands. No doubt these scapegoats had a small role to play. But who are the real killers of our ecology and lives?
Our bureaucracy is the real vampire. Behind its iron curtain, all the rights are wrong and all the wrongs are right. The Chlorine gas containers have been lying unclaimed close to a decade in MbPT. The question to ask are
- Why did the consignee abandon his cargo?
- Why was the cargo not auctioned off for so long?
The answers to these questions would reveal the vampire (system, not people or scapegoats) behind the government administration. The press is in connivance with the babus, in witch-hunting to find a scapegoat to appease the public. What ISPS, or another safety manager, or a more stringent procedure of handling DG cargo can do to avert such lapses? These issues have no remote pertinence or relevance to the causation of this calamity.
MbPT is one of the most rogue ports in India, even dwarfing Kolkata Port Trust by miles. Every fibre of human transaction is notoriously corrupt in the port. To make matters more painful, the rules and tariffs continue to be downright unfair and unjust since the British Raj. The enormous staff strength in the port do nothing productive, except finding novel ways to block businesses. The customs and many other ghoulish departments are treasure hunters, desperately skimming in the orgy of under-the-table extortions on fallen victims. During Nhava Sheva's epileptic seizure in the monsoon of 2007, many containers, destined for ICDs and Navava Sheva local discharge, were force-landed in MbPT. It was a death trap. The complicity of the bureaucratic processes and under-the-table orgies, made it nearly impossible to transship back the containers to their right destinations. By the time you could amass a mountain of NOCs from all possible departments and sub-departments by greasing a chain of greedy & hungry palms, you frustratingly realize that six months have elapsed.
MbPT computes storage and many other funny charges on both the containers and it's cargo, based on its invoiced price that grows exponentially gigantic after every slab of periods. After six months of rotting in the docks, the real value of the cargo is no match to the port bills - and not to forget the import duty and additional costs of palm greasing and clearing. The poor consignee has no option but to abandon his cargo in desperation. The shipping line is the next victim to pay up or else all its operations and assets in the port are seized. The shipping line is held completely liable for all costs, while having no title or lien over the cargo, in practice. The control always stays with the port and the customs. The process of auction is so slow, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair that it seldom takes place. (If it happens all proceeds are usurped by the customs & port. The deficit is again billed to the shipping line.) As the days pass, the liabilities mount in size and menace. Shipping line has no option but to vigorously grease palms to recover last vestige of its loose assets and suspend operations thereafter. Unfortunately, our courts have given some judgements in favour of the Port in some distant past that stands uncontested for obvious reasons of fragility of justice to the people of our country.
Predictably enough, the witch-hunting is on, in the case of gas leak in MbPT. Now all evidences are being gathered by the press to demonize the poor consignee. If that fails they would gun for the shipping line. It's time we the people of the nation, call a spade a spade. The DG office overlooks the clumsy MbPT premises and it is time we raise our voices to the fact that they do not look over the vampire by fixing some scapegoats in MbPT. They need to expose the system to the public rather than gloss over it by finding scapegoats to appease us.
Article - 19 Week 28
INDIAN PORTS and PARASITES:
My last week's visit to the soulless corridors of Bangladesh's bureaucracy was a stark reminder of our wretched past & murky present. The menacingly stained buck teeth sputtering on the blood red pan-chewed visceral of the seat of power, spewed out intractable injunctions with an authority of a despotic god, while the guilty eyes constantly fidgeted on the mountains of documents in cheap brown folders for initialing the death warrants on the freedom of the starved.
However, more than that it was a humbling experience to see a young nation's pace of change that dwarfs ours in matters of administration. Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) manages its terminals by private stevedores in a formula, patronizingly called '4+1'. Four terminals are manned by one private stevedore. This fosters competition and does away with the scourge of union blackmailing. It was so efficient that they could touch 450 moves per crane per day – surpassing the productivity of even JNP. Ironically, the country's judiciary has recently put a spanner in the spokes by banning the private stevedores in the port. The port is grinding back to a slow & inept avatar of our Kolkata port.
*The long queue of desperate job seekers outside and relatively well-off workers inside the ports holding the nation to ransom and depriving the way to desperately needy job seekers.
Look at our terminals. They hold on to every thing including own workers. Then they forget the art of managing them. All kinds of unions try to enter in. Political parties, from village to state levels, butt in. The underworld too finds a foothold. The result is what we saw in GTI. The cancer that was benign till now, starts mutating into malignancy. It is so unfair that when there are millions of educated and semi-educated desperate job seekers trying to settle for a job at one fifth of the wages earned by a terminal worker, the legitimacy of stratospheric salary & bonuses of these workers are being justified by the industry think-tanks. Such perversions impoverish the House Of Want of many at the cost of vulgarly enriching the House Of Have of a few. They hold the nation to ransom for their own selfish ends. Apparent justice to few at the cost of injustice to many is naked injustice.
The innovation by CPA might have had a nasty bump in recent times. But the fruits of efficiency in the port in the past still linger in the psyche of the people. This is creating a big public awareness and very soon the tide of people's nostalgia shall force the bureaucracy & polity to mend their ways. Unfortunately for us, we have not experienced such efficiencies in our ports any where in the past. Therefore, our complacency would do no good to force change from within. The only way we can bring about positive and constructive change is by learning to articulate and discuss openly the evils in the system – eating us from within – rather than the frivolous issues remote from the fundamentals of our industry.
Article - 18 Week 27
'COO' way is a cool way:
It's a titillating & refreshing change to see the prospects of a highly paid expat COO to run Air India. After all we have seen what the expat coaches have done to our Indian cricket team. Why is SCI waiting for a 7226 Crores in loss to justify that? JNPT, CONCOR, CWC, and many others hiding under state monopoly – direct or indirect - need a similar dosage of vitamins – at least with desi COOs. These COOs have to break down the brittle walls of Indian bureaucracy to keep their take-homes as elastic as the numbers they churn out, every financial. The culture of no or low decisions, lethargy, nepotism, and connections would come on their ways for sure.
This change process can not happen until public opinion is highly polarized as in the case of Air India. Unlike Air India, SCI or JNP are not that broad and direct to the public glare. We hope that in order for changes to come here, Air India may well provide a trigger that works at policies in general that would trickle down to our industry. People from outside would find it easier and simpler to break down the uneven & rigid systems rather than people from within. The people from outside are not tied to the system till retirement. They have nothing to fear from within the system. As long as they can crunch the right numbers at the end of the financial year, their interests are safe and secure. On the contrary, the people from within are so tied to the system that any change they try to bring in, makes their position more vulnerable and unstable. If they push themselves to the edge of enforcing changes they are eventually edged out unceremoniously. As is universally true, real changes can only be brought about fruitfully by outsiders – more so for Indian bureaucracy.
The first thing the decision makers would find a challenge is the 'check' element on the outside COO. What if he misuses his powers? Then, there would be a plethora of new rules and regulations to tie his hands down. The incoming COO has to negotiate for his freedom and also find ways of jumping the strictures where he can't manage straight. That's would be the beginning of an era of trust & accountability - away from the intractable whirlpool of 'checks & balance' that devours every bit productivity to utter wastefulness.
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Article - 17 Week 26
A Consignment Of Guilt:
We can not but stare straight at the heartbreaking stories of 'blatantly corruption, cronyism, and shoddy connections in our shipping industry. Without going into details much further, we are a nation, branded 84th in the list of corrupt nations – even behind Burkina Faso (78th) with a GDP(PPP) of a mere 1100$. We need not hide behind the make-believe walls of denial from the condescending glares of the global community. We need not hang our heads in shame when pushed to confront the naked lacerations of our corrupt practices. Let's first try to comprehend from bottom up rather than top down.
- You just (out of the blues) gift Rs 1000/ to a Babu – it's not unlawful.
- You request a Babu to pass your file – it's not unlawful.
However, when you combine (A) & (B) it certainly is corruption!! How can two innocent acts when combined result in Corruption? You may contend on the line of intentions. But then the intentions never change, except the degrees. (A) may have been unrelated to (B) in isolation: But it has a distant and distinct leaning of bending the Babu's judgments. After all, there can be no justification of being altruistic to a well-fed Babu, when we have millions of real poor men. And requesting the Babu has its intents represented – loud and clear. The paradox appears to be a real one, until we leave the third interested party in the transaction – that is the Government, the service provider. The Babu gets paid by the government to pass your file. You pay a fee, however nominal or indirect it may be, to pass your file. The Babu's salary and therefore his incentive come from the fees you pay to the government.
Let's say he duly passes your files on time without taking any direct incentive or inducement from you. The government system does not give him any extra incentive – even in the form of appreciation – to the Babu for doing his duty diligently. If you do something mischievous after getting your file passed and it comes to light, the Babu is unceremoniously questioned, and is made to prove his judgment in passing the file. That's no mean task, because he could not have read your evil mind and its intentions out of millions of possibilities, when he passed the file. In other words, the Babu's sincere work has punished him in an extremely harsh manner. Let's say he just sits on the file and does not pass – while accepting no further inducement from you. He gets his salary on time. He has no risk of getting into answering his judgment and suffers. He is not asked to explain, why he did not pass the file with utmost honesty and in a reasonable
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