Article - 97 Week 22 | MALICIOUS ADMINISTRATORS

Article - 97  Week 22 |  

MALICIOUS ADMINISTRATORS

We inherit a fat bureaucracy. This goes fatter & more despotic both overtime and on weak political leaderships. If we look at history, all powerful leaders like Chandragupt, Akbar, or even Genghis Khan had trimmed and focussed their administrative mechanisms to efficient delivery. They combatted fierce resistance to the points of almost open revolts. And they dealt with the challenges with tact and brute force. The rest is history.  Almost all of them were followed by weaker heirs. With weaker leaderships, the bureaucrats built their own empires of impenetrable power & intrigue centers. Then the empires crumbled!

We have a peculiar political system. The electorate elects their local representatives, but not their prime leader. This system gives us weak leaders with diluted powers to push changes and reforms. Our constitution allows for the executive to be autonomous in character and be guided by the legislations and policies. It is an Utopia. The bureaucracy drafts & pushes most of the legislations and policies. Political meddling is unashamedly accepted. Most politicians succumb to the crafty intrigues  by the wily bureaucrats and end up doing things, even against their own interest and the public. A perfect recipe for disaster. If you look at the government Rule Books in detail, no political leader would endorse such multi-edged and ambiguous rules. In some cases some rules are bent for private gain of some political leaders, but then they are few in numbers and a result of a decaying system.

It is a case of our bureaucracy becoming far too fat and despotic. We still can defy many such odds despite a poor judiciary, a medley of political buffoons, a wreaking infrastructure, and many more challenges. But it is clear now that, we shall succumb to this despotic bureaucracy, because it is not self correcting in nature, like our political system. It hides behind the political face and thrives. The politicians do not have the gumption to take on. It is in their short term interest to use the bureaucracy in whatever way they can and be grossly abused in the long term. The public needs a scapegoat to vent their anger. And the politicians with a life span of five years from election to election, absorb the brunt of the public ire - leaving the disease causing bureaucracy to grow fatter and more malicious.

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 96 Week 21 WHY ICD BOXES THROUGH NHAVA SHEVA?

Article - 96  Week 21

WHY ICD BOXES THROUGH NHAVA SHEVA?

The state of affairs of handing containers in Nhava Sheva has become a nightmare for the shipping lines and shippers. Monsoon is knocking on the doors. History would repeat. ICD boxes would be piling up inside the terminals. Pendency would be driving big holes in to the pockets of the suffering shipping lines. The shippers and consignees in the hinterland ICDs would be cussing their guts out for their cargo. The terminals would be relishing & devouring the punitive storage charges from the users, while pretending and wallowing for lack of working space and various other bottlenecks. 

Under such situations, it defeats rationale to use Nhava Sheva as a gate port for the northern ICDs, when the deep ports of Pipava & Mundra stay underutilized. However, we understand that it is difficult to fight the old habits of shippers, and the cost & frequency issues of shipping lines. Indian Railways is the only organization that can right this wrong. If they increase the freight for the containers from Nhava Sheva, while subsidising the rail freight from Mundra & Pipava, the impending mess could be avoided. JNP & the terminals would not like to participate in the drill because they would lose a whole lot of easy juice. The shipping lines are far too many to join hands and enforce this boycott on JNP for the ICD boxes. They would not be in agreement to increase their usage charges ex-Nhava Sheva to discourage shippers. On the other hand, Indian Railways is the monopoly carrier to all ICDs. Such a shift in traffic would not affect its revenue. Rather it would reduce stress on this busy corridor highly populated with passenger carriage and give elbow room to develop pure freight corridors. 

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 95 Week 20 | NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE ABOUT EXPORTS

Article - 95 Week 20 | 

NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE ABOUT EXPORTS

Globally, Nhava Sheva has become a messy brand name as a container Terminal. A not so promising face to India's commercial hub. JNPT is quintessentially an Indian State run unit, mired with lethargy, inefficiency, & high costs. Ships queue for weeks. Windows keep getting rattled. Operators bleed. Customers cuss. NSICT, an exemplar of a highly suspicious state with ubiquitous ineptitude shaking hands with greedy private hands, sits with a large underutilized capacity, challenging a clueless & callous administration. Apparently, it loses more money if it functions with average productivity. More it produces, the more it loses. So, going slow, easy, and sticking to its basic minimum of self-acclaimed volumes, while leaving its capacity underutilized, is commercially right for them. Tragically, our inept Indian administration is known for its reputation in blocking businesses and scavenging on the spoils. Therefore, a solution is a far cry in the wilderness. GTI too is similarly plagued with restricted move counts.

With all the three Terminals chronically challenged, the exporters are left to cuss freely. Ships calling these Terminals are allowed to discharge all imports. However, exports are debilitatingly curtailed to account for the lost time and capacity to inefficiency & after-strike effects in JNPT, self-imposed lesser operations in NSICT, and move count restrictions in GTI. In other words, the port is welcoming imports with open arms and blocking all initiatives to exports. Understandably, it is operationally far too difficult to apportion the lost time and capacity equitably to exports and imports. However, is it not bad economics to bring in more imports and cut our exports? We have the time. We have the infrastructure. We have the capacity. We have the exports and the hunger for exports. And we have managed to kill them all Nhava Sheva & messed up beyond a redemption! It is time, the decision makers are poked & prodded to life from their moribund state of indecisions by the users or the public.

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 94 Week 19 | THE VAMPIRE SQUIDS OF BUREAUCRACY

Article - 94 Week 19 | 

THE VAMPIRE SQUIDS OF  BUREAUCRACY

"Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist."   Richard Nixon

A familiar sight on Mumbai lanes! A truckload of youths shouting their guts out, being chased by a pack of dogs barking silly and shrill, and the nervous guys behind the wheel fidgeting and speeding off to tease the pack while keeping a safe distance. Every change of speed inspires the youths to shout and flail their limbs with more gusto, while pushing the pack to the limit of its doggedness. Then there is a lull !

Like the guys behind the wheel, our political leaders change speed and direction to keep the pack at a teasing distance, while helping the well shielded bureaucrats to flex their powers and muscles. The public goes tired and silent. The shielded bureaucracy tightens more screws. That is our state of affairs. After a series of scandals and protests on bad governance, the politicians lick their wounds. The people go silent with simmering bitterness within. But not the bureaucracy! They are busy formulating even more absurd rules to nail the public, the judiciary (retrospective laws to nail Vodafone, the GAAR), the Army, and feeding the legislators with whatever they can bring on the table in order to strengthen their fortresses. Like it or not, our bureaucracy is becoming too big beyond anyone's comfort levels. The politicians are the faces of the evil, who have their souls conscripted to the devil! The crafty bureaucrats writing those mumbo jumbo of rules, hard to understand by the public, leave alone our mostly pedestrian & not-so-educated politicians. Sadly, the ire of the public and media is largely vented on the politicians. It's time we question the system of our governance rather than a binge of  politician bashing. Can our politicians make substantial amends to governance in general and bureaucracy in particular? For that to happen we need revolutionary politicians, who would put the house in order and keep the public opinion on their sides. 

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 92 Week 17 | THE JNPT PAP STORY

THE JNPT PAP STORY

Project affected people draw attention. And they do bask in it to extract their pound of flesh. The government takes away their land for a pittance and throws the land to the wolves. That is, large part of a large story. The social activists stand up for the people backed by funds from NGOs and other interested parties. In some hot cases, the politicians wedge in, to cook their own broth. 

The other essential slice of the large story is the need of the government to take the land from the occupying people at a reasonable cost and give it in the hands of the saints. The saints who would cook solutions for the ballooning misery for a  deprived & growing billion. The wolves and the saints should not be straightjacketed into the same rule book. The story of land grabbing by big boys in the fictitious names of EPZ or Lavassa, is not the same as JNPT or an airport. But then who would discern the saints from the wolves, given that the government is mostly led by the wolves.

JNPT is the gateway to prosperity for millions. And it should not be taken hostage by a few thousands, for their pound of flesh in an unreasonable manner. The wisdom of the public and the press must prevail here for the much larger public good. Imagine a crippled and sick Nhava Sheva, like our Kolkata port! Cargo would be rotting in expensive godowns waiting to be exported. The factories would be unable to ship in their raw materials and losing export orders due to costly delays. Even agricultural products would be perishing under delay and huge cost pressures. This will make our farmers, and factories suffer losses and closures. Many workers & farmers would be pushed into poverty and deprivation! Can we afford all this by leaving the reins of Nhava Sheva in the hands of a few myopic bandicoots wearing the cloaks of PAP ? If that is not enough, public pressure has forced the government to legislate strict laws. These strict laws are fine for the wolves but would be a death knell for the saints, who hold the keys the doors to prosperity.