Dear Sir Mohandas,
The resonation of your name to the father of our nation coupled with your exalted position as the father of our poor shipping industry is a chronically compelling reason for me to pour my heart out to you in all its earnest. At a time, when the people of the nation have lost all hopes in the politicians, who blatantly & routinely rob them with incidents like CWG & rotting grains and food inflation, etc they have somewhat high expectations from brilliant bureaucrats like you who could make a difference to their lives.
Sir, you must be fully aware of the reasons of MbPT gas leakage. This is no rocket science. Dangerous cargo should be given direct delivery to the consignee in his factory and not kept in the port warehouses, if the warehouse does not have the facility to store them. Permissions are required prior unloading of such cargo. Since, permissions were granted and the cargo in question was kept in MbPT warehouse, it is clear that at least on paper MbPT had all facilities & precautions in place. And we all know the big disconnect between what we have on paper and what what happens on the ground in all government departments. So it must have been a bad idea to store such cargo in the first place and direct delivery to the factory would have been a prudent idea - of course under Customs Bond. Customs need not act like bandits by blocking the cargo to exact the duties right inside the ports. The importer can not run away like those old days. Sir, this is exactly how it is done in many other countries. But in our country, all ports are flooded with such dangerous cargo including some nuclear wastes Sir, if some Newspaper reports are to be believed.
So my question to you Sir : Why can we not have a system of correcting such missives in the future? This is simple if we make dangerous cargo of a real threatening nature as direct delivery only. The importer should be given the liberty of a Customs Bond till his factory, until pays the duty. The port can have a private escort system in such bad cases. But I heard that an expert panel has changed the Shipping Policy so that no warehouse can be built in port land, and shopping malls, cyber cafes, and health clubs should replace the warehouses. Sir, the port is meant for cargo handling & distribution and not shopping malls & discotheques. Sir, these days cyber cafes are going extinct with the arrival of 3G etc. Please, tell the expert panel that they can shift their shopping malls close to where they are staying, not where we are doing our daily business. It’s our daily bread, Sir. If toxic gas leaked in MbPT, the warehouses had no misdeeds. The system and the people goofed up. So, you can advise the expert panelists to please spare the poor warehouses, who had no hand at all in the leaks. If warehouses wither away from ports, the exim cargo will go homeless. They have to be made to travel long distances at far greater costs and risks Sir. Another important thing to remember is that - these expert panelists take all their inputs from babus within the system. These babus have no clue of the grassroots. So they would naturally churn garbage to protect their skins. Garbage in is Garbage out! So that is what we get every time. If for a day, you come down to talk to the receiver of the cargo, the people in the godowns, and the shipping company people (Don’t listen to the Babus) you will understand the problem and realize that the solution is so simple!
We understand that all are drooling over the MbPT’s prime properties in the heart of Mumbai. They want to make money by putting up malls and entertainment parks etc. Fair enough Sir. Allow them that, because MbPT is so rotten that hardly any one uses it any more. But, to do that you need not make a policy where no major port will have a warehouses in its land. You just do that policy for MbPT and let them have the party and let other Ports have normal business.
I do earnestly request your kind highness to look into this issue, so that our nation does not suffer and our poor people don’t to pay more for such a blinder of a Policy.
Yours Truly
A Common Indian
(To read the unedited version and leave your comments you may visit http://ourships.blogspot.com)
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