Beggaring belief

Scarcely a day goes by when ships or seamen are not in the news these days- as usual, for the wrong reasons.  For example, in the last week or so alone, I have been told many things by the press. That pirate attacks have become more brutal. And that so and so ship with x number of crew has been held for y number of years. In Pakistan, family members of mariner hostages have stood like beggars outside a mosque on a Friday, pleading with presumably religious passersby to drop a few rupees into their donation boxes, to be used towards ransoming their loved ones. Families of seamen in India have gone record once again berating the government for continuing to do nothing to help while they run around trying to find out if their sons were dead or alive in Somalia. (I ran into a senior Master who does not sail anymore. He asked me, referring to piracy, "We stopped sailing at the right time, didn't we?")

Elsewhere, I met a youngster who had completed his pre sea GP Rating course three years ago and was still looking for his first job on a ship. Like many, his lower middle class family had taken a loan to send him to an approved institute back when they still hoped he would make a career at sea. The rating told me he was done begging at shipping companies and was looking at other options to pay back the loan, at least. (I idly wondered if a life of crime was a workable option.) The man seemed to be spending a lot of time standing outside the many maritime training institutes in his city, dissuading ratings  from enrolling there or joining the career.  

Seems to me that we in shipping are training our young men to end up as beggars. And, since shipping has always had a bottom up approach to everything- or should it be bottoms up approach? - we have now graduated to even training mariners' families to beg for the lives of their sons and brothers. 

The economic upheaval that shipping will go through in the next few years will make things worse for seamen. The bite is already being felt up and down organisations, especially with ship owners and managers downsizing and laying off people. Thing is, most employees ashore have some protection, from voluntary retirement schemes to golden handshakes to some kind of half decent severance pay. Hardly any seaman from this part of the world enjoys any of those benefits. Best-case scenario for him is that he is not recalled for another contract. Worst-case scenario is that the managers or owners do not even pay him his earned wages. We all know that the worst scenario applies more often than we care to admit. Seamen are rarely laid off anyway; one has to be paid round the year for that to happen.

Those cursed with long memories should be puzzled by the fact that paying  for a job or a training berth was almost unheard of a generation ago. Things were not always this way; the rot has been a gift of the STCW 95 convention and has deepened with every STCW amendment. Of course, I am even more puzzled by the fact that nothing is done to tackle the rampant problem of youngsters paying for training berths or their first jobs, because this kind of corruption is so easy to reverse. Then I remember that it is the Indian shipping industry, its regulators and the Indian Government that we are talking about here, and I stop being puzzled.

The outcome of making beggars out of our seamen- not just with jobs or ransoms but in so many little ways that all of us recognise, from asking for 'leave' to treatment while joining-is inevitable.  The industry's inability to attract decent calibre is linked directly to that propensity of ours, seen from the time a seaman is ready to join to the time he asks for 'leave' and even later. The degradation of Indian maritime certification and competence is but a logical consequence of this industry attitude, and that is something which will automatically result in an incrementally shrinking Indian maritime pool. It is a vicious circle; it is a "chakravyuh"-the near impenetrable military formation in the Indian epic Mahabharat-that our industry luminaries revel in not breaching.

All this is why the canard that sophisticate industry insiders spread at every chance - that seafaring is a profession of choice even today and that Indian seafarers are (almost automatically, it would seem) some kind of chosen people within the profession- is so difficult to digest. In fact, it beggars belief.

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Inside Indian shipping: A few good men

Some of the sound bites coming from India's maritime regulator in connection with marine education and training are interesting; I particularly liked the comment made some time ago by the Director General of Shipping that maritime training institutes should make a profit and not look to profiteering. Absolutely correct. The recent Directorate General of Shipping (DG) decision to issue a Continuous Discharge Certificate with a reduced two year validity to graduates of some maritime programmes suggests that there are teeth behind the bite too; with this step, the DGS wants to track better the 'placement record' of institutes, or more accurately, the lack thereof. We all know that placement is a flourishing racket in shipping.

Maritime training institutes will quite correctly point out that it is only ship owners that can provide training slots, not the institutes, and that the regulations and incentives rolled out by the DGS for Indian ship owners have failed in what they set out to do: create training slots for future officers and crews. I agree with these institutes, because things have reached such a sorry state that even officials in well known shipping companies- not just touts and middlemen- are taking bribes to 'place' youngsters, most of whom will never get a training berth aboard a ship without paying a fair amount of money to somebody or the other. The racket is an epidemic; most everybody is involved.

It is very possible that Dr. Agnihotri- the present DG- has plans that include a holistic addressing of the problems that plague the training business, and that the Directorate has just started- not ended- its cleanup move. Cynics will say that some of the DGS' initiatives are prompted by the recent ESMA visit to Mumbai or the crackdown on the MET business in the Philippines; I say that is irrelevant to the fact that the Indian MET juggernaut is in a mess and needs to be fixed- in our own interests.

But it will not be. It won't be because- in addition to deep flaws in our training setup- there are also weaknesses connected to the structure and execution of shipping's administrative and regulatory systems. Those need to be fixed too, else any clean-up exercise will be eventually incomplete and so ineffective.

The biggest weakness is in the very nature of the Director General's appointment; in line with protocol, the DG is transferred every few years and a fresh appointment made. The problem is that any person at the top of any government setup in India can only start to do good within this time; to complete a change requires time that he or she usually does not have. Changes to regulations in shipping may be mandated and quicker, but changes to a system- including the internal systems at the DGS- will take much longer.  We have to give any person of integrity, intelligence and ability enough time to perform.  We do not, so we always produce a half baked dish.

In this connection, I have never been one of those that say that only a mariner should be at the helm of affairs at the DGS. I say that the best person for the job should be appointed and retained based on performance. There have been many mariners within the DGS and MMD; at least some of those have either not delivered or have been otherwise less than suitable. The Indian system, like the British one, assumes that a transfer every few years ensures a clean system. It does not; we know that. Only an honest person at the helm - given enough time- can do that.

Coming back to the MET issues that we started with, what is likely to happen is this: The unsavoury elements that the DGS is trying to eliminate from the training space will wait it out, knowing that the next routine change at the top at the DGS will mean that a new person comes in, takes time to settle and prioritise- and that the system will then start reinventing the wheel again, more or less from scratch. Meanwhile, these elements will continue to exploit the cracks. 

I am saddened by this, because I do believe that the DG - at least with regard to maritime education- is on the right track. I agree that the MET business needs a cleanup. I believe that the on board training arm of our MET is its weakest link and a travesty. I would like to see the net cast wider than on just the DNS programmes and their 'placements' done thus far, to include all programmes for cadets, ratings and even shorter STCW courses. I believe we should not be training anyone that we cannot guarantee an on-board training berth to. 

Many in the industry often say that no education in the world guarantees a job, so why should we in shipping want to do so? They conveniently forget the fact that a training berth on a ship is not a job; by definition, it is part of the training that the industry is supposed to provide.

To be fair, the problems at the DGS are not unique; government departments throughout the country have near identical issues. Ultimately, the basic problem everywhere- including at the DGS- may be that the system does not support progress. The bad people do a lot of long lasting harm in their allotted few years and go; the good people can only start to do good in that time, not complete it. The good guys' reward may lie in walking away with integrity and with their heads held high, but imagine the change we would see if the system could exploit the full potential of these few good men and women.

Wild optimism

I distrust third party management consulting reports. They are usually commissioned by organisations with hidden agendas, are indicative of the commissioning organisation’s inefficiency (do you really expect a bunch of young hotshot MBAs with little business experience to know more about your businesses than you do yourselves?), and, after the dust settles, will be put away in fancy bookcases to be taken out only when their fancy spines need to be periodically dusted. Occasionally, interested folk will selectively use some findings of these reports to push their own narrow points of view.


It is with some hesitation, therefore, that I quote McKinsey’s recent report that says that there are 1.1 million seafarers- officers and ratings- in the world today and that Indians constitute 6.3 percent (officers) and 7.5 percent (ratings) of this number. The Ministry of Shipping wants to increase Indian seafarer market share to 9 percent in five years; by this time, the demand for seafarers- both officers and ratings- is slated to touch 1.4 million. I must point out that the IMO’s statistics are different. Secretary-General Mr. Efthimios E. Mitropoulos referred in September to there being today “1.5 million seafarers in the world.” The difference between 1.1 and 1.5 million is pretty large: this lack of clarity is symptomatic of the confusion that generally reigns ashore with regard to anything to do with mariner affairs.

I assume, even with all those iffy statistics and assuming an equal number of Indian ratings and officers, that the percentage of Indian seamen stands at about 6.9 of the global workforce. So, using the figures above, I reckon that there are approximately anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 active Indians mariners today. To put things in perspective and to perhaps indicate why seafarers remain divorced from public consciousness in the country, consider this: Just one Indian software company, Infosys, had, at the end of 2009, almost 110,000 employees- more than the total number of active Indians at sea.

We must be realistic: we can hardly expect, given these numbers, great public or political support for either seafarer or industry ‘causes’. It is equally presumptuous to assume that the criticality of the industry will dawn on the entire populace next Monday morning. In any case, there are two different issues here that need to be pushed: on one hand, broad industry commercial interests will need lobbyists and a proactive administration. Seafarer employment issues will have to be largely addressed in-house and within the industry.

Therein lies the rub.

We are not going to produce that additional 2% mariner number the Shipping Ministry targets by 2015-around 40,000 additional Indian mariners with the projected demand slated to grow 20%- by sitting on our hands. As things stand, we have no concerted plan that will get us within even spitting distance of such a number. We have no workable databases of existing seafarers, to begin with- but perhaps the INDOS one can be tweaked to reflect active seafarers. The industry does no research, besides making assumptions based on anecdote, of what will attract new talent; we don’t even know for sure what makes present seafarers tick. We do not even know how many of the present lot plan to sail for even the next contract with us- or anywhere else.

Come to think of it, we actually don’t know our seafarers very well, do we?

It is telling, in more ways than one, that whatever little research is being done on the much overused term- the ‘Human Element’- is being conducted in the West, whereas much of the mariner workforce comes from the East. This needs to change quickly: why can’t the Indian maritime industry do its own research and come up with its own ideas? Cultural and nationality based factors cannot be applied on a one size fits all basis- European HRD ideas, for example, often do not work too well in India. A pan Indian industry body funded by individual companies has a much better chance of success. It could research and promote the profession, disseminate best HRD practices, suggest initiatives for improvement in both the quantity and quality of fresh entrants and provide industry feedback and comment related to general seafarer calibre to training institutes.

It would provide Indian solutions that would, in all likelihood, make sense in the Indian market. (The first thing it would need to do, in my opinion, is to recommend to the industry that it stop using touts in manning or training and that it stops charging any ‘placement fee’ from any sailor, either officially or under the table.)

I am convinced that unless we-and I mean those in the industry in India- do much more in the human resources development space than just hire and fire (or, more likely, hire and hope), our ambitions of increasing Indian seafarer numbers will remain pipe dreams. Actually, our ability to maintain even present seafarer market share is a huge question mark in my mind- leave alone that overly ambitious 9 percent number.

Change will not come from the Government, mainly because seafarer numbers are small in India and so politicians can ignore us: I could house all those 75000 or so active mariners from across the country in one corner of a suburb of Mumbai and nobody would even notice.

Change, if we want it, has to come from within.
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Placement debasement

When I joined a foreign ship for the first time fresh after my Second Mates thirty years ago, the first question I was asked by the German Captain was, “Did you pay anybody for this job in your country?” I have no idea whether the firm asked the question of every fresh employee that joined a ship in those days; I do know, however, that the question left with me with a good feeling about their setup. The fact that nobody had, in the four years or so that I had spent ‘at sea’ until then, asked me to pay for either my Cadetship or my first job left me slightly confused as to the validity of the query; but I presumed that the practice of paying for jobs existed in some of the more corrupt countries, and I self righteously knocked off India from that dirty list. We did not take under the table money from Cadets to give them a sea berth, I thought. As bad as the situation was within government departments in the industry (and still is), we did not at least carry forth those corrupt practices into the private sector, I told myself.



Therefore, it is with great disgust that I say today, three decades later, that the now widespread and perverted Indian industry practice of making Cadet trainees cough up cash for on board apprenticeships should be stopped at once.


I use the term ‘widespread’ advisedly; though there are companies that do not follow this reprobate practice, we all know that there are far too many that do. The exercise is widespread enough that a trainee has to budget for this bribe, along with Pre Sea and other costs. For many cadets and ratings trainees, the only options are either to know somebody somewhere or to pay up.


I do not demand a stop to this depravity because it is illegal, although it certainly is, and I would love to see the practitioners of these acts treated like the criminals that they clearly are.

I do not want to waste time justifying the indefensible, and so I do not want to go back in time to determine when this obscenity began, although the eighties recession had surely something to do with it.

I do not want to dwell on the particular nausea I feel when I hear of an ex mariner directly or indirectly involved in this putrefacted degeneration.

I do not want to put the math of the whole transaction down here: corruption is not about numbers. (Reminds me of the joke about the blonde in the train who agreed to sleep with a stranger for a million dollars but screamed when he suggested ten: “What kind of girl do you think I am?!” They had already examined that question and reached a conclusion, the gent informed her. They were now only haggling over the price.)

I will not even bring up, except in passing, that these ‘placement fee’ numbers are high enough to make a significant difference to the costing of ratings and cadet programmes (and therefore their marketability); in quite a few cases, the placement fee is the final straw that breaks a would be trainee’s financial back, or that of his parents, and he doesn’t enroll because he can’t afford to. We lose some good people because we promote- or condone- this system.


I will say this much, though: As long as we continue this placement fee circus, we have no business going on ad nauseum about falling standards at sea, the falsely perceived unattractiveness of the profession, officer shortage numbers or even the disinterest shown by most youngsters towards a life at sea. We have lost the moral right to question any of those things. Worse, each time somebody in the industry takes money for ‘placement’, he or she insidiously and invidiously downgrades the entire industry.


For, if the first step towards the recruitment of future officers that will be responsible for tens of millions of dollars worth of ship and cargo is to be identical to that of a construction labourer going to Saudi Arabia on a shady contract after paying touts in India for ‘placement’, then we have no business bemoaning anything except our own turpitude.

Neither do we have any business cribbing about the poor press our industry gets, as we are wont to do, or decry the widespread perception that this is a backward, blinkered and dirty industry.


Seems to me that part of the industry is exactly that. As for the few good men out there, well, evil thrives when good men do nothing.
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