Article - 102 Week 28 Monsters Of Indian Shipping

Article - 102  Week 28 

Monsters Of Indian Shipping

We loved monster stories as kids. We love monster movies as adults. It's a world away from our real existence. We are safe from the menacing aliens or giant sized alligators jumping at us in 3D in the comforts of movie halls. If there was a more advanced life form looking at us remotely, he would be laughing his guts out at the irony. The irony that we humans while willingly giving in to the deadly monsters gnawing at our body, mind, and soul - make it an entertainment theme from the imagined ones. 

A monster can safely be defined as an entity that steals our life and its resources. Let's look at the institutions empowered by the Government in our industry. The Port Authorities, the Customs, the Police, & so on. What do these entities do?  The Port Authority is a mechanism for rent extraction. If you need to move your goods through them, you have no option but to cough a huge price. If there is a small violation of its rules, they would seize your goods and ask for storage and other silly costs that would make you a pauper in the street. Any vehicle or vessel that comes into the Port will be levied sky high. The Port Authorities have employed a few private companies to do a better job of extraction while belting out shoddier services. Exactly like the big monster who would employ smaller devils to perpetrate his cruelty & exploitation on the people. Lets look at the Customs. Their job is to collect tax as written in the Rule Book. They do that with a good amount of ineptitude. But what they do with real efficiency is seizing your goods with the slightest of excuses. Then you are doomed. They would extract from you depending upon the entire bloated damage that could possibly enact and their ingenuity in finding lapses and magnifying them to push you on to a slow and painful financial and mental train to hell. Bigger they magnify and longer they can procrastinate, the more they can extract. In such situations other Authorities like the Port, the Police, the CONCOR, the Railways, Plant Quarantine or even the Fire Department, would happily join the orgy to nibble away the leftovers. In most cases the amounts they extract is a wee bit smaller than the complete loss. You soil your soul, mind, and dignity to give precedence to cold logic. You get back a small part of what was originally yours. And come out poorer, dejected, bruised, and broken. The farmers commit suicide and you lick your wounds. It's survival game in this wilderness of monsters. The monsters we live with are far more ubiquitous, threatening and life sucking than the ones we would read in comics or watch in movie halls. And the ironic part is, we do not have the nerves to make movies on these real monsters gnawing at us constantly, from many such places like the Passport Office, the Municipality, the Tax office, the DG Shipping, the MMD, the Shipping Master, and so on! Is this because we ourselves would turn ourselves into such dastardly monsters, if we are put in those positions of discretion?

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Brgds

Capt Rath