Article - 104 Week 30 Policing On Port Gates

 Article - 104 Week 30   

Policing On Port Gates

We have learnt to govern ourselves in our own ways. Under tremendous resistance or absence of governance we have found our survival tricks. Think of the times when traffic cops or red lights disappear on busy roads. It becomes chaotic. Traffic stops. Horns blare away in frustration. It's a huge crowd desperately trying to think and act in synchronicity. A smart volunteer comes forward to help and guide. It's a slow and excruciatingly inefficient traffic management system though. 

What do you see at the Gates of JNPT? As an outsider you would see a long and struggling queue of container trailers for miles and miles. At the Gate it is utter chaos. Both import and export trailers locking their horns at the Gate, paralyzing entry and exit for hours. No policing. Just a matter of self governing by a crowd of frustrated and tired trailer pilots. Some try to bully their way through and block any hope of an immediate solution to the ballooning problem. Bullying comes naturally to those brandishing there descent from the PAP villages. The CISF guys are unperturbed and at times amused by this world of turmoil outside their comfortable cabins. And also a sense of beholding from a more authoritative and powerful pedestal at the hapless inferior sea of sub-humanity. All that counts are those multi-colored Form-13s, 11s, and so on, being reverently presented from the sheepish faces with broad smiles on, despite the trauma of the struggle to get past the madness. The Terminal management is a distant and apathetic observer of this drama from the confines of those closed and comfortable administration offices. It is non of their concern to fix these mini-mutinies at their gates. They would hear out the problems with utmost condescension and ask you to take a hike if you do not like the process. 

We need liberalization here. We want the Terminal managers to come to the site of the problems. Guide and manage the flow. Hear the cacophony of desperation. See the beads of perspiration on those contorted faces struggling at the Gates. See the inefficacy of the outdated colored Forms creating  this mass of human suffering. See the sadistic brutality on the faces of those in charge of their Gates. And all this without asking for speed money to set things right. And we would gladly call this Liberalization - Not those high sounding empty Policies written in incomprehensibly complex rule books by a bunch of crooked lawyers to favour a certain entity at the cost of fooling the majority.

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Brgds

Capt Rath