Article - 25 Week 34 ~ Theist in a Foxhole:

Article - 25 Week 34 ~ Theist in a Foxhole:

“As with the Rajput or Mughal courts,chronic intrigues and sycophancy had also corroded the motivations of the officers in the government and even in business. Sincere, able and honest ,officers were undermined and superseded by others with greater charm, connections, manners, and flattery. Truth was not welcome and the bearers of bad news, as in most despotic societies, often faced ridicule or punishment. It was much easier to find excuses and to blame others or to fatalistically surrender to destiny.”  Murad Ali Baig, Journalist, in his book “History, Mythology & Religion”


Indian shipping industry rolls itself in the cultural mud of mediocrity. MSC Chitra’s floundering & leaking, MbPT gas leaks, a near stagnant home tonnage, and the ever shrinking global job pie for the Indian seamen and marine professionals are not really as dreadful as the manner in which they are handled and given directions to. Are we in a foxhole?



We have fallen into the habit of worshiping the hero and bashing the fallen – never looking at the chains that bind the fallen or at times unleash a hero. We need to appreciate the difference between management & managers, administration & administrators, bureaucracy and bureaucrats, governance and politicians. Despite the apparent close interlinks, former is mostly immune to the later. The former is like the software in the system. If this software or the processing method is faulty, the quality of the hardware - the people behind the system - can seldom do any thing outstanding. Paradoxically, we are a nation of brilliant bureaucrats, technocrats, political philosophers, politicians, administrators, managers, and entrepreneurs with a naked manifestation of demented & rotten bureaucracy, debased politics, inept administration, mediocre management system, and a grinding vacuum in entrepreneurial adventures.

Where do you think we have gone are wrong? It’s our obsession with hero or raja worshipping to the point of believing them to be infallible and having the ability to solve all our problems. Be it a Manmohan Singh, a Sonia, a Tendulkar, a Sridharan, a Jagmohan or Abdul Kalam Azad. They are merely individual brilliances who represent an infinitesimal fraction of our collective creativity. These brilliances in fact mislead us into believing that all wrongs can be righted when we would have sufficient such individuals at the helm of affairs - as if in a dream sequence. So we wait agonizingly with our usual rant, rave and blather of witch-hunting.

Though serendipity could be a surprise guest in the avatar of a few heroes who could break the shackles, our high expectations would guide us no where. Pragmatism is the need of the day – not idealism and shallow dreams. Our system stinks. It’s winding, callous, unresponsive, unaccountable, manipulative, complex, hidden behind crafty words, primitive, wasteful, unjust, unfair, exploitative, anti-citizen, hubristic, and in one simple word ‘dumb’. Putting a bunch of smart pundits in a dumb kingdom, converts the pundits not the kingdom. The pundits draw their sustenance from the dumb kingdom. It is time as Indian citizens, we ask questions at the system not the mandarins who run it. Questions as to why the system of administration in the Shipping Ministry, DG Shipping, Customs, Port Authorities and myriad such institutions should not be dismantled and replaced with effective ones? Are these institutional frameworks and systems not part of our key infrastructure? When we are spending billions on physical infrastructure why can’t we change these key areas of infrastructure that needs no such humongous investment?

Alas! All we would be slapped with would be another lazy cow called ‘ Ministry Of Administrative Reforms’! Can we have such honest cogs as agility, nimbleness, fairness, justice, responsiveness, progressiveness, simplicity, directness, transparency, accountability, public welfare and pragmatism in building our institutional infrastructure?

Draft

Article - 24 Week 33

HOW OUR ADMINISTRATION CRIPPLES US: 

The cost of bad administrative system in our country is not only 'all brakes and no accelerator' on our economy & life in general; but also a disturbing menace to our planet earth. India grows when the government sleeps and when government wakes up the planet earth shudders. This has been statistically & empirically proven yet again. Let's take the example of the ecological disaster of the leaking MSC Chitra that has shaken Mumbai's population and our small shipping industry. Let's ignore the causes and focus on how we have responded, post collision.

First : Stop all shipping traffic to JNP & MbPT

Second : Confused acts and hollow words of calm

Third : Wait for things to happen, while not containing damage

Was it really necessary to stop all traffic movements in the channel and approaches paralyzing the trade? The argument pushed by the authorities is that the floating containers might have sunk in the channels & blocked the passage. Let's assume that the complete channel is filled with sunk containers. Containers can not stand vertically in the channel, because it would be unstable to stay that way. If really a few malicious containers, out of the reported 200, decide to sleep or swim in a few square meters of the  channel when millions of square Kilometers are open to them, that would amount to a risk of a probability of 1 to a million - needle in a hay stack. Even then, all the poor containers can claim are only 2.43 meters of height from the bottom. The chances of them floating like submarines makes them more benign anyway with their mass neutered by by floatation in a moving tidal water. If 12.5 meters navigable depth was available, we could reduce this to 10.07 meters and allow navigation. Why stop completely?

The maximum weight of a container is about 29 Tons and average weight about 15T. When submerged in water, buoyancy would negate this by the volume of the cargo & the net of the container volume too. What harm could this submerged 29T container do to a mass of 30,000 T giant moving at maneuvering speed? It is like those stories about how the big whales used to collide with sailing ships, when Lord Neptune was upset!

How long does it take to take a few boats to echo sound the channel any way? Echo sounders are fitted on all vessels and even boats. It's cheap and uncomplicated matter. This stopping of navigation for so many days just tells us how our administration works. Insensitivity, inaction, and indecisions are the hallmarks of our babudum. Add a pinch of politics and there you have a desi recipe of muted public suffering, agony and an ecological disaster. Since the little Indian can not question the government that stays miles away from us, he has no where to run except his God. I wish the government had gone off to sleep during this period and God stayed awake! We are already severely pained by the resulting pollution on the coastal life and the diet of millions of people. Seizure of our vital port by such powerful stalling forces of the government was unwarranted & uncalled for. 

Coming to the drama on pollution, what prevented us from cordoning off the leaking ship with float-oil-barriers? In a tidal water the floats can be held in place by tug-boats.  Even ship's polypropylene ropes could be used as a temporary solution till arrival of the  foam-floats. Later the trapped oil could be sucked out by skimmer boats. Spraying neutralizing chemicals could have complemented this act. 

By allowing the oil to spread out, we have ballooned the containable problems into an ecological disaster. Ours was no high seas with heavy swell and winds like BP spilling. In a sheltered road with only the tide to fight, we could have contained the damage. 

Alas! The next legislation may stop all ships calling into Mumbai if they happen have bunkers onboard! 

Article - 23 Week 32

DIRT ON OUR PLATES: 

On a lazy Saturday morning, Khalijia-3 rams onto the soft belly of container vessel MSC Chitra on the doorsteps of JNPT & MbPT. Chitra sinks on the shallows leaking out tons of fuel oil and toppling nearly 200 containers into the waters, some containing highly contaminating chemicals & pesticides. This catastrophe comes on the heels of the toxic gas leaks in MbPT. If corruption, occasioned by our political and bureaucratic systems of the likes of CWG & Kalmadi  ruffled our moral edifice, the pollution of our dinner plates from the toxic marine life around Mumbai would surely ruffle our diet and impoverish the fisher folks.

Corruption eats up our morality and pollution eats up our food, water, & air. Interestingly both have a common God - our system of governance. Hanging Kalmadi will not stop the corruption machine. The system can produce many more Kalmadis. Similarly, finding a lone culprit in the Chitra & Khalijia-3 collision or the MbPT official who did not dispose of the toxic canisters in time and severely penalizing them shall not prevent future repeats. This cowboy justice system is meant to appease the gullible and perpetuate the ills of our system.

An accident of such gargantuan scale should not be construed as a negligent navigation alone. From various researches on the fields of such operational accidents, it has been observed that there are chains of multiple actors and actions leading to a proximate cause, that really tips the incidents into a giant accident. Our tendency to stay fixated on the proximate cause alone is another reason why we keep on repeating the same mistakes time & over again. Look at our rail accidents. A human negligence or a faulty signal does us in. After finding a scapegoat, investigations are initiated to last a life time. The press gives its cowboy verdict and the public is pacified until the next accident. The end result is that both the faulty system and the scapegoat escape unscathed. 

Prima facia news reports carry this trend. The witch hunting is on. The vessel owners  & the Masters are clearly the softest targets. JNPT & MbPT shall cannon accusations at each other. Coast Guard, anti-pollution departments in DGS & MMD, and many other hitherto unknown departments would indulge in an orgy of mud slinging. The Masters of both the vessels would be paraded into enquiry for months or years. Unlike Obama's direct imposition on BP in the USA, here tongues would wag to keep the drama alive. It is true that the negligence of the Masters of both the vessels, to various degrees, could have contributed to the disaster. However, there would be many more actors and actions in addition. Once the other actors and actions are zeroed down, we need to look into the process that induced the actions and the actors. It would be unfair and untimely to speculate at this point of time, since full facts are not yet known and what is known from the news reports are disjointed and patchy - mostly official versions. 

The concerns are not about the multitude of causes. The concerns are about who would look into them? Would it be a case of perpetrators investigating the perpetrations? The concerns are about knowing the deficiencies in our systems, so that corrections would take place. How are the traffic coordinated between JNPT & MbPT? How do the marine departments function? Do we have enough pilots? Do our marine departments work like independent islands in the midst of terminal operations? What is the average berth idling period between the time a vessel unmoors and the next one moors? How does the Traffic Control coordinate the vessel movements in the confined waters and beyond? Is it wise to have two independent Port Authorities - one in JNP & one in MbPT? Should they not have a common traffic control? Is it fair to drag the Masters to the Yellow Gate Police station while the Pilots go free? While the ship operators are paying a bomb to use the ports and their facilities including navigation (compared to any progressive civil societies in the world) can the Port Authorities escape all culpabilities in a case like this when their own pilots and traffic controls were virtually in total control of navigation of the vessels in question? Are the pilots accountable? How was Khalijia-3 fit to navigate after her massive repairs & who certified her seaworthiness? How are we geared to take a handle on urgent anti-pollution measures? What national legal frameworks does the Port Authority or Authorities in this case, have to get compensated in case of bunker spills? Who would be the nodal body to compensate third parties like the fisher folks, beach owners, and the public? Who would advocate for the fish and other marine life? 

A disaster is also an opportunity to set things right. This is possible if the right questions are asked. All the above questions may not be even pertinent to the chain of events leading to the proximate cause, but they can be used as tools to cleanse our system of dirt. Saving skin and blame games will further vilify & encrust the dirt within. It's time we learn to ask hard questions, because there is dirt on our dinner plates.

Article - 22 Week 31

Technology CHALLENGED: 

Our nation stands tall on new age technology. At least that's what the world thinks. And our nation's shipping industry  - specially the Customs' interface - bludgeons this very technology to a pain in the neck. Floppy drives & those boxy dot-matrix printers may be an extinct species else where in the world but they are lovingly nurtured & nourished in our Customs Departments. 2' wide and 3' long sheaths of punched papers groaning away laboriously under the tyranny of cantankerous dot-matrix machines and spitting out shreds of flying papers is a common scene in the offices of a shipping lines or their surveyors. As many as 8 to 12 gigantic copies (IGM) for each BL the country imports must be responsible for cutting down many innocent trees and greasing many greedy palms. Filing of the IGM is restricted to the end-carrier and the consignee's CHA has to run from forwarder to forwarder - assembling a collection of endorsements on the BL - before coming to the end-shipping line for delivery of his cargo. Nothing significant has changed in the last 10 years. And we need to force change - at least to stand in solidarity with the innocent green trees and the Little Indian's shriveling pockets.

Bangladesh had a  completely manual system of filing IGM till a couple of years back, when India had this half-hearted mediocre system. But today, their system is advanced. Filing IGM is a simple online task. Even the registered forwarders can do their filing and don't have to run to the shipping line. The shipping line can declare as per the MBL. You can even do an amendment at any stage online. The charges for the amendments are directly deducted from your account. There is no need to submit hardcopies to customs. You can take one printout for yourself if you like, or else you can always check it online. No stamping and no endorsements from window to window.  No need to grease palms for simple IGM filings or amendments. What a contrast to what we practice in Nhava Sheva and all other ports in India!

Not that you need a very high-end technology to automate these processes. A simple and relatively inexpensive database management system would do. Still this change is resisted with ferocious tenacity by the bureaucracy albeit nations's policy clearly stipulating computerization and cutting the face to face link of greasy palms. After years of struggle, when the SMTP process has been automated online, you still have to take a printout  and run for a rubber stamping in the bureau for Rs 50/ - not to overlook the fact of submitting sheathes of documents and under-the-table dirty cash to get yourself registered for online transaction. This is so disturbing to be pushed around this way for so long. Are we not brave enough to raise our voices ? Or have we condemned ourselves to be victims and tolerate things unflinchingly like cows?

Article - 21 Week 30

CAN'T WE BE PROUD OF OUR NATIONAL CARRIER?: 

A Singaporean is proud of NOL. A Chinese is proud of China Shipping and COSCO. A Malaysian is proud of MISC. And an Indian is ashamed of SCI. It is not a question of ownership by government, rather a question of our national pride, leaving aside the cliched national need, security of the future and blah blah. The tricky terrain here is  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 SCI and 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 would never go to the bottom of the problems. Eventually they would take off tangentially on some scapegoats to close the file and erase the public memory if any. A few near-innocents would be exemplarily sacrificed to mask the bloody face of our system. 

The system is such that even when you diligently stuff 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 diabolic 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 ever mounting dog-eared files. The files refuse to budge. It becomes self-protective and pragmatically right to hold back the files and thwart progress 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 or bribe) 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 wholesome cogs in a nasty wheel. The CAG findings are merely filing & documentary fissures, not the real problems. When you go deeper, you would bump across many holy names in many  insinuating ways and no single person shall be the sine qua non. So witch-hunting  is no solution to such ignominy. One witch shall replace another. 

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. Talking about our home truths, good performers are either ignored or punished by our system. The non-performers are rewarded with promotions, perks, increments, and bonuses on the basis of the sole criteria of the number of years in service and no adverse remarks in the HR files. Even the HR files can be cooked. In fact the performers tend to have immense chance of being in the wrong side of the HR file. It is a pseudo-egalitarian system. While performers and non-performers are measured on a slippery stick, heavily in favour of the non-performers giving it the mask of egalitarianism. Rigid caste or class(hierarchy) system within the government corporations 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 in spite of big time screw-ups - albeit both being graduates. This is accepted by all sections including the Unions. To simplify - government employees are by and large ghettoed into classes on the basis of an entry test that basically favours those with good English speaking or thinking aptitudes onto top castes and the native-educated ones are condemned to the bottom of the pyramid. Once indoctrinated into a caste there is perverted egalitarianism with absolutely nothing to differentiate between performers and non-performers. The faulty selection system (Mostly Ratta and vomiting back in English or its equivalent) is the foundation of the caste system and nothing significant matters after that. That's the reason we send our children to expensive English schools and prestigious colleges. Then we force them to bring good grades to secure good jobs. Getting a good job is like a happy-ending - like in our Bollywood movies when the lovers are finally united despite all odds. The fact is that life actually starts after the person gets job. And then the whole thing is bulldozed into sameness. This caste system is like the unsaid Manu Code in our government organizations - reverently unquestioned like a holy cow. 

The questions to ask here are :

1-  Is the Chairman of SCI selected basis his merit of running a company efficiently?

2 - How does he continue despite consistent poor performances?

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 other 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

1. Why did the consignee abandon his cargo?
2. 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 Nhava 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 84^th 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.

1. You just (out of the blues) gift Rs 1000/ to a Babu – it's not unlawful.
2. 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

HOW OUR ADMINISTRATION CRIPPLES US:

Article - 24 Week 33

HOW OUR ADMINISTRATION CRIPPLES US: 

The cost of bad administrative system in our country is not only 'all brakes and no accelerator' on our economy & life in general; but also a disturbing menace to our planet earth. India grows when the government sleeps and when government wakes up the planet earth shudders. This has been statistically & empirically proven yet again. Let's take the example of the ecological disaster of the leaking MSC Chitra that has shaken Mumbai's population and our small shipping industry. Let's ignore the causes and focus on how we have responded, post collision.

First : Stop all shipping traffic to JNP & MbPT

Second : Confused acts and hollow words of calm

Third : Wait for things to happen, while not containing damage

Was it really necessary to stop all traffic movements in the channel and approaches paralyzing the trade? The argument pushed by the authorities is that the floating containers might have sunk in the channels & blocked the passage. Let's assume that the complete channel is filled with sunk containers. Containers can not stand vertically in the channel, because it would be unstable to stay that way. If really a few malicious containers, out of the reported 200, decide to sleep or swim in a few square meters of the  channel when millions of square Kilometers are open to them, that would amount to a risk of a probability of 1 to a million - needle in a hay stack. Even then, all the poor containers can claim are only 2.43 meters of height from the bottom. The chances of them floating like submarines makes them more benign anyway with their mass neutered by by floatation in a moving tidal water. If 12.5 meters navigable depth was available, we could reduce this to 10.07 meters and allow navigation. Why stop completely?

The maximum weight of a container is about 29 Tons and average weight about 15T. When submerged in water, buoyancy would negate this by the volume of the cargo & the net of the container volume too. What harm could this submerged 29T container do to a mass of 30,000 T giant moving at maneuvering speed? It is like those stories about how the big whales used to collide with sailing ships, when Lord Neptune was upset!

How long does it take to take a few boats to echo sound the channel any way? Echo sounders are fitted on all vessels and even boats. It's cheap and uncomplicated matter. This stopping of navigation for so many days just tells us how our administration works. Insensitivity, inaction, and indecisions are the hallmarks of our babudum. Add a pinch of politics and there you have a desi recipe of muted public suffering, agony and an ecological disaster. Since the little Indian can not question the government that stays miles away from us, he has no where to run except his God. I wish the government had gone off to sleep during this period and God stayed awake! We are already severely pained by the resulting pollution on the coastal life and the diet of millions of people. Seizure of our vital port by such powerful stalling forces of the government was unwarranted & uncalled for. 

Coming to the drama on pollution, what prevented us from cordoning off the leaking ship with float-oil-barriers? In a tidal water the floats can be held in place by tug-boats.  Even ship's polypropylene ropes could be used as a temporary solution till arrival of the  foam-floats. Later the trapped oil could be sucked out by skimmer boats. Spraying neutralizing chemicals could have complemented this act. 

By allowing the oil to spread out, we have ballooned the containable problems into an ecological disaster. Ours was no high seas with heavy swell and winds like BP spilling. In a sheltered road with only the tide to fight, we could have contained the damage. 

Alas! The next legislation may stop all ships calling into Mumbai if they happen have bunkers onboard! 

DIRT ON OUR PLATES:

DIRT ON OUR PLATES: 

On a lazy Saturday morning, Khalijia-3 rams onto the soft belly of container vessel MSC Chitra on the doorsteps of JNPT & MbPT. Chitra sinks on the shallows leaking out tons of fuel oil and toppling nearly 200 containers into the waters, some containing highly contaminating chemicals & pesticides. This catastrophe comes on the heels of the toxic gas leaks in MbPT. If corruption, occasioned by our political and bureaucratic systems of the likes of CWG & Kalmadi  ruffled our moral edifice, the pollution of our dinner plates from the toxic marine life around Mumbai would surely ruffle our diet and impoverish the fisher folks.

Corruption eats up our morality and pollution eats up our food, water, & air. Interestingly both have a common God - our system of governance. Hanging Kalmadi will not stop the corruption machine. The system can produce many more Kalmadis. Similarly, finding a lone culprit in the Chitra & Khalijia-3 collision or the MbPT official who did not dispose of the toxic canisters in time and severely penalizing them shall not prevent future repeats. This cowboy justice system is meant to appease the gullible and perpetuate the ills of our system.

An accident of such gargantuan scale should not be construed as a negligent navigation alone. From various researches on the fields of such operational accidents, it has been observed that there are chains of multiple actors and actions leading to a proximate cause, that really tips the incidents into a giant accident. Our tendency to stay fixated on the proximate cause alone is another reason why we keep on repeating the same mistakes time & over again. Look at our rail accidents. A human negligence or a faulty signal does us in. After finding a scapegoat, investigations are initiated to last a life time. The press gives its cowboy verdict and the public is pacified until the next accident. The end result is that both the faulty system and the scapegoat escape unscathed. 

Prima facia news reports carry this trend. The witch hunting is on. The vessel owners  & the Masters are clearly the softest targets. JNPT & MbPT shall cannon accusations at each other. Coast Guard, anti-pollution departments in DGS & MMD, and many other hitherto unknown departments would indulge in an orgy of mud slinging. The Masters of both the vessels would be paraded into enquiry for months or years. Unlike Obama's direct imposition on BP in the USA, here tongues would wag to keep the drama alive. It is true that the negligence of the Masters of both the vessels, to various degrees, could have contributed to the disaster. However, there would be many more actors and actions in addition. Once the other actors and actions are zeroed down, we need to look into the process that induced the actions and the actors. It would be unfair and untimely to speculate at this point of time, since full facts are not yet known and what is known from the news reports are disjointed and patchy - mostly official versions. 

The concerns are not about the multitude of causes. The concerns are about who would look into them? Would it be a case of perpetrators investigating the perpetrations? The concerns are about knowing the deficiencies in our systems, so that corrections would take place. How are the traffic coordinated between JNPT & MbPT? How do the marine departments function? Do we have enough pilots? Do our marine departments work like independent islands in the midst of terminal operations? What is the average berth idling period between the time a vessel unmoors and the next one moors? How does the Traffic Control coordinate the vessel movements in the confined waters and beyond? Is it wise to have two independent Port Authorities - one in JNP & one in MbPT? Should they not have a common traffic control? Is it fair to drag the Masters to the Yellow Gate Police station while the Pilots go free? While the ship operators are paying a bomb to use the ports and their facilities including navigation (compared to any progressive civil societies in the world) can the Port Authorities escape all culpabilities in a case like this when their own pilots and traffic controls were virtually in total control of navigation of the vessels in question? Are the pilots accountable? How was Khalijia-3 fit to navigate after her massive repairs & who certified her seaworthiness? How are we geared to take a handle on urgent anti-pollution measures? What national legal frameworks does the Port Authority or Authorities in this case, have to get compensated in case of bunker spills? Who would be the nodal body to compensate third parties like the fisher folks, beach owners, and the public? Who would advocate for the fish and other marine life? 

A disaster is also an opportunity to set things right. This is possible if the right questions are asked. All the above questions may not be even pertinent to the chain of events leading to the proximate cause, but they can be used as tools to cleanse our system of dirt. Saving skin and blame games will further vilify & encrust the dirt within. It's time we learn to ask hard questions, because there is dirt on our dinner plates.

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine
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