Indian Shipping

Article - 88 Week 4 : MATRIX OF BABUDOM

2012-01-22T20:15:00.001-08:00

Article - 88 Week 4 :

MATRIX OF BABUDOM

Indian bureaucrats have been rated the worst in Asia. Hong Kong based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd said this. No surprise there? I used to wonder in my bizarre experiences, how the bureaucrats in Vietnam, Myanmar and even Bangladesh are comparatively more friendly and facilitative (even to their own natives) compared to our counterparts. I am still reluctant to jump on any judgement on the issue, though my fears appear to be vindicated by this proclamation. On many occasions, I wonder if I am over-reacting, while there are millions who succumb to this tyranny, blissfully indifferent to their conscientiousness & moral integrity. Or may we agree with those fence-sitters who declare with aplomb that it is our genetic make up manifesting in public domain?

Walk in to the Customs, Service Tax, Income Tax or our Municipal offices. The hostility & scorn is palpable in the air. Like you are in an enemy territory. Logic, reason, compassion, sympathy, righteousness, and fear of God are like those esoteric higher human values, kept on the pedestals of patronizing proclamations and little else. Money is the only language between the ruled and the rulers and scorn or veiled despise, sugar coated with niceties, is the podium for the language. This is not surprising at all that we are tagged and condemned to this, because we are a poor nation. The surprising revelation is that the bureaucrats in even poorer countries in Asia, behave better than ours and are less obstructive.

I have had a real harrowing time in explaining this to foreigners, who have been embittered by their unpleasant contacts with our Babudom. The positives of our vibrant democracy cleaning up this mess overtime, sounds too cliched. That 'overtime' seems endless. In some nations, power is wielded by the military or despots and in ours the power is invariably wielded by the bureaucracy. The power of the elected legislature is far less to bring in the real changes. The check and balance system has allowed unfettered power in the executive. The only power that can be prevailed upon is through politicizing the top decision makers in the bureaucracy and leaving the details to the ragtags. The ragtags and the politicized top echelons build the mesh of rules and notifications to have more control and benefit a selected few. The rest are sandwiched to operate within the system as their free wills & self interests permit.

There is no power greater than the power of the people. This power will one day subdue this unfettered power of the bureaucracy through immense political pushes and pulls. We will see that unfolding in front of us.

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 87 Week 3 POLICY INITIATIVES TO CONTAIN POLLUTION ON OUR COASTS:

2012-01-17T00:56:00.001-08:00

Article - 87 Week 3

POLICY INITIATIVES TO CONTAIN POLLUTION ON OUR COASTS:

Bholulal: "Sir, Sir, …. Why all junk ships are sinking in Mumbai coasts? The coast is so fully spoilt with oil. The fish is dying. The trees are dying. Look at the fishermen, who have lost their daily bread."

Babulal: "As per Sect 2675/II of Chapter III/(A/(8) the responsibility of removing the oil before it goes in the mouth of a fish lies with the Pollution Board. We can act, only after they fulfill their duties."

Kachralal: "We have taken immediate action, as per Sub para 123(A)/98/PUL07 of our Rule Book. We have floated an international tenders to clean the oil, before the the fish can have it. We have got very good responses so far. Soon the tender will be given to the party who can satisfy our appetite."

Mantrilal: "Look at poor M.V.Rena. Falling apart on the reefs. If it can happen in New Zealand , it can happen here. No big deal."

Bholulal: "MantrilalG, what action you will take to prevent such events in future?"

Mantrilal: "The guilty must be punished. I have ordered a committee to initiate the enquiry. Whoever is found guilty shall not be spared. This is my promise."

Bholulal: "But Sir, … the owners of these junk ships are not in India?"

Mantrilal: "Ah… that's no problem. We will lock up the ship's agent, the ship's Captain, and the crew in Yellow Gate Police Station…. They can not run to Hongkong or Dubai so easily …. "

Bholulal: "But Sir, … the owners?"

Mantrilal: "You see, we have some Treaty to honor with these countries….how can we question them? That's a sensitive issue...See, can you catch Mr Anderson who left Bhopal a long time back?"

Bholulal: "But Sir,…..the agents and the crew are innocent!"

Mantrilal: "How do you know? Don't talk rubbish in the media without full knowledge of our Constitution & Law Books. Anyway, don't you worry ... I'll ask Babulal to make such knotty & hard rules that no ship can ever come any where near Mumbai - forget pollution!"

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 86 Week 2 Regulating Regulators

2012-01-08T20:23:00.001-08:00

Article - 86 Week 2

Regulating Regulators

It's a bad idea to start with. If there is a need to regulate the very people who are supposed to regulate and administer - the system has already failed. We have this old habit of putting in more checks and trying to balance the system. In the bargain, the system gets slower and slower as you keep screwing it tight with more and more of checks. Then at a certain stage, the system just comes to a grinding halt. It does not move, even when you keep on kicking it with all your force.

You try getting any thing moved in a government Department and you realize that, even when the people who happen to be friendly(interpret how you nurture this relationship) to you are genuinely trying to move your file in the right direction. But they fail or get it blocked many number of times. Remember that you are already working in a failed system. So, there is no point grumbling about who to blame. Going by the past, we have a whole new set & subsets of bodies to keep an eye on the errant ones, like SIIB, DRI, Appeal Boards and many such departments who have started feeding on each other and slowing the system down to a very large degree while increasing the dirty money circulation, many folds. We do have a judicial system to correct the excesses. Unfortunately that too is in a similar mess. They would usually avoid many such issues on the pretext of administrative prerogatives, while passing judgements on flimsy cases in order to benefit a particular party.

Rather than regulating these regulators and administrators, we must let them lose. And focus on the crime rather than the criminal. The processes should be simplified. The users and associations should act as guides in this simplification war. The Laws and regulations should be articulated in texts easily understood by the public. The goal of each department should be defined and a there should be a matrix to measure performance of the people inside. Accountability should be brought in. Award and punishment systems should be firmly in place. The list goes on. This is no rocket science. The 'how' part is known to all. The problem is, no one wants to do it.

The reason, no one wants to do it, is because over extremely long period of time, the public is misled into believing that more stringent and punitive mechanisms directed at the administrators and the regulators would solve the problem. You can not blame the public or collective wisdom so to say. They have been subjected to these stringent and punitive severities from the government for a very long time. Therefore, they have begun to think of such a reversed mechanism to deliver the goods. Such ideas have brought forth movements like Anna's. Even though Anna's movement can be interpreted and supported as a reaction of the public to the excesses of near-failed administration and poor delivery, this will in no way make the system better. There will be another crazy elephant in the room. The smaller miscreants will no doubt be cowed down by this wild elephant if at all it sees the light of the day, but the system will continue to chug along more slowly than before. Public needs to understand the importance of complete changes & simplifications in the administrative processes.

The government knows how to fix this. The public (collectively) is unaware of it, though there are individuals who know this. The public hears of smoky stuff like political will and so on. Political will is not an unconnected island of benevolence. This will is created through the public perception. I feel the day is not really far, when public will be fully conversant with the ills of the system rather than be fixated with the people within the system. The big change is not very far.

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 85 Week 1 THE NEXT DECADE OF LINER SHIPPING

2012-01-01T20:41:00.001-08:00

Article - 85 Week 1

THE NEXT DECADE OF LINER SHIPPING

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Thomas Jefferson

We are witness to an event in shipping, that could change our industry. We know that such a Great Depression had taken place in the 1930s. This was again triggered by European debt crisis & migration from Gold standard. Today we see a similar scenario. Today's paper money stands on its shaky legs, while Europe struggles with its debt crisis. Shipping industry then was not exactly the way it is now. Most of the ships were destroyed in the World War. And here we have a whole lot more ships in the world, than we really need for the next five to ten years. The Great Depression lasted from 1918 until 1945, for 27 years. Is this one as big as that?

No matter what answer we have for the above question, this is a certainty that it's not going to go away that soon and that, the experts go wrong most of the time. There will not be container loads of cheap toys and toilet papers rushing from China to the rest of the world. The cheap manufacturing bases would shift, upon the next revival of the world economy. That would take some time. Until then, the manufacturing capabilities would be tested from India to Africa. Many countries would try to manufacture their own cheap products for their home consumption. This would derail the steady flow of bloated containers from China. We are already witness to this sad decline. This may take a few years more to dribble to insignificance or even reverse. There would be new cargo routes in a ever changing trading landscape. The cheap labour of Africa, Myanmar, or Bangladesh are plum targets for investors. The governments of these countries have started realizing the benefits of opening up their economies. So cargo would move in starts and spurts in unpredictable directions. There would be many false starts and false falls. The story would be one of navigating in a heavily mined terrain, so far as liner shipping goes.

The good news is that, there will be many new heros. The bad news is that many old heros would retreat. A creative destruction on a bumpy landing. Those who exploit the new opportunities arising, while leaving behind the un-lucrative routes quickly would do a better job. So far India goes, we are some how crippled with a lot of direct subsidies in the hands of the public. The people here need not bend their back to earn a their basic meal. Even though it does a world of good to energies a large section of people into economic activities, the incentive to compete or work harder is rather dampened (Likes of Malaysia) compared to the hungrier countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh or the poorer countries in Africa. In other words, India may have missed the bus to host manufacturing for the world. So, we may see similar import centric India as we have seen in the past, unless the government does a U-turn on its policy paralysis and stringent land usage Laws. That is unlikely to happen. Therefore, lets expect the mirror reflection of current China in the next decade, on the shores of Myanmar, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Africa, or even Pakistan. Forget the infrastructure. It does not take long to build, in a cash rich world of today. All it takes, is for the governments in these places to smell the opportunities and open their doors, while the the rest of the lazy governments cry foul against tax parity, tax heaven, colored money and many such imagined ghouls to stop their capital to leak out in to these preferred places, where they earn more for the investors.

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 84 Week 50 The Ghost Of Honest Mistakes

2011-12-12T23:54:00.001-08:00

Article - 84 Week 50

The Ghost Of Honest Mistakes

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing" - George Bernard Shaw?

Don't we all make mistakes as human beings? Mistake is not a desirable thing to start with. Mistakes are made when we cross the lines of the laid 'rule'. When we cross a line and the consequence makes us better off or congruent with the objective at hand, no questions are asked. However, if the consequence is adverse, you are in for big trouble! And most of the people working in the government are in big trouble.

There are barely any sharp line in the process, norm or rule of governance. The lines are blurred beyond discern. Any thing you do, you tend to stay on the blurred line. These blurred lines even shift in any unpredictable direction, depending upon how confused the elected leadership is or the philosophical inclination of the cerebrals of the bureaucrat beginning from the bottom of the hierarchy. One such highly ranked bureaucrat I came across, thinks that any minor typo is a deliberate attempt to cheat the government, while if a fraud is committed with impeccable compliance of the existing rules and exacting documentations, it is unnecessary to pay any heed to this. The good news is, if you cross the line, most of the time nothing happens. You get away easy and clean. However, sometimes these lines get sticky. No matter how carefully you manage your act, you land up in hell for a minor transgression or flirt with the blurred line. You could be heading for Tihar jail, for an innocuous enough act or decision that becomes the monster of the future, for really no fault of yours except that you did apply your mind. You consider this your misfortune. The only option to stay completely clear of any trouble, is not to act at all. Coming extremely late or disappearance from the work place is one of the means of staying away from acting. That way you never make a mistake.

And that is the dumbest thing in our governance system. It's time to be more objective with clear 'do's and clear 'don't's. The lines need to be meaningfully sharp and definitive. The ghosts of honest mistakes do not drop from the sky on our bureaucracy. It's their own making at times. Of course, a confused central leadership is the driver behind this crazy & Transformer like, machine called 'bureaucracy'. Our norms are hazy. Our rules are myriad and are multiplying as I am typing this very thing. It's time for us to pressurize the government from all forums to make our rules razor sharp, simplify them, and keep their numbers manageable, rather than clamoring for more rules to check on bad governance. More rules mean more trouble.

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Rath

Article - 83 Week 49 Penalising Mindset:

2011-12-04T19:54:00.001-08:00

Article - 83 Week 49

Penalising Mindset:

"In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organised robbery?" - Saint Augustine

At the drop of a hat, you could be penalised in the corridors of Customs in India. The word 'penalty' stems from a retributive & abusive power system. It's directed at people who cross the line of the rule. However, when no rule is broken this 'Penalty' should not be imposed. Any 'Penalty' so imposed, without any clear violation on technical, intuitive or textual interpretation of the rules, stamps a traumatic stigma in addition to the pecuniary difficulty on the people. Such arbitrariness is crudely oppressive.

As an example, if you missed a 'zero' on the third place after the decimal on the BL, the penalty imposed could be to the order of Rs 20,000/ or even higher. The Officer could insist that the typing should have been 3.840 Metric Tons, in place of 3.84 Metric Tons. The "zero'' on the third place has no significance, from any accounting or mathematical perspective. But not from the perspective of our Officer in question. He thought that the Rule was transgressed. And imposed a steep penalty, by quoting a Section that barely relates to the issue at hand. Governance is reduced to whims and moods of the people. Was he arithmetically or morally challenged? The answer to the question would do little to the sad consequence.

This cranky despot attitude by our Customs Officials is a matter of extremely regressive. The juggernaut of discretion and arbitrariness seems to pick up steam along with the protests from the public to bring it down. It is difficult to say, what direction this monster is going to take in the future with a crippled government on shaky morals. The bureaucracy is utterly confused. It refuses to change, while fretting and fearing an uncertain future repercussion. Such arbitrariness is a result of ambiguous rules, suspect intents of the formulators, a great deal of opaqueness, unaccountability of bureaucracy to the people they serve and too much regulations.

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 82 Week 48 Culture of Big Talk

2011-11-28T20:04:00.001-08:00

Article - 82 Week 48

Culture of Big Talk

Culture is a gooey stuff, brewed with individual biases and beliefs into a gigantic sticky snowball. It's so overbearing that it strongly controls and directs the thoughts of the very individuals who contributed in building this sticky snowball in the first place. The set of responses of any individual in a group or industry has a clear pattern and commonality. To an outsider this looks strange and funny at times, unless he gets carried away to lose his shirt at a later date. He tries to rationalize his observations, based on his own culture. When we talk about groups, they do not necessarily mean to comprise of a geography or demography. The group could be engaged in a specific industry or business over a large geographical or time span, influenced by common factors like government regulations and policies, consumer appetite, and various other terrains of the enterprise.

There are many facets to the culture of our Indian shipping industry - both good and bad. We shall discuss about one of the facets - Big Talk & Despondency. I have yet to come across one in our industry, who believes that the future holds promise for Indian shipping. Some people believe in a state of stagnation at best, while majority love to stay in their make-believe temple of doom and confusion. Meet any sales professional in our industry. They would spew up unbelievable numbers on your face! They throw such fantastical numbers on your face like so many1000 containers, that too from a small port incapable of handling such a volume in months, or so many million tons of bulk cargo to put even China's appetite to shame, or so many tons of air cargo that no plane has been built to carry that kind of load. If bravado is a mask to hides one's vulnerability, such claims are no more than pumped up words to hide the deep seated despondency within. To outsiders, such claims are mind bogglingly incredible at times.

It's time for us to stay away from such fantasy and indulge in a real a world with real numbers. And these are by no means small any more. They are impressive numbers in the backdrop of a buoyant economy. By believing in reality and working with confidence, we can change this culture of Big Talk to Real Talks.

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 81 Week 45 Understanding Compulsive Business Dishonesty?

2011-11-07T20:29:00.000-08:00

Article - 81 Week 45

Understanding Compulsive Business Dishonesty?

Its wonderful for an industry to do well. This creates jobs and helps other industries to thrive with cheaper and efficient support. We know that consumption, skill, technical know-how, people, infrastructure, raw materials, ecology, and cheaper connectivity to the consumer are clear givens. What we really underestimate is the role of our Big Daddy - the Government. It decides on its policy, taxes, skill development, education, health, infrastructure building, and freeing up consumption climate. Assuming, people explore ways around to combat the defects in infrastructure and skill developments etc, our Big daddy finds a way to tax the ingenuity and productivity of the entrepreneur - stealing a major chunk. Sometimes, Big daddy steals every thing that is produced in the industry. The industry becomes sick like a non-milch cow. Big Daddy wakes up and starts doling put subsidies to keep it alive, so that he could continue milking.

There are times, when Big Daddy steals more than the industry could produce. In such a scenario, the business heads for sure death. The entrepreneur sees this. And with an instinctive survival mechanism hard-wired into him from evolution, finds a way to steal back part of the taxes from Big Daddy. The harder the Big Daddy tries to extricate its claimed pound of flesh, the more ingenious the entrepreneur becomes in devising his stealing back mechanism. This prolonged struggle results in systematic (at times open and blatant) supremacy of wits of the nimble-footed entrepreneur over the slow and large Big Daddy. The industry does survive with a culture of dishonesty and deceit. This trait gets embedded in to the psyche of the people, until such a time when the words 'business' and 'dishonesty' become almost inseparable. Businesses are considered dirty. Businessmen are assumed to be dishonest, treacherous, conniving, and ruthlessly unscrupulous.

A stage comes, when Big Daddy realizes loss of revenue and finds a sickly industry living two lives of deception. It loses its power and potency to deal with the menace. The people working for the poor (some times almost insolvent) Big Daddy find it logical and beneficial to cozy up with the businessman. They join hands and connive the contrivance of tax escapades and duping an unsuspecting population. Stealing taxes becomes legitimate. Subsidies are doled out. And budget deficit snowballs into ugly inflation. The best possible example of this can be seen in our domestic shipping industry - an incurable culture of dishonesty and a helplessly miserable government. Can we come come out? Time will tell for sure. Until such time, we need to pray that the Big Daddy steals lesser than the sum total of productivities of our industry - both direct and indirect. And invests in better policies and institutions.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

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Capt Rath

Article - 80 Week 44 Can You Sell To A Total Stranger?

2011-11-01T04:56:00.001-07:00

Article - 80 Week 44

Can You Sell To A Total Stranger?

We sell all the time. We buy all the time. That's unique to humans and we are hardwired that way. However, there is a big barrier created by our social culture or bonding. An extreme example ; The infamous cliches` that 'Money can not buy love' and 'There is a price for every thing', stand opposed to each other. Volumes of fictions and movies have triumphantly taken on one or the other, captivating the mind of the people. The fact is, we find it easy to push hard bargains with perfect strangers, while we easily acquiesce to make concessions to known people. We sort of avoid bargaining with friends for material prices. We voluntarily give away without pre-conditions to the people we love. Even though there may be unsaid motives for getting some thing out of the other person whom we unconditionally give and the other person guesses it right, we can not call it a true Sale. If we try hinting anything to that effect, it would be a social disaster. Try paying for the birthday cake baked specially for you by your mother or sister!

Therefore, we have two distinct types of Sales - (A) Impersonal Sales (B) Social Sales or Gifts. In impersonal sales, it is a pure deal between demand and supply at that particular moment between the two individuals. Both the individuals are pushed to the edge of 'take it or leave it' point. Each individual consummately assesses the extent of compulsion of the other, while hiding his own vulnerability. Then you have the offers and the counters. Finally you have on the table, an objective price or subjective conditions to arrive at a price in a future date. Think of it. It is a big disadvantage to sell something to a stranger. So, if you are a salesman like me, you would better have many friends in your basket of clients. In other words, before you seriously attempt to sell what you set out to sell, you need to vigorously campaign to have as many friends as possible in the basket of clients in front of you. This is where, most of us go wrong. We start selling on our first meeting, struggling hard to hold on to our prices and other advantages. If we delay this until there is a personal relationship, then we can be far more effective. However, this should not be kept so late and subtle that it backfires - like those close friends of yours who chase you for those network-sales for herbals and shampoos. You run away from them or avoid taking their calls! You can not effectively sell to a completer stranger or a very close friend. Understanding that fine line in between is one of the essential keys to effective sales.

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article -78 Week 38 “Monkey see - Monkey do” & Our Maritime Cabotage Law

2011-09-18T20:56:00.001-07:00

Article -78 Week 38

"Monkey see - Monkey do" & Our Maritime Cabotage Law

Paradoxically, Adam Smith, the vociferous proponent of Free Market Economy advocated the idea of Cabotage Law - the law that severely restricted foreign ships to call British shores. That's a humungous departure from his theory of free market. Jones Act of USA was more of a lobby stuff by the American shipping magnets, soon after the World War I. The fear of war-time necessity was fed in the public mind, by taking a leaf from the theory of Adam Smith. Then it went viral and continues till date. Interestingly the most vocal hardliners of this restrictive trade practice, like US, UK, Australia, and India have lost heavily on this lucrative trade and display a poor & declining market share in world shipping - even when you add their tonnage through FOC flags. And the liberal nations like Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and Japan have stamped their authority in the industry. The hardliners used the insecurity of the World War II to reinforce the idea and till today the idea is pushed vociferously in countries like India much to the detriment to their home economy and particularly their shipping industry. Ironically, more than 75% of the logistical support to the US forces during Korean War & Vietnam War was provided by chartered vessels flying different flags and shadow-owned by many different nationalities.

As to why Adam Smith had this aberration or exception is very clear from the history of that period of later part of 18^th century. The Dutch beat the British hands down in trade and commerce. There was this prevalent concept of core nation exploiting the peripheries or colonies with shipping as the main tool to boost its national wealth. Even intra-Europe trade was considered a secondary perphery. The Dutch were superior, especially in this secondary periphery. It was not possible to compete with the Dutch, without severely restricting their ships to British shores and its colonies. Being a strong nationalist, Adam Smith propagated this idea to weaken the Dutch business and give a strong protection and subsidy to the British shipping.

However, after the World War II things changed. Colonies were freed. British, US, and other adherents to Cabotage Law suffered due to this restrictive Law. They had to shift to Panama, Liberia, and Isle of Mann etc. Their coastal shipping was monopolized by a few fat, incompetent, subsidized, and inward looking companies. The ship building industries in them had a pitiable fate and had to survive on expensive defense contracts. Where as the ship building yards in Germany, other Scandinavian countries, and Japan became global leaders. South Korea and China joined the party later. German, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek, and Japan became world leaders in the shipping industry. Later, Taiwan, South Korea, & Singapore joined the party. And the countries like US, UK, & Australia, etc stagnated or declined. They were forced to migrate their tonnage to FOC or off-shore locations. India being a third world nation with a sickly shipping industry, inherited from the colonial era, did not have the good fortune or capital to take the FOC route. And pitiable journey continues.

Maritime Cabotage can best be explained this way. Permit a few domestic players on the coast. Tax them heavily on every possible way. Further cut their efficiency by red tapes, permits, and licenses etc. Set the Unions on them. Further escalate their costs by forcing them to pay bribes to government pain-points. Once in a while, dole out a few dollies so that they keep quiet. Then allow them to charge what they like to the home user. But competition will still be there from unexpected alternatives like roadways and the rails. Ultimately, the ROE will be lesser than their brethren in international waters with open flags. So, those already in the business have this false sense of protection from the government and shall keep themselves content with whatever ROE they manage. Sometimes, they would click a government deal and make a killing and go partying. But then that too is limited in scope and happens far too infrequently. They would lose all their appetite to scale up and compete. They would constantly look up to the government with folded hands for more dollies. They would sing the same song for the justification of Cabotage, as sung by Uncle Jones. After all, how can Uncle Jones be wrong? He is from the land of freedom and opportunity - the USA! Any attempt to justify India's Maritime Cabotage is nothing more than a "Monkey see - Monkey do" syndrome, of looking unquestionably with unthinking awe, at Jones Act of 1920 in USA.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Rath

Uncle Jone & Our Maritime Cabotage Law

2011-09-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

Paradoxically, Adam Smith, the vociferous proponent of Free Market Economy advocated the idea of Cabotage Law - the law that severely restricted foreign ships to call British shores. That’s a humungous departure from his theory of free market. Jones Act of USA was more of a retribution to the British restrictions on US trading ships. Then it went viral and continues till date. Interestingly the most vocal hardliners of this restrictive trade practice, like US, UK, Australia, and India have lost heavily on this lucrative trade and display a poor market share in world shipping - even when you add their tonnage through FOC flags. And the liberal Scandinavian nations like Norway, the Netherlands, Greece and Germany have stamped their authority in the industry. The hardliners used the insecurity of the World War II to reinforce the idea and till today the idea is pushed vociferously in countries like India much to the detriment to their home economy and particularly their shipping industry. As to why Adam Smith had this aberration or exception is very clear from the history of that period of later part of 18th century. The Dutch beat the British hands down in trade and commerce. Since the excess grains could not be exported due to high export duty, the farmers were in a pitiable state. The general economy was in comparatively bad state. Adam Smith was a strong nationalist. He knew that the Dutch were great traders and prosperous. It was not possible to compete with them without restricting their ships to British shores and its colonies. However, after the World War II things changed. Colonies were freed. British, US, and other adherents to Cabotage Law suffered due to this restrictive Law. They had to shift to Panama, Liberia, and Isle of Mann etc. Their coastal shipping was monopolized by a few fat, incompetent, subsidized, and inward looking companies. The ship building industries in them had a similar fate and had to survive on expensive defense contracts. Where as the ship building yards in Germany, other Scandinavian countries, and Japan became global leaders. South Korea and China joined the party later. German, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek, and Japan became world leaders in the shipping industry. Later, Taiwan, South Korea, & Singapore joined the party. And the countries like US, UK, & Australia, etc stagnated or declined. They were forced to migrated their tonnage to FOC or off-shore locations. India being a developing nation with a sickly shipping industry, inherited from the colonial era, did not have the good fortune or capital to take the FOC route and still continues in its pitiable journey. Maritime Cabotage can best be explained this way. Permit a few domestic players on the coast. Tax them heavily on every possible way. Further cut their efficiency by red tapes, permits, and licenses etc. Set the Unions on them. Further escalate their costs by forcing them to pay bribes to government pain-points. Once in a while, dole out a few dollies so that they keep quiet. Then allow them to charge what they like to the home user. But competition will still be there from unexpected alternatives like roadways and the rails. Ultimately, the ROE will be lesser than their brethren in international waters with open flags. So, those already in the business have this false sense of protection from the government and shall keep themselves content with whatever ROE they manage. Sometimes, they would click a government deal and make a killing and go partying. But then that too is limited in scope and happens far too infrequently. They would lose all their appetite to scale up and compete. They would constantly look up to the government with folded hands for more dollies. They would sing the same song for the justification of Cabotage, as sung by Uncle Jones. After all, how can Uncle Jones be wrong? He is from the land of freedom and opportunity - the USA!

Article - 77 Week 37 We Need A Nw Rule Book

2011-09-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

Article - 77 Week 37

We Need A New Rule Book

India has changed. The world looks at us with a curious mix of awe and frown : awe for what we have achieved or promise to achieve and frown for sticking to insane archaic rules and processes reminiscent of the pre-digital era. Let's discuss the export and import processes pertaining to declarations before the shipments arrive or depart our country. No country of India's might and stature does it this way any more. In today's world, every aspect of trade is highly specialized. There is a clear divide between the carrier and the owner of the cargo. The owner of goods is a clearly seen and visible entity and is fully responsible towards the ownership of his possessions. On the other hand, the carrier is the custodian of the goods until fulfillment of the contracts of carriage with the owner of the goods.

However, in the sailing ship era, this was not the case. You could never see the entities behind the ownership of the goods. You could barely communicate with them. When a ship called upon a port, the government and its officials of this host country knew nothing about the owner of the goods. They saw the ship with the cargo and it's Master. The Master represented every thing. He could sell the cargo and do whatever he wanted to. He owned the cargo in proxy. Therefore, it was incumbent upon him to declare the cargo to its last ''t''. He had every reason and interest to declare wrongly either to avoid duty or artificially inflate the price of the cargo. He was a direct beneficiary of these extra revenues. Therefore, the Laws, especially the British Laws, were overtly punitive and suspicious to the carrier and his representative. Any small mistake in declarations was severely punished. At times the cargo along with the ship was confiscated. Those were the semi-dark ages and those were the dark rules.

In this context, our laws stink of that era. The carrier is fully held responsible for omission of an insignificant content in it's declarations and penalized disproportionate to the spirit of of the contents. Our Laws hold the carrier for all wrongs, while pretending that the receiver or shipper don't exist. In US, you have a declaration, before the cargo is loaded in the port of loading, eliminating the chance of wrong cargo coming into the country in the first place. But in our country, even banned or prohibited cargo sneaks in. And then the carrier is penalized with rule books, stinking of repressive rules and regulations of the British colonial era. In more pragmatic countries like Singapore, carrier makes no declarations at all. The receiver does this from the contents of the BL issued by the carrier. In India, essentially though the contents of the BL are considered paramount, but the duplications of the contents in many points makes this process utterly complex and prone to delays, corruption, and costly. In Malaysia, they have a simple online system where the data is shared by many departments. The officials are practical and don't have the interest or inclination to strictly match the "t'' to a "t'' or interpret the rule books esoterically with many different versions like they do in our country.

We are crying for corruption to end. But unless our rule books are burnt and new-age rules are in place, this would be a tall demand. In fact the inertia is terrifying. It's widely believed that the old rules are kept preserved because it serves the officials to exercise unlimited power without accountability. And therefore fuel the juggernaut of corruption to thump on our progress for a long time. It's time, we look at the rule books in addition to this ugly beast of corruption and lethargy of governance.

Brgds
Capt Rath

Article - 75 Week 35 Execution - THE REAL DILEMMA

2011-08-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

>>
>> Execution means getting things done. Straight and Simple. This skill is an important weapon in the armoury of a manager. Nothing can be accomplished in our world without execution. To understand its true implication, let's watch out on the frequent answers of poor execution,
>>
>> "But … I forgot.."
>> "I told Mr. X and he never called back…."
>> "I'll do it tomorrow…"
>> " Mr. Y refused to accept my instructions…"
>> "I'll surely do it tomorrow.."
>> "I phoned Mr Y and no one picked up the phone.."
>>
>> The list is endless and the implied meaning is of poverty in execution. This is no secret that Indians working on ships are technically and theoretically sound by rote acts on complex rules and regulations. But they are far too unwilling to roll up their sleeves when it comes to execution. This act of procrastination, avoidance, dodging, or even evasion is a manifest poverty of an indispensable soft skill for a manager. It has been observed that all star CEOs are fabulous in execution. And in day to day life we come across ordinary uneducated people who excel in the art of getting things done and highly qualified and trained people who display a manifest poverty of this skill. This may not be the only defining skill for a good manager, because you need many more other skills to excel as a manager in addition to having this skill of execution. But without it, you go no where. The question is why some people are good at it while others just cant get it right? Why some are naturals? The moment they walk in, they get things done effortlessly. And there are the others, who need rigorous training, workshops, motivations, bonuses, and change of responsibilities to just chug along.
>>
>> This skill is a matter of both nature and nurture, and more of the latter. It is a mindset. We are socially and evolutionarily wired to take more and give less. We want to take more salary and do less work. In individuals, where this belief is deeply ingrained, they just can not come up so easily to execute. As a second nature they resist action. They hone a sharp mind that churns out excuses instantly to procrastinate, avoid or evade action. Therefore, such individuals can be effective, if they think through and change their ingrained false belief system. And innate qualities are the strengths on which to build this capability of execution after vanquishing the demon of resistance to action.
>>
>> For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/
>

Article -74 Week 34 SHUTTING OUT CORRUPTION WITH NO OPTION TO SSR:

2011-08-21T20:55:00.001-07:00

Article -74 Week 34

SHUTTING OUT CORRUPTION WITH NO OPTION TO SSR:

What do we feel inside yourself, when you pay Rs 10,000/ bribe to amend an innocent typo in the IGM? To put a rubber stamp on the online print of a TP copy at Rs 50 per document? To chase the peon who moves around the tea stalls in the Customs Office with the rubber stamps in his pocket and pay him Rs 20/ to put the stamp on after the signature of the Inspector? To pay Rs 80,000/ to the Customs officer in Vizag to renew Steamer Agency License? To Pay a monthly fixed bribe of Rs 4000/ to the Customs officers in Vizag port when you have low volume of exports or import? To pay Rs 12000/ to CONCOR officers in Delhi ICD to release the cargo, because of an innocent typo in the Forwarding Note? To pay the Customs officials on every IGM copy? On every CMC permission? Every Bond cancellation? Every Shipping Bill submission? Every EGM ? On every inspection? When you bring to India your personal effects by containers on transfer from overseas, paying Rs 20,000 to Customs Officers? When you pay Rs 40,000/ for every back to town container from the Terminal to the CFS? Paying bribe of Rs 16,000/ for a permission to move a box from Pipava to Nhava Sheva via Colombo? To pay bribe to get your Passport in spite of the online system? Pay in lakhs to Income Tax raiders for the narrow interpretation in finding faults in your books or not cooking your books properly by experts? Paying lakhs to the Service Tax officers for assessment or centralization? To pay DG shipping for Multi Modal Transport license? For dispensation on crewing? To MMD officials for passing seaworthiness? SSR to NSICT by force? To the traffic cops in JNPT on the hapless trailer drivers on their serpentine queues? To the Municipality officials for Shops and Establishment certificates? To their occasional visits to your offices demanding and negotiating bribes? To pay to get a birth certificate? To again pay to get a Death certificate? To pay to get a Marriage certificate? The list is long and exhaustive.

Do you not get angry? Do you feel ashamed of being an Indian? Do you feel frustrated? Don't you feel that your soul has been soiled? A piece of you is rotting within your conscience? You may have the power to endure and swallow, but can you ever overcome these strong feelings that dents your freedom, choice, and opportunity?

The answer is on the streets of India. We are proud of being Indians, the way we have expressed our pent-up hurt with unanimous solidarity with Anna Hazare's movement. Let's be part of this large movement to clean our house. It is our house. We have to clean up. Let's not look at others to to do it for us.

Vande Mataram!

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

____________________________________________________________________________

Rath

Article - 71 Week 31 Our System Punishes The Innocent:

2011-08-02T02:09:00.003-07:00

Article - 71 Week 31

Our System Punishes The Innocent:

India grows sustainably in spite of a third rated governance and third rated Laws and Policies. But we the people inside the industries, know the dirty little tricks and secrets of our growth. There are times, we run out of tricks. We take a beating and retreat, mauled and bleeding. We don't even expect the last vestiges of justice or humanity to save us. Only hope lies with the influence or connection to a dirty politician or a local goon to stop us from sure death. Let me tell you a true story:

It has been six months. 41 containers have been arrested by the Local Customs in Tuticorin. The containers belong to the shipping line. They came in empty, but were manifested as having full cargo inside. The shipper and consignee indulged in some scam in connivance to perpetuate a fraud. Both the shipper and the consignee are bonafide Indian nationals. The department does not have the gumption to catch them for reasons best known to them. The reasons could range from active connivance with the fraudsters, the fraudsters being too powerfully connected to politics or the underworld, simple lethargy and imbecility, ineptitude, or a sadistic pleasure of tormenting the innocent, as has been the habitual more of our system of bureaucracy. Wonder, why we call them (Government) servants, when they harass the innocents of this nation and do such an evil disservice and get paid by our taxes! They should rather be called (Government) terrorists. That's more apt.

The facts are fully presented to the department. The investigations have been conclusive about the innocence of the shipping line with substantiations from the load port's Customs. The consignee and shippers are still free birds. But the property of the shipping line continues to be under seizure. The shipping line has been warned that it is better not to take on the crocodile, if it wants to live in the same water.

It is time we feel ashamed of ourselves. We have lost any sense of justice, sensibility and dignity. We penalise the innocent and let the criminals go happily free. Let's hang our heads in shame for continuing with such a rotten bureaucracy!

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 70 Week 30 The Rewards Of Criticism:

2011-08-02T02:09:00.002-07:00

Article - 70 Week 30

The Rewards Of Criticism:

"We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend." - Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher and Thinker)

We are far too used to a culture of flattery and a false sense self glorification. In olden days there used to be professional flatterers in the courts of aristocrats and kings. Every one with money and a social standing, lived on a over spiced diet of flattery. Even our gods indulged in this luxury. The remnants of this culture is suffocatingly dominant in our work places. The less privileged are tacitly coerced into demeaning themselves from saying 'multiple times of Sirs', to folding or wringing hands, to looking down at the floors etc, in order to keep the bloated ego of the privileged in its elevated pedestal, supported by the eluding legs of flattery. The best negotiator for paying lesser bribes are those who can flatter the Babu to no end, without any sense of logic or decency. Some times I have been bemused by the ingenious Babus who flatter back with a consummate skill to up their price. It's amazingly hilarious to be part of such negotiations. The parties pretend to be like blood brothers and offer to sacrifice their lives for the other, only to seal the deal at a suitable price.

Therefore, there is this chronic scorn to criticism & critics in our society, to the point of intolerance and violent retribution. People and organizations are blinded with rage, when criticized. This stems partly from our inherited history and also our propensity to hold on to what privileges we already have - no matter how unfairly we might have acquired them. Coupled with this is the stubbornness to avoid inevitable changes, dictated by time of openness and equity.

Had their been no critics, we would still be living in the stone ages. The aspersion that the critics only display their flair of painting in repulsive black, the softer belly of an issue, with quite a pompousness and audacity, while completely ignoring the brighter side, does not belittle their usefulness and gravity. The society needs to see the dark side of things from as many perspectives as possible in order to bring light and drive change. Pragmatically speaking, our systems have many evils. Many would agree that the evils outweigh the goodness we possess in our governance and society. Leaving the debate open to the degrees of goodness or badness, we would rather do good by articulating the painful parts. This awareness is the first pointer towards a positive change. And we need a change from this never ending cycle of vice. After all, wisdom of the crowd can only prevail through debates from all possible perspectives.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 69 Week 29 No Law vs Bad Law

2011-08-02T02:09:00.001-07:00

Article - 69 Week 29

No Law vs Bad Law

"An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so." Mahatma Gandhi

India has Law and China has Order. Saw this in one of the twitter posts. We have so many laws. And sadly many of them are bad laws. China has a few laws; most are meaningful and purposeful. For an example, if you buy a vessel and get it registered in India, you will be slapped with 5% customs duty - applicable if you wish to bring her home. So long as you keep her outside India, there is no duty. If at all, you are compelled to bring her home, you need to prove that it is temporary in nature. Then, you may be exempted. I wonder if temporary has a qualifying meaning within the ambits of the law! If there is no qualification, then it is left to the discretion of some Babu. The Babu can define even 10 years as temporary, if he wishes to. Or if he does not like your face, he may not even consider one month as temporary. So the doors to corruption and connection is split wide open with this law. After all, we need a whole lot of cabotage vessels for our coast and people will find a way to meet this need, so long as it is commercially profitable.

This law, simply tells you to bribe and manage. Or else, use foreign flag vessels for the Coastal trade through dispensations, which is more damaging to Indian shipping. And remember that dispensation does not come free. You have to grease the wheels of bureaucracy generously with plenty of ego massaging and connections in the top. But all this great struggle to carry our own cargo on our own shores using foreign vessels and killing our own shipping industry? What a shame on this sham law!

No Lokpal Bill can touch this. We say yes to stricter and fairer laws and yes to quick redressals on the infringements. But along with them, we must demand to remove all bad laws. Simplify them. Make them congruent with the betterment of the industry and broader national interests. It is time, we the people, realize that "We are not party to this national graft mess by choice, but rather arm-twisted into them by bad Laws". These are the crafty laws, leaving us with no option to honesty and nation building.

Let's scream and shout at bad Laws! Let no one point his dirty finger at us with the accusation that we are guilty of breaking bad laws and therefore a party to the 'Corruption Cauldron' of our all-consuming bureaucracy & polity!

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 68 Week 28 Anti-market Conferences:

2011-08-02T02:08:00.004-07:00

Article - 68 Week 28

Anti-market Conferences:

Too big to be questioned upon. Container shipping lines are mostly giants in the industry. And when the titans take up their cudgels, there is a whole lot bleeding. This bleeding becomes pervasive and gory. The freights plummet to abysmal lows. Bottom lines are swept to the bottom of business rationale. All that matters is 'market share' and 'market turfs'. The smaller players simply drop mortally wounded or perish. The name of the game is brute 'size' and 'scale'. When bottom lines shriek for panic attention, the giants declare cessation. They huddle behind closed doors and direct their collective violence on the consumer of their services. PSS, CBR, FAF, CAF, and many such mysterious and strange sounding missiles are fired at the end customers at tandem. The consumers shake their heads and roll their eyes. The giants shake their legs all the way to their Banks.

If these unholy behind-the-door collusions and alliances are broken, the giants would no more dare to drop rates to desperate and impossible lows. And therefore, there would be no need for such unholy alliances to spike the general freight rates. There would be stability and semblance of it among the end users. This too will invite smaller competitors to wedge themselves in to the niches. The market would slowly be a true market - not a manipulated one in the hands of the giants. It is true that the consumers benefit immensely when the titans clash. But they too get their deadly 'freight and service shocks' when the giants join hands. This is especially bad for an emerging economy like India. It's export industries experience periodic shocks on both input costs and export competitiveness.

India is basically a consuming nation for this service and would continue to be so for a long period. With the kind of shipping and taxation policies on Indian shipping, it would be impossible for a pure Indian company to raise its head among the giants. SCI can thrive on mediocrity on tax payers' money. It would face the same dilemma like Air India in the hands of conniving politicians and never grow to be a giant among giants. Therefore, this is time to declare such conferences anti-competition and anti-market by the government of India, in line with EU.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

____________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article -67 Week 27 Rationalising Corrupt Practices:

2011-08-02T02:08:00.003-07:00

Article -67 Week 27

Rationalising Corrupt Practices:

"But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost. " — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We live in an interesting time of paradigm shifts. Especially so in our shipping industry in India, where we have learnt to live with and consume dirt for so long that we no more care to pay attention, even when it hurts. Half a century of maladministration. Getting the basic things done for the common man had to be through bribes, corruption, nepotism, or stealing if all else failed. When the common man was desperate and angry, throw them some populist soups to invade his unsuspecting subconscious mind space with a 'brand of the political oligarchy'.

When the common man is aware enough to raise questions, show them the winding corridors of red-tape or the complex and almost esoteric volumes of legislations. Amazingly, this Indian man knows how to scramble through this maze of red-tapes - be it RTI, an almost moribund judiciary system, or screaming media to lay his hands on the perpetrators to shake from their comfort zones. Now the government almost shouts back at the common man with reprimands of constitutional breach for daring to ask.

We have been on the receiving end for far too long. Customs, Service Tax, Income Tax, Sales Tax, and many such departments have traditionally snuggled up with the rogue violators of the rules while the honest guy has been treated like a vermin in their corridors.

A few days back, I happened to be in one of these corridors. I was kept waiting for hours, because the Babu was busy. But I could see the through the glass partition. The Babu was sitting with a known local goon cum contractor. I could see the chemistry with those irrepressible smiles and gestures between them - just like long lost brothers. And those occasional smirks on his faces, when he saw me staring straight through, spoke of his blind hatred to the common man. What a shame! I know all officers and Babus are not like that. Most of them are friendly ordinary folks like us. But the undercurrent of this rotten culture is a clear manifest in the involuntary body languages and those notorious noting on the files.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 66 Week 26 Detained or Seized Cargo and the Notoriety Behind :

2011-08-02T02:08:00.001-07:00

Article - 66 Week 26

Detained or Seized Cargo and the Notoriety Behind :

The sheer number of exporters, importers, shipping agents, and shipping lines in our land stand bewildered into submission by brute & twisted laws and a flagrant violation of any vestige of fairness and justice in them. But the fact is, they have behaved patiently and sans protestations, in spite of many forums to vent their views and facilitate trade. Let's take the case of 'Customs Detained' cargo in containers in seaports and especially Nhava Sheva. It is but natural that with volumes and volumes of Customs Books and their ever increasing volumes of riders and annexes, written in ambiguous words and phrases and no system of pre-screening of documents, a whole lot of uncalled for cargo lands in our CFSs. Many times the cargo is brought in to dupe the system through prior settings with the department officials in select places to evade high duties and they are caught accidentally. Some times, the importers are unaware of the changes made through notifications and get stuck on. No matter how, the Customs Detained cargo in containers are destined to have years of seizure inside the CFSs and the menace would grow exponentially with time.

The importer has no easy way out. With passage of time he has to pay extremely high storage charges to the CFS and detention charges to the shipping line to release his cargo. There has been notifications of waiver of CFS charges under certain conditions of detention. But the shipping lines' detention charges fly exponentially and punitively high.

As a precondition to set up a CFS, 10% of the area is to be set aside for such customs detained cargo. The CFS needs to remove the detained cargo from the containers and preserve in this 10% designated area and release the containers to the shipping line. But no CFS in Nhava Sheva resorts to this process in connivance with the department. So you would notice piles of such shipping lines' containers in all these CFSs. The shipping lines and their agents just give in to this unfair system. Many times they just abandon the boxes out of desperation. The CFS takes undue advantage of this misery and extracts what they can from the shipping lines.

This has given India a very notorious reputation among the shipping lines doing business here. They ridicule our system, our people, our laws, and unfair practices. This happens only in India. You would be surprised that this gross violation of justice and fair practice is uncommon in many African countries or even blatant military establishments like Myanmar, while it is a regular thing in India. Let us clean up the system.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

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Article - 71 Week 31 Our System Punishes The Innocent:

2011-08-02T02:07:00.000-07:00

Article - 71 Week 31

Our System Punishes The Innocent:

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article -65 Week 25 BROKEN WINGS

2011-06-19T21:03:00.001-07:00

Article -65 Week 25

BROKEN WINGS

Dukhiram - I will never pay bribes.!

Sukhiram - A nobel thought! Huh!

Dukhiram - Don't dig at my misery. I went in for VAT registration. The guy wont accept my documents, because the electricity Bill is in the previous owner's name. And he is slapping a penalty because my business is already on and I am not paying VAT. And how can I pay VAT if I'm not registered? And how can I be registered unless I get an electricity Bill in the name of the new owner?

Sukhiram - What's the big deal? Give some other alternate document.

Dukhiram - This is a new premise. I have no bills for telephone or any other service. Moreover, I don't know what could be an alternative, because the guy doesn't tell me. He keeps on chewing Pan and spits out.

Sukhiram - Why don't you meet his senior?

Dukhiram - His senior is never there on his table. No one is sure when he comes and when he goes. I have tried for 3 days and managed to get him once. But he curtly told me to go back to the same Pan spitting guy.

Sukhiram - Can't you complain? Higher?

Dukhiram - Yes. I've seriously thought about that. But the guys there told me that, once you complain, the Department will avenge very badly. They are capable of finding many small faults or even fabricate them to fix me. I am afraid.

Sukhiram - That's bad. What are the options open to you?

Dukhiram - Best option is to pay a bribe of Rs 20,000/ to him in cash and he will register it 3 days time. He knows how to fix it. He told me. Then they will not trouble and will not ask for more during assessment as well. He assured me. Second option is to shut the business. Because, if I don't do any thing now, I would be doing this business illegally. And therefore would be liable for heavy penalties, including imprisonment.

Sukhiram - Going to prison is just a threat! I don't think they will do that.

Dukhiram - No. They won't. But they will use that as a threat to extract huge bribes from me. All for a silly electricity Bill not being in the correct name! I wish I knew this before!

Sukhiram - Why don't you hire a consultant?

Dukhiram - I have no more money to pay the consultant. I have invested all my money in this business. I have to take a loan from some one to pay for this bribe - if at all I decide to carry on!

Sukhiram - Why don't you go to Anti-Corruption Bureau?

Dukhiram - Come on Sukhi! How can I prove it? I have not even paid the bribe yet. Moreover, not having a document in a certain manner is a technical ground for rejection.

Sukhiram - I am not sure, what to tell you. If you go to Court, it would be very expensive as well and would take ages. If you really want, I can loan you the Rs 20,000/ for the bribe. I know what difficult times you are going through. You have a large family and so much of responsibility on your strong shoulder.

Dukhiram - (His eyes well up with tears of dejection and he slumps on his stool.) I have changed my mind. I'm a common man. I have to live and take care of my family. I will pay bribe.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article -63 Week 21 ANGER MANAGEMENT:

2011-05-23T20:48:00.001-07:00

ANGER MANAGEMENT:

Remember the famous movie of this name. There are times when emotions take the better part of our reasons. We pay less heed to the problems on the other side, especially so when we feel wronged blatantly. Tempers fly high. Irrevocably damaging words spill out. Menacing demeanours, gestures and other animalistic offensive mechanisms vitiate the problem further, some times to the points of no return. We are human and are prone to be swept up by this torrent of evolutionary blinding of our senses.

The malady can only be handled with the help of a magic wand. This can be anything that you carry yourself all the time. Like your favourite pen. The rule is to hold the pen in your clasp and not to speak till the pen is in your hand. Just listen & listen. Until the other person who barges on to you with a mauled emotion completes his tirade, you need to hold on to the pen and just sit up to listen and try to soak in his view points. Focus onto what he babbles and make sense out of this. Once he keeps quiet - that could mean from a burst of 10 minutes to a melancholic parroting up to 30 minutes - you hand over the pen to him and tell him the rules of the Magic Wand. And then you take off. Once you are finished with, take back the pen and follow the rule.

You will be surprised at the pleasant and amicable outcome. In case you are the first to burst at your seams, you need to go there to the other person and hand over your pen. Explain him the rules. And start. This prevents a violent collision of reasons with emotions and sets the platform for an effective communication.

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For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

____________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article -63 Week 21 So They Speak

2011-05-23T20:42:00.001-07:00

Article -62 Week 20 The Monkey In The Balance Sheet

2011-05-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

Article -62 Week 20

The Monkey In The Balance Sheet

Born to live a life of lies : officially speaking! I am sure that we can have a more wholesome officialdom than this shallow one. I have had many discussions with wise experts on the issue of reflecting the bribes paid to government servants and kick-backs paid to individuals in private companies in the general course of business transactions in the books of account. My contention is to reflect them the way they actually are - not as incidental miscellaneous expenses of such monumental disproportions. Even though the Indian Court vindicates my stand, it is impossible enough a task to represent truthfully in the books - I've been strictly warned! Incentive, Bakshish, Kick-backs, Speed-money, Incidentals, Grease Money, Bribes, Inducements, and Sweeteners etc - are bad words in our account books!

Because the very act of giving bribes is against the law. Therefore, an entry to that effect stands illegitimate and punishable admission of culpability. The Income Tax Authorities shall not admit this as an expense in the books that easily. There are no receipts, invoices or names in the transaction. You can not prove it to be bonafide in any case. If you show it as a miscellaneous expense, then the amount should not be eye-catching. The Service Tax authorities have no qualms on this issue, since they would slap a 10.2% Tax on these expenses of miscellaneous ledger heads.

So the pragmatic solution lies in cooking the books to show these expenses as some other direct expenses. It is not that tough to fabricate a lie. The other option of doing it truthfully with the spirit and idealism of a novice is akin to sticking your neck into the lion's mouth. Then the most obvious question that is cannonballed on to the pragmatist is : "Why did you pay bribe in the first place? Is that not a culpable crime? Your second right is not going to exonerate your first crime!"

That's a loaded cannonball! To simplify it further " Can we do business successfully in India without paying a bribe to Babus or Politicians ?" The nation broods, while business goes on with heavily cooked books.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

____________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 61 Week 19 A GOOD MANAGER IS ONE WITH AN OPEN MIN

2011-05-09T02:12:00.001-07:00

Article - 61 Week 19

A GOOD MANAGER IS ONE WITH AN OPEN MIND:

Dukhiram - You don't understand. Every thing was a mess right from the word go. The costs are rising and there is no profit in my business. And all you can do is preaching me! Be practical.

Sukhiram - Go on. I am listening. My intention is only to help you do better.

Dukhiram - The salesman can bring in no business. Says, the market is down and shall pick up next month. He has been saying this for months now. I am giving so many advertisements and can not get a good sales person. I am frustrated. There is no money coming in and only going out. I want some money to come in to manage the costs.

Sukhiram - I am afraid to open my mouth, because you would see that as preaching!

Dukhiram - No No. Go on. I am in a fix anyway!

Sukhiram - Your sales manager is bringing you no business. Right?

Dukhiram - I told you! Yes.

Sukhiram - Since how long?

Dukhiram - Right from the beginning. And I don't know what is wrong! He seems to be very assuring. But nothing comes in.

Sukhiram - That means there is a difference between what seems to you and what actually is.

Dukhiram - I hate to admit it. But yes!

Sukhiram - Why don't you go to the market yourself to see the difference between 'what actually is' and ' what seems to you'.

Dukhiram - I am not a salesman & that's not my job! Don't expect me to be knocking on the doors leaving all else in neglect!

Sukhiram - The fact is you have no 'all else' without any sales being made! Besides, your salesman was not born knocking on the doors. You are putting limits on yourself by claiming that sales is not your job and 'all else' is your job. If you remove the limits and sincerely try to understand the bottlenecks, you would see things with more clarity!

Dukhiram - Correct. Since I am in a fix, why not go and try it myself. I am not going to lose any thing by doing sales or any thing for that matter, so long as I know 'what really is'.

____________________________________________________________________________

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 60 Week 18 Fear Vs Productivity In Our Workplace

2011-05-02T00:22:00.001-07:00

Article - 60 Week 18

Fear Vs Productivity In Our Workplace

Fear is a natural emotion for our self protection. Self protection again is a learned process - through real own experience, watching others experience or being told by others. As a child, when we burn on our finger on fire, we fear any flame. When we see our younger sibling getting an electric shock from a naked electric cable, we stay away from it. Or when our grand mother tells us of an ugly ghost behind the house to swoon down on lone children, we stay away from the place. Therefore, this emotions called 'fear' is mostly a matter of nurture, away from the realities of its consequences. We continue to dread a ghost having experienced none nor seeing others experience a ghost.

In our workplaces, this conditioning has been overdone to the point of scuttling our creativity and productivity. Growing from the ashes of a feudal, imperial and caste system, there stands a culture of great divide between the ranks in our work places. The juniors are implicitly conditioned to keep their free minds and opinions to themselves and speak what the higher rank-holder expects to hear. 'Speak when you are spoken to or get the hell out' is the binding philosophy. So a senior would clobber any voice of dissent if it remotely challenges or is perceived by him to challenge his authority. This control virus affects the entire chain of command making it appear more like a Mogul durbar's intrigues.

The problem is that this virus is hard to kill in a society where age, caste, pedigree, schooling, connections, and even the language or accent is revered, simply because it is being passed down as the unquestioned tradition. When you kill this at the top, it mushrooms at the middle or at the bottom of the pyramid. The only way to eradicate this virus is through celebrating merit and completely ignoring the other ghastly parameters conditioned in our heads for millenniums.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Week 17 We have never done it that way!

2011-04-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

Week 17

We have never done it that way!

If someone asks you to come to office at 8 AM in place of 10, you would take it as an affront into your freedom. And if your Boss asks you to sit in the office till 9 PM, you hardly find a reason to protest. We still type on "QWERTY" keyboards, even though we have been taught "ABCDE…" from the school. We refuse to confront corrupt officials when they demand bribes for our legitimate and right acts and promptly pay up a bribe. There are a lot of useless or not-so-effective things, we refuse to let go. Whenever, there is a new process or procedure introduced in place, we fight like hell to resist.

The enemy of all good changes in life is the father of all excuses, " We have always done it that way." Period. No argument beyond that. In reality, that is where we put a handbrake on our growth. Experimenting with new changes is the only doorway to innovation and therefore better productivity. It is true that majority of the new changes fail miserably. But the recompense you get from a few that work overwhelmingly transforms your productivity and creativity to another orbit.

This statement "We have always done it that way" can be easily replaced with "There is always a better way. Let's try the new initiative." And it works wonders in our lives to embrace changes and kick off inertia.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

_________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 59 Week 17 The Madness Of The Crowd And We, The Rational Individuals:

2011-04-24T20:42:00.001-07:00

Article - 59 Week 17

The Madness Of The Crowd And We, The Rational Individuals:

Group judgements are akin to mob judgements. I have yet to come across an individual who is as unwise and as irrational as a Group of people. However, when a crowd of rational and highly intelligent people gather, their individual brilliances transmute into manifest foolishness. Their brilliances just disappear and turn into diabolic imbecility instead of adding up to sparkling brilliance. That is the reason why our democratic administration is so utterly chaotic and wasteful. Democracy per se is the best tool to select individuals to govern us. But using democracy as a process to administer is ineffective.

Let's analyse our shipping industry. As individuals in the industry, we can see the gaping holes and understand the ways of plugging them. But collectively - a Shipping Minister and a Shipping Secretary, consulting a whole body of individuals and institutions inside and outside the industry - go misty eyed to the gaping holes. Ship owning industry, bunkering industry, spares & stores industry are daunted by myriad taxes vis-a-vis shipping friendly nations like the Panama or Singapore. Ship manning in Indian waters is marred by ancient labour laws and myopic unions. Indigenous liner shipping is subjected to crippling service tax and income taxes while foreign based companies with DIT can walk away from these oppressive tax monsters and their hungry keepers. Coastal shipping is marred by exorbitant economic rent collections from terminals and ports and the group of interest groups holding them up. Shipbuilding is suffocated with Unions, labour laws, and indirect taxes while China and Korea continue to subsidise, and the list goes endless. In simple words, we a nation of more than billions, have lost focus on reality - so far as shipping industry goes. At an individual level, we may all concur on these glaring shortcomings and at a collective level, where we elect a body of government to set things right, we go awfully confused. A sort of mad digging at Sethusamudram or Vallarpadams are the tips of such monumental foolishness. That's a painful price we pay for our much prided individual power to elect a collaborative governance.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 58 Week 16 Don’t we need an Anna Hazare of shipping?:

2011-04-17T21:26:00.001-07:00

Article - 58 Week 16

Don't we need an Anna Hazare of shipping?

A container loaded with two types of deadly DG cargo - wrongly stowed and packed by the shipper - entered JNP. The shipping line realised the danger during final checking before loading the box and shuts it out - rightly so. The shipping line had given approval for each DG cargo to be carried in separate containers - not to be packed into a single container, with dangerous and explosive ramifications. The container was now a big threat to the Terminal and the people working inside. This had to be moved out of the port with utmost urgency for separating out the individual cargo. It is a matter of common sense.

However, there is hardly anything common about common sense and our wolverine Customs processes and its kursis. The process is ridiculously known as 'out of town permission' - even though the box moves from one customs bonded area (Port) to another customs bonded area(CFS) - undertaken by a transporter under Customs Bond. To get this 'out of town permission' was so time consuming, palm greasing, and pain-staking that the surveyors appointed by the shipping line, passed the shipping bill and filed the EGM as exported out. On paper at least, it is the duty of the customs department to see that on-boarding on shipping bill and passing of EGM is done by them to authenticate that the cargo has been shipped. In practice, they would blindly stamp on any thing, as long as the palms are greased and the red-tapes are secure.

In this case, the customs inspectorate, turned their own gluttony and felony on its head by putting the full blame on the shipping line. That's an expected given in our land of corruption. The shipping line continued pleading and haggling for praying a lesser bribe - but the agony became harsher and prolonged. Finally, the shipping line had to fork our a bribe of Rs 25,000/ in hard cash under the table to the inspector to get the shipping bills back and the permission for the ridiculous and vulgar 'out of town'. This took a neat 20 days.

Imagine, what could have happened if the DG cargo had exploded or imploded inside the Terminal. We could have had loss of lives, maiming or even seizure of port operations for days. The danger that was posed by this cargo was equivalent to what a terrorist could do to our port or airport. Therefore, our question should be - Who is more dangerous, a terrorist or a wolverine red-tape?

At times it is a shame to do business in our country, because the red-tapes are unbreakable to the common man and a malleable toy in the hands of the corrupt.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 57 Week 14 Are We All Stuck At 80?

2011-04-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

Article - 57 Week 14

Are We All Stuck At 80?

We are creatures of habit. We keep on doing things in our work place day in and day out, exactly the same way and yet expect spectacular bonuses, promotions, and pay hikes. When we are even mildly poked to change, we defend back with extremely ingenuous excuses. Little do we realize that most of what we do produces close to nothing and a few of what we do produces awesome results. I became a fan of Pareto's 80/20 thumb rule, the day I laid my mind on that. It tells us that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts.

What happens to the rest of the 80% of our efforts? What would happen if we stop putting those 80% efforts? Of course, this would take away 20% of our cake. If we are ready to sacrifice this 20%, we are effectively armed with 80% more time and resources. And that is huge. We can create miracles with that.

Easier said than done. We can not hold back when the mobile phone hums, knowing fully well that it is a call from a colleague from another location to hear out the frivolous details of yesterday's operations. The same can be given in a few lines on an email. And you had to stop half way through your "To Do" to indulge in this unproductive '80'. We call the client to find out some details which we already have and had failed to record in an easy way to refer today. Many times, we keep working to look busy to others, only to realize that the rug is being pulled from our feet because we skipped what we should have done earlier. And so on.

Therefore, pinning down this '80' is the first step towards personal effectiveness. We need to jot down a large list that falls under this '80'. Then systematically and methodically dispensing with them one at a time. Once done, we have a huge block of spare time and other resources at our disposal. The process is some thing like tuning and fine tuning. Our personal effectiveness, creativity, and productivity largely depends to the extent we can fine tune. The thing to be careful about is that, if stop tuning, we stop growing. And stagnation hurts as much or probably more than embarking on radical changes and styles in our efforts. So, let's change the way we think and change the way we work with an open mind.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________________________________

Article - 56 Week 13 Are We All Stuck At 80?

2011-03-27T20:57:00.001-07:00

Article - 56 Week 13

Are We All Stuck At 80?

Easier said than done. We can not hold back when the mobile hums, knowing fully well that it is a call from a colleague from another location to take the full details of yesterday's operations. The same can be given in a few lines on an email. And you had to stop half way through your "To Do" to indulge in this unproductive '80'. We call the client to find out some details which we already have and had failed to record in an easy way to refer today. Many times, we keep working to look busy to others, only to realize that the rug is being pulled from our feet because we skipped what we should have done earlier. And so on.

Therefore, pinning down this '80' is the first step towards personal effectiveness. We need to joy down a large list that falls under this '80'. Then systematically and methodically dispensing with them one at a time. Once done, we have a huge block of spare time and other resources at our disposal. The process is some thing like tuning and fine tuning. Our personal effectiveness, creativity, and productivity largely depends to the extent we can fine tune. The thing to be careful about is that, if stop tuning, we stop growing. And stagnation hurts as much or probably more than embarking on radical changes and styles in our efforts.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 56 Week 13 HIJACKING FROM A STRATEGIC VANTAGE POSITION

2011-03-27T20:50:00.001-07:00

Article - 56 Week 13

HIJACKING FROM A STRATEGIC VANTAGE POSITION

Khyber Pass has been under the control of tribals for millenniums. Even today, the Americans have to pay their way through for the NATO supplies & logistics to Afghanistan. The terrain is such that you can be ambushed easily by the local people. The practice of ambushing and at times just blocking the pass has been highly profitable for the locals. All movements of cargo and humans have been held at ransom for a huge price. Essentially a handful of people sitting on the vantage points on the pass have forced billions of people on both sides of the pass to on their knees.

Nothing much has changed today, even in a progressive India. A handful of villagers have branded themselves as PAP (Project Affected People) and partially blocked JNP, the gateway of India's commerce for more compensation and stopping corporatising of a typically slow and inefficient JNP management. What good can possible happen to the local people, if JNP is not corporatised and inefficiency celebrated? How different are these people from the tribals in the Khyber Pass?

India had a population of about 350 millions in 1950 and 2010 it would be far in excess of a billion. And it is going to grow. How can you possibly accommodate the needs and wants of such a huge population, if pockets of passages and infrastructures are hijacked by narrow interest groups? If the group of people inhabiting the strategic nodal points hijack the project like the tribals in the Khyber Pass, they would cause enormous pain to the rest of the people and their livelihoods. Sitting on railway tracks or blocking the port facilities are anti-people, anti-national, and should be condemned by all sections of the society.

At the same time, it is true that the legislations pertaining to acquisition of lands for government or private projects are both primitive and oppressive, with threads of law from the colonial era. The biggies in league with the political patrons have usurped lands for SEZs etc both from villagers and public for a pittance. This issue needs to be resolved fairly and quickly. The government's inability to legislate intelligent and fair laws, has given this destructive weapon in the hands of the so-called PAPs to take the nation on its knees.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

_________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 55 Week 12 Progress sans Justice:

2011-03-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

Article - 55 Week 12

Progress sans Justice:

Last week I was in Singapore, where I gave a talk to the students of SMU on Government, Business, and Society. Something struck me like a hard-rock when one student asked me if the Government of Singapore was a good one or a bad one. I was not struck by the question, but by the answer that had to be delivered with as much propriety, honesty and candidness in the forum. I told the audience that a good government is not one who is just successful in our eyes, in fact success does come forth from being fair and good to all the citizens and in promoting well directed freer market forces. Freeing up market forces again is an externality of unadulterated fairness and justness on exchanges of excesses. Doling out quick and fair justice is the first step of building a good and durable government. When you read the ancient Indian stories about the Kings and Princes, you realize that for a good and successful King, quick and fair justice preceded military prowess. Even Lord Ram, had to push his own wife into fire and wilderness to make sure that justice had to be quick and fair and made no special relaxation for the privileged that included the First Lady.

The reason we languish in mediocrity in our shipping industry, along with many other fields in India is because, justice is in the slammers. Justice is unarguably delayed beyond tolerance, is mostly unfair, and the worst thing is that it is discriminatory.

When CONCOR makes a mistake in its billing, it refuses to own up and pay back, when the terminal makes a mistake of not handling its duty properly, it slaps a storage cost on the shipping line, when the Port Authority scripts a doubled-edged instrument of BOT contract, when a small & genuine error is detected in data entry the Customs not only slaps a humungous punitive charge on the shipping line but also takes a huge bribe that could wipe a business off, when some company pays its service taxes on time and sincerity its books are ravaged by the department to extort bribes and the list is endless.

And the quality and quantity of justness and fairness injected upon the populace, differentiates a good government from a bad one, without being specific. A democratic form of government can also be bad. The consolation lies in the fact that at least there is a recourse for badness, but there is no guarantee that the replacing government would necessarily be just and fair in its life to death struggle to perpetuate its seat and handle on power.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________________________________

Use http://econarmy.blogspot.com for info sharing

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 52 Week 9 Personal Goal Setting Precedes Corporate Goals:

2011-03-20T20:40:00.001-07:00

Personal Goal Setting Precedes Corporate Goals:

We hear about goal setting as a management rhetoric or rather a fad in our corporate climes. This over-kill of goal setting in our work places, does not mean that we can be really productive without it. First of all, goals need not be grandiose in design or sound. Goal needs to be simple and clear. Sometimes it is difficult to think in simpler and clearer blocks. We need to think of what we want to achieve in a year, and then try to quantify our projected growth, as objectively as we possible can. The same needs to be broken into blocks of months.

A monthly block looks less daunting and gettable at first sight. But when you go about getting there, you realize that you are almost stuck. That is where we have to believe in ourselves to hold on tenaciously. We have to be careful to our vulnerability to frustration. Revisiting the past to find splinters of unattended patches is important here. And the challenge would be to think and find better ways of getting things done to get at your goal. This introspection and innovating on the strategies ahead, should be a group think to have a better quality of newness in addition to adding commitment and cooperation from the full team.

Even in our personal & professional work spaces, we need to set goal for ourselves. We can not be part of a bigger goal, if we are unable to set personal goals for ourselves. Personal goals need to be congruent with the larger team goals, or else we are on the wrong job. While setting goals for ourselves, we need to keep our focus on gettability, objectivity of the goals, reviews, re-strategizing, improvising, measuring progress, and celebrating the mile stones. Progress goes something like a fly-wheel - slow at start and building almost an unstoppable momentum towards the end. At that stage, we could stretch our goals.

It's a haunting dilemma as to how we can set our personal goals. We need to understand that our professional achievement is not an isolated space. Our family life, mental state, physical health, intellectual sharpness, and even a good social life affects our professional productivity. If we lack in any one of them, it does affect our professional prowess. Therefore, it becomes imperative that we need to bring in incremental and measured improvements on our family life etc. Many of us buy the story of our corporate set-set goals to such an extent that we forget to improve ourselves first. When we do that, we work far too hard, far too late, and drink far too much caffeine to tire ourselves to exhaustion or burnout. With mounting stress, we keep neglecting our personal improvements. This can lead to stress in family, health, and a fractured social clime.

Therefore, personal goal settings are far more important for us and their positive effects shall give us the ammunition to participate in the corporate goal settings.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Use http://econarmy.blogspot.com for info sharing

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 51 Week 8 On Government & Business:

2011-03-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

Article - 51 Week 11

On Government & Business:

"What is the relationship between government and business? Why in some nations the governments enable and facilitate business? And why in some places they restrict businesses?"

The answers to these questions can uplift many lives and make our place a much better place to live in. Before, attempting to answer this, we have to understand the constituents and meaning of business. Business means exchanges of excesses among individuals and entities representing a group of individuals. That means, if there are no excesses, there would be no businesses. If each individual can produce a little less than what he needs to survive, using his labour, mind, and available resources, he will eventually have nothing to give in an exchange. He can not even promise to give any thing in future, considering his present state. And to survive and prove Darwin's laws right, he needs to steal from others. If he alone, is unable to execute this act he would join up with people with similar conditions as his. Then you have the stronger group surviving at the cost of the weaker group. That is how, nations have been built on the moving sands of history. By plundering a weaker group, the stronger Group creates excesses over what they need to survive. And immediately they would seek equally strong Groups to exchange the excesses. This was clearly seen in the arid and dry deserts of mediaeval Arabia. Same too was seen in the wild west. In those circumstances, justice, fairness and equity have a completely different hue from what we have from a position of plenty for many.

Hypothetically speaking, if each individual produces just enough to survive for himself and nothing more, he will have little reason to take up the risky task of stealing where he could be killed or maimed by the victims. At the same time, he has nothing in excess to exchange. That is an unstable stasis. The situation would sway toward formation of stronger Groups and fleeing weaker ones.

Today's situation is unique. Many pockets of nations have excesses far more than they possible need and they continue producing the excesses. And many other nations like in Sub-Saharan Africa have far less to make a living. The differences between the rich and poor nations grows more and more when we have governments in in the poorer nations looking at short-term and extorting every thing they can lay their hands on, including the natural resources over and under the ground - selling them at a pittance to the rich nations, who would bloat their excesses even to phenomenal levels.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 54 Week 11 Our Government & Our Shipping:

2011-03-13T21:57:00.001-07:00

Article - 54 Week 11

Our Government & Our Shipping:

Even the Romans understood the pitfalls of democratic dizziness in timely & gritty decision making. They empowered Fabius to wield absolute power and authority for six months to save Rome from the marauding Hannibal. He brought in a set of new & novel strategies and tacts to take on the enemy of a higher mite and skill.

Lets us look at ourselves in the shipping industry. We have a democratic system that does not understand its elbow from the toenails. A bureaucracy that is mostly self-serving and inward-looking. The significance of an important industry that would support this growing nation, is lost in this labyrinth of democratic chaos and a cock-eyed bureaucracy.

How desperately we need a Fabius to save Indian shipping from the Global shipping market, especially from the flags of convenience and our own tax maze, is evident from its very decline. Our shipping Ministers talk about the port capacities - albeit occasionally - as synonyms for the entire Indian shipping industry. No one bothers to talk about the realities. Declining tonnage, a third rated coastal shipping, a laggard & expensive rail service, an infantile ship-building industry, a ship manning industry that smacks of inconsistency, and the other related droopy and sleepy services like repairs, supplies, bunkers, training, technical and commercial managements etc are a testimony to the fact that we need a Fabius. A Fabius that lays the road ahead with a roadmap and goal to match the pace of a resurgent India and its shipping needs. It would be a defeatist strategy to seek shipping services from China on one hand and a state-owned and state-funded & gloated entity on the other.

We need to lobby hard for a Fabius as our Shipping Minister or Secretary, who could understand and initiate the changes in the right direction and save us from this whirlpool of mediocrity.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

_____________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 53 Week 10 A Conversation With A Wily Fox:

2011-03-07T02:10:00.001-08:00

Article - 53 Week 10

A Conversation With A Wily Fox:

A man without conscience and a sense of duty is like a wily fox. Uncannily our system of administration is composed of such departments and individuals, pretending to govern our nation. We are like a herd of sheep seeking no other better way than submitting to these wily foxes.

Wily Fox : [Clears throat….]

Sheep : Sir, when can I have my Tax Registration completed?

Wily Fox: Hmm… The address on your electricity Bill is smudged!

Sheep: Am extremely sorry Sir! Here is the Original Bill.

Wily Fox: That's not enough. You have started business since 3 months and applied for Registration a month back? This is tax evasion. You will be served a notice.

Sheep: [Stutters and fidgets] Sorry, Sir. I did not know, that my business would survive 3 months that time.

Wily Fox: Now that it has survived, you will be served a notice. This could amount to six month's imprisonment and Rs 500/ penalty in addition to tax on all transactions with interest there upon.

Sheep: Sir … Sirrrrjee …. Please please do some thing ….. You know how difficult life is for people like me …

Wily Fox: Then you go to Appeal. Or you can move to Court.

Sheep: Which is better Sirjee?

Wily Fox: Hmm …. Both are pointless….Everyone knows that….Appeallate will interpret this against your favour, because we have a target of collection … Court will take so long that the judgement can be expected long after you are dead and gone. Hmmm…

Sheep: Sir….hushhhhh … How much?

Wily Fox: Are you offering ghoos? Just go away ...Hmm

Sheep: Sirrrjeee … Please help me!

Wily Fox: Look. I don't discuss any thing here. Call me after office hours.

At 7 PM the same day, the sheep dials Wily Foxs mobile number

Wily Fox: Halooo...Ho, you are Mr Sheep...I'll call back….

Cuts the phone and redials after an hour

Wily Fox: Mr Sheep. Come in 20 minutes time to Lola's Night Club.Bye.

Cuts..Then meets Mr Sheep in the Nightclub

Wily Fox: Look. We are friends. Put your mobile off. These days you can record any thing…..Let's be direct….1.5 Lakhs will do..

Sheep: Stutters..Sirrrr..That is too much..I can not afford..I don't even make that much…

Wily Fox: All in cash..I'll tell you who to hand over and when..

Sheep: Please make it lesser...I'll pay 50 thousand..

Wily Fox: Hmmm… Looks like you are new...Never mind..1.2 Lakhs …. No more or no less … And wait for my call in a week's time..

Sheep: OK Sirrrr….. 1.2 Lakhs..Done…

Looks down at the table in defeat and gulps the vacuum in his soul and thinks that a Consultant would cost him close to that in addition to running around the pillars...

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

______________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723 18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723 20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

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MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath