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

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