Comparisons
between Singapore and India are odious; the former is a tiny city State whose
entire population, at five million, is roughly two-thirds the number of people
(7 million) that travel every day in the suburban railway system of just one
Indian city- Mumbai. The politics is different too. Let us just say that
Singapore's politics is differently manipulative than that in India and leave
it at that.
Now that that is all
over and done with:
If you are an
Indian in shipping, read former Singaporean Primer Minister Goh Chok Tong's
speech at Bimco's recent Annual General Meeting and weep at a future that will
see India becoming incrementally less important to the industry. Weep again,
because it is not difficult to reverse this slow slide to oblivion; it is just
that we in India will not do anything to do so.
Singapore,
already a bigger maritime hub than Hong Kong, is well on its way to taking centre
stage in a future that will see, thanks to China, maritime economic power
shifting to the East. The country wants to become a leading international maritime
centre. To do this, says Goh, "First, we invest in maritime R&D
infrastructure; second, we formulate pro-innovation policies to meet changing business
needs; and third, we develop maritime talent to drive innovation across
industry".
Goh called the
development of the third- development of local maritime talent- as "our
most important prong." India, weep again.
Amongst the slew
of measures Singapore has already taken- collaboration between the Maritime and
Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and some excellent local universities to
build up R&D infrastructure- the results are available and are being used
by local industry; the setting up of the Singapore Maritime Institute on the
back of a S$ 250 million fund (another S$ 150 million standing by); a S$100
million Maritime Innovation and Technology Fund (MINT Fund) to provide
"co-funding support for R&D projects and test-bedding
activities", and another S$100 million Maritime Singapore Green Initiative
to encourage greater innovation in clean and green shipping- with concessions
granted in port dues to ships that exceed IMO's EEDI requirements.
The Indian
maritime world is, in contrast, still in the Stone Age. Development means just announcing
the construction of new ports here, hang the environment, demand forecasts,
archaic tariff structures or service innovation (which could start with coming
down on rampant corruption in everything, including the constructions and operations
of Indian ports, by the way). There is no R&D in India and there is no
useful collaboration between industry and the Government. Nobody is looking at
the future of shipping seriously. Nobody is funding it.
And developing
maritime talent? What the bleep is that?
Since India
does not recognise that attracting top-notch youngsters to the industry is
important, we fail the future before we have even begun to look at it. We do
not recognise the need for those already in shipping to enhance skills because we
treat them as casual labour on daily wages and nothing more. We set up a
maritime university that is mired in corruption and mediocrity even before it is
launched. Unsurprising, therefore, that we are a country that now produces-
even compared to our own standards of twenty five years ago- seafarers whose
competence is considered increasingly suspect internationally, many who have
reached their level of incompetence and who are ill equipped- academically or
otherwise- to learn anything new or more advanced.
Our organisations
and people ashore, whether in government or industry, are not any better- given
what is required of them, they do not have to be. They are happy in their
wells, sourcing certified warm bodies and periodically declaring that the job
those bodies do is not rocket science. (Neither is arranging documents,
tickets, medicals and feel good seminars, actually, but let us leave that aside
for now.) This is why technical,
environmental or operational innovation coming out of India is zilch. This is
why we have hardly any competitive or sizeable chartering, insurance,
shipbuilding, repair or reinsurance organisations to speak of. The main reason
why our standards are falling across the board and why shipping is going
backwards is that nobody is doing anything that will change it. Nobody is
tasked- whether in the public or private sector- to produce talent that will
dominate the industry in future. There is no attempt to be competitive. Nobody
is funding institutions that will research, innovate or pursue the development
of future maritime talent.
Singapore is
doing all that and more. And that is why that tiny city State- that relied, in
1969, on the Indian origin Captain Sayeed to form NOL, its first shipping setup
- will catapult itself even further beyond Indian reach. Singapore is planning
to compete with London; India, in contrast, is unable to compete with even Sri
Lanka, as we have seen in connection with a port or two in Kerala.
The same ex PM
Goh, who worked under Captain Sayeed at NOL long ago, said later, "None
of us had ever run a shipping line and Captain Sayeed was patient in teaching
us the ropes". The same Goh has today outlined a vision for Singapore's
maritime domination; is India capable of meeting the challenge? Are we capable
of doing anything else except basking in historical- and tinted glassed- glory?
Even though we are a nation of a billion plus versus Singapore's 5
million (one and a half million of whom are foreigners), I suspect not. I
suspect the fight is over before it has begun, and I suspect that the old adage
has been proved once again- that sometimes, it is not the size of the dog in
the fight but the size of the fight in the dog that counts.
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