Everybody knows

(All poetry from Leonard Cohen’s ‘Everybody knows’- and special thanks to a friend whose email that gave me an idea)

Everybody knows, by now in India, that the basis on which Pre-Sea maritime training institutes are allotted students in line with their approved intake of General Purpose Ratings- the Common Entrance Examination- is headed for abject failure. The latest twist is this: it has been announced that, should enough CET approved trainees be not available, each institute is allowed to take in trainees on their own to fill up its seats for the January batch. This, in my opinion, is akin to the ‘management quota’ system in use and abuse in engineering and other colleges in the country. Everybody knows that this undermines any common entrance examination system like nothing else does.

Everybody could see this coming. Everybody knows that the GP Rating CET system was plagued with problems from the start. That the shortage of successful CET candidates meant that some institutes ran batches at less than full strength, and were up in arms because they suffered revenue losses. That some went to court and took in students on their own to fill their seats, upsetting the Directorate General of Shipping and the BES, the Board that conducts the entrance (and exit) exams for GP Ratings.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows that the CET has been gasping for breath ever since it was rolled out just a couple of years ago. The presumed objective- standardisation and a raising of standards- may have been a worthy one, but it never really worked on the ground; at least I never felt  that any CET cleared student I saw had more potential than those taken in earlier, before the CET; even their English language skills were found wanting. Surprising that, considering that the CET was conducted in English.

What everyone did not know, though some were suspicious, was that the CET was a way the system was trying to limit the number of Indian ratings entering the job market- a market that had little place for them anyway. And while this may have been an even more laudable objective, everybody knew that maritime training institutes- some politically connected and all having invested considerable sums in premises and material- were not going to sit idly by and celebrate their own funerals.

In this scenario, and with

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

it is hardly surprising that we are where we are today. The CET system has been successfully subverted now. I do not know who in their right minds will appear at the CET next time; as it is, stories are doing the rounds of successful CET candidates who are complaining on various grounds. Who will spend money, time and effort in writing an exam when he can get admission into the same institute at the same price without the effort? (Perhaps not the same price; stories are also doing the rounds of some institutes charging significantly higher fees from non CET students)

What has been lost sight of, in all this drama of turf wars and revenues, is the farce that is being perpetuated on hapless pre-sea trainees in the country today. Everybody knows that there are no jobs for these guys. Everybody knows that they will likely get substandard training. Everybody knows that they will pay some tout in some shipping company to get a job. Everybody knows that their future is bleak, and everybody knows that that the chances of their careers taking off, or of these guys becoming reputed seafarers of tomorrow, are similar to a snowflake’s chance in hell.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
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Another brick in the wall

An email sent by the students of a running batch of General Purpose Ratings training at a DG approved institute in Delhi has gone viral. That may be an overstatement, actually, because nothing connected with shipping- the invisible industry- is on anybody’s radar long enough to really go viral. Whatever; the email was forwarded to me by four different sources on the same day on the second weekend of this month.  

I will not name the institute, for reasons I will explain later.

Forwarded emails are often suspect and usually exaggerated. Unfortunately, although this one may well be overstated, I fear that it is genuine enough at the kernel. Sent to a dozen senior officials at the DGS, MMD, IMU and Board of Examinations for Seafarers Trust (that conducts both entrance and exit examinations for GP Ratings trainees), the letter is addressed to the DGS and begs (the words “humble request” are used) that the abysmal conditions at their academy- infrastructural, academic, faculty related, administrative and the woeful state of ‘placement’ related issues- be addressed. The subject of the email says it all-“Please Help All the GP Ratings of July 2012 Batch.”

Of the fifteen points listed in the missive, many relate to infrastructure. The allegation is that the institute has an absence of even basic facilities, and suffers from leaking roofs leading to flooded dormitories and wet bunks, worms in the swimming pool, dirty stinking toilets that are almost never cleaned (with just one bottle of Harpic being issued every month for the purpose), dangerously low ceiling fans above the upper bunks and unbearably hot and humid classrooms. These accusations would be bad enough, but worse follows- no drinking water in the dormitories and none available at night, presumably since the main building is locked. Unhygienic, insufficient and substandard quality of food is another.  

I don’t completely buy the convenient reasoning that some institutes put out in response to such complaints, which says that future seamen should be used to harsh- even hostile- living conditions. There is no excuse for keeping trainees underfed and malnourished anyway. But even I would perhaps grudgingly accept this facile argument if the training at such establishments was even remotely acceptable. It is often not. “Most of the classes are not conducted and we are always subjected to cleanship” (euphemism for cleaning or maintaining the institute) even during class hours, allege the students in Delhi. Claiming that the library and computer lab are never available to them and are in fact being used by another non-maritime institute, the accusations go on to say that faculty  is insufficient for training- which is why, perhaps, so much time is spent on cleanship.

Complaints from the students and their parents fall on deaf ears or elicit veiled threats from the administrators, says the letter. An administrator is quoted in Hindi saying that he- a rich man- will kill the students and make their bodies disappear and nobody will even know. A Director at the institute dishes out abuse and threatens expulsion and the destruction of careers, students say, adding that he has ‘mercilessly’ beaten earlier trainees. Large amounts have been taken from the students for arranging jobs - the widespread racket that is called ‘placement’ - but nothing is done. “We are frightened to know all the past facts from our instructors, teachers and the students of previous batches,” the email says. “You (DGS) are our last hope…. This training environment (is) not teaching us anything rather threatening us daily and we are living in a very poor and pathetic condition.” 

I have, after much thought, not named the MET institute, mainly because I do not know if all these allegations are true. You can decide whether it sounds like the truth, fabrication or exaggeration; I will only say that all that is actually the secondary issue here. 

The fact is that such conditions exist in more than a few maritime institutes across the country, and everybody knows that. The fact is that it is unimportant whether those appalling conditions exist in that particular institute in Delhi, because they exist elsewhere, and I will bet the last shirt off my ageing back that they are much more widespread than you or I imagine.

All maritime institutes approved by the DGS that conduct GP Ratings courses are subject to strict guidelines regarding infrastructure, course structure, hours of tuition, syllabus, equipment- and almost everything else. Each deficiency mentioned in the email, for example, concerns something that the DG s examines before initial approval, and at each annual audit thereafter- or surprise audits that it can choose to conduct anytime. The institute must keep proper records of everything. At these audits, it is common for surveyors to examine dormitories for liveability, toilets for cleanliness, general infrastructure, lesson plans and records of classes conducted by each faculty- who are not supposed to teach more than so many hours a day. I have seen DGS surveyors examining everything from classrooms, equipment, dormitories, faculty credentials, wiring, fan heights, toilets, faculty sufficiency, their appropriateness and their hours of work. I have seen them going through student feedback forms. It seems impossible that a MET establishment can run like the one in Delhi is alleged to have; it seems inconceivable that an institute can function with glaring deficiencies under almost every head of the DG guidelines. But many do.

Why? Short answer- this is India. There is not enough space out here for the long answer.

 I am beyond anger here, and well into despair.  For imagine a 17 year old youngster, little more than a child, just out of the tenth grade wanting to make a career at sea. His unschooled poor or lower middle class parents are thrilled when he gets through the common entrance examination. They take a loan to fund his training, content that the subsequent career will make the loan repayment easy. The youngster joins a DG approved institute; if this is like the one described in the email I have been talking about, he is bewildered and increasingly disheartened at the conditions and lack of training. He hears disturbing stories about joblessness in the future, but it is too late, because another loan has been taken by the time he graduates- this one for ‘placement’. His parents are now in hock for a figure that can be rounded off to half a million rupees, counting interest. 

Two years later, he is still jobless and has abandoned all hope. The interest on the loan is still being repaid, with no end in sight.

Just imagine. Imagine all that.

Now imagine if that boy were your son.

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Death before dishonour

Disclosure: I derive a part of my income from the maritime education and training industry. Nevertheless.

When something is unsustainable, it falls apart eventually. Like the crony capitalist economic system that is today imploding across the world. Or, more pertinently to shipping, the present maritime training setup in India that has been going downhill ever since the STCW95 fiasco and the diarrhoeic deluge of third rate Maritime Education and Training(MET) establishments in this country (and others too, but let us stick to us). The resultant plunging MET spiral was inevitable and has been in process for close to two decades by now, underscored by blatant, rampant and unbridled corruption in administration and industry, greed, callous neglect, tumefied egoism and simple cussedness shown by all involved stakeholders.

The MET assembly line is now falling apart- it is dying, actually. There are few takers for its substandard product, and, while the pimps that proliferate in the street and in shipping offices will continue to ensnare the gullible for some more time, the priest should be called in, because it will soon be time for the reading of the last rites. New STCW conventions will not do anything. There is only so much rouge one can put on a syphilitic streetwalker; there comes a point when the disease cannot be hidden any longer. That point has arrived for MET. 

The impending death of the present maritime education circus will be a good thing; I shall not mourn its passing, because I believe that we need to destroy the diseased system first in order to rebuild. There is a risk, of course, that we may not get order out of the resultant chaos once we destroy. But if we don't destroy, there is an absolute certainty of the lingering death of the patient with no chance of resurrection.

While everybody has their own differing thoughts on overhauling MET, all recipes have three recommendations in common- a) Dramatically improve structure and delivery of all maritime education- and, thereby, quality of product; b) Guarantee on-board training and c) Do not promote distance learning programmes (DLPs- or KLPDs, as I uncharitably and crudely call them) at the expense of seatime.   

(There are some other common thoughts that resonate in addition, but they are broadly covered by these three basics. For example, a) would cover making pre sea education practical and relevant as well as re-examining useless STCW courses, b) would cover the tonnage tax regime and the need to take in only those trainees that the industry can place, c) would cover the primacy of experience over an academic certificate, and so on.) 

By the way, I welcome death of the present MET patient over the option of its 'treatment' for another reason- I believe that corruption and greed will ensure that treatment will never work. The training institute will always want to just fill its seats, hang employment or on board training of its graduates. The touts - whether in government or private industry- will always want to protect their commissions. The egotistic in national and international administrations will always want to expand their fiefdoms and justify their existence, such as it is.  The (somewhat grandiosely called) shipmanagement chop shop will usually want to get trained people free. 

It will require mortal struggle by a handful of intrepid visionaries just to knock down the present rotting edifice; to change it from within will require years of single-minded effort, with the existing gang fighting you every step of the way with every weapon in their arsenal - legal, political, industrial and even criminal. Therefore 'treatment' cannot be done.  Actually I am not even sure that we have, within the diseased system, enough integrity left to let the present seafarer factory die, or enough fortitude left to withstand screaming MET establishments, disgruntled pimps or the sound of the explosion of punctured egos if the system is dismantled.

But die it must, so we can protect five thousand years of maritime heritage, not to speak of times more recent when Indian seafarers built, brick by brick, a reputation that is now being cast to the wind. Not to speak of jobs for Indians or other spin off benefits to India, its economy, its industry and its people. 

So there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the present MET assembly line must die so it can be reborn and restart afresh. Along with this must die the touts, the indurate, the obstructionists, the out-of-date and the egotists, for the dishonour they bring down upon all of us is worse than death.

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Burying the ass in the well

Every year, the first working day of July- today, as it turns out- is when the second batch of the six-month GP Ratings Pre-Sea course commences for the year across India. Unfortunately, the run up to the last two batches- including the present one, where the story still has to play out- has been anything but smooth. The acrimony, confusion and finger pointing between the regulators on one hand- the Directorate General of Shipping and its authorised body, the Board of Examinations for Seafarers Trust (BES) - and maritime training institutes on the other seems to be increasing, the largest bone of contention being a shortfall- through a BES controlled All India Common Entrance Test (CET) - in intake. The situation is complicated by the fact that the MET institutes cannot afford to antagonise the DGS beyond a point, subject as they are to the approval and audit regime of the regulator.  This didn't stop some of them from going to court last time, though.

The smaller problem is that everybody- including seemingly secondary players like managers and shipowners- is right, in their narrow-minded way; one has sadly come to expect such self-centred killing of the golden egg laying goose as a given in the industry. The bigger problem is that everything everybody- without exception- is doing is guaranteed, unless things are changed quickly, to destroy the seafaring profession. Because they are looking at numbers instead of quality of graduates- the only thing that will make Indians preferred employees with shipowners. Because they are looking at short-term profit instead of sustainable growth.  Because corruption and middlemen have taken over the game.

The last DG, Mr Agnihotri, made no secret about his opinion- valid, in my view- that too many in the MET establishment were profiteering instead of making a profit. The MET establishment- somewhat understandably- says that the infrastructure and faculty conditions of the DGS are such that costs are high. The first CET  last year (a series of CETs, actually) did not produce enough numbers to fill all the DGS approved seats across the country; this resulted in great confusion around the new year, with some institutes going to court and, based on the ruling (later reversed), taking in trainees all on their own. The DGS came down on this practice later. In any case, many institutes blamed the BES for the poor calibre of entrants- including some CET failures who were allowed to join. They also claimed- somewhat disingenuously, considering that touts were feeding the institutes, which they still do, through the CET apparatus- that they were able to get much better calibre of students earlier, and much higher numbers too. Other abrasive issues included high fees being charged by some institutes, which the BES claimed make them automatically less preferred. Some institutes said that a CET was not necessary, given that the BES was already controlling standards through the Exit Examination - written, practical and oral- being conducted by them for every graduating batch.

Of course, the elephant in the room was always the 'placement' issue- the organisation of the first on-board berth for graduates- which brings us to the story of the present batch. At the time of writing this, indications are that many institutes are up in arms because many of their seats remain unfilled after the CET. Indications are - though I can hardly be sure- that CET failures will not be accommodated this time around, and the last batch resultant 'management quota' is not an option, given court rulings and the hesitance from MET setups to go against the DGS wishes.

The placement issue is an old story; the twist today is that the regulatory and commercial arms of the industry are openly acknowledging what everybody has known for years- that graduates, even toppers from the Exit Examinations, are simply not finding any jobs without paying people sitting in shipowners' or shipmanagers' offices. These include more than a few Master Mariners, by the way, who seem to have graduated to becoming professional touts today. The bogey of 'agents' or middlemen that many of us raise is a red herring, therefore; after all, those agents are bribing people in those offices to give graduates a job.

While Indian shipowners refuse to fulfil their statutory responsibility (in some cases), training institutes are being held responsible for the no-job scenario. On the street, nobody is talking about raising standards of Indian seafarers or excellence at the MET level; training institutes just want to fill up their seats. Nobody is talking anymore about raising Indian seafarer market share to 9 percent- a figure some clueless management consultancy outfit threw at the shipping establishment a couple of years ago, and which was quickly digested without a single thing being done to make it happen. Instead, the commercial industry and the regulators are both clamouring for a reduction in intake- even zero intake, some of them are saying.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the shortfall in the present batch of GP Ratings is a managed affair. Somebody may have decided, in the corridors of power, that it is better to have some MET institutes shut down instead of producing people who do not get jobs. Unfortunately, this is the wrong end of the stick. It is also a vicious circle that will result in a further downward spiral in standards- squeezing the training establishment may well result in a fee war that will eventually guarantee this, as institutes bleed, some of them to death.

Right now everybody is covering their behinds. The blame game is on; everybody is protecting their own interests. Everybody is behaving like the farmer whose donkey fell in the well and who decided that it wasn't worthwhile getting the ass out since he was old and useless, and so decided to bury him there instead- alive. That is what the industry is doing to the profession, make no mistake.

Anyway, if I can complete the parable about the donkey. The farmer, having made the decision to bury the guy, grabbed a shovel and began to throw dirt onto the donkey in the well. After howling for sometime, the donkey became quiet, desperately thinking about survival. What he then started doing was simple- he would shake off each shovel of dirt and- as it built up in the well- take a step up. The farmer, shovelling away, was amazed when the donkey, having reached the edge of the well, happily trotted off.

The simple minded will say that there is a moral to this- when life shovels dirt on you, shake it off and take a step up- never ever give up. I am sure the preachers- of which they are many in our fraternity- will advertise this course of action as the best in our present predicament. They will point to the donkey for inspiration without doing anything else.

Actually, I like a different ending to the story. In that parable, the donkey, after trotting away from the well, becomes very angry at the farmer's betrayal. Enraged, he runs back and bites the farmer- no prizes for guessing where. The bite gets infected and the farmer dies of sepsis.

Moral of the alternative story? When you do something stupid, and then try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.

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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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Indian Ratings: Common Entrance Test travails

As I write this around Christmas, a Common Entrance Examination for Indian Ratings for the batch scheduled to start just a week later- on January 2, 2012- has just been held. Or should I say has been held yet again, for this is the third CET that the Board of Examination For Seafarers Trust (BES) has conducted since September for the same batch. (One could quote Goldfinger from Ian Fleming and say, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time its enemy action," but that may be somewhat uncharitable). Whatever, the confusion, fear and suspicion the first ever series of CETs have created in the maritime training establishment in the country have, so far, nullified any advantages that the new system was supposed to usher in.

The reason for all these CETs is simple: shortage of applicants and a misreading of the effort required to promote the course. (I also wonder, given the sample question papers put up on the BES website, how many applicants were actually successful. I can tell you from experience that many typical entrants would not have been able to answer many of the science- and even English language- questions asked.) And, although the post examination system- especially the allotment of entrants to different institutes- has not been transparent, my rough calculations assume that there was a countrywide shortfall of anything between 5-700 candidates after the second CET was held in November, if all the seats in the country's Directorate General of Shipping approved institutes were to be filled. That is something like a 20% to 30% shortfall; not a small number.

Predictably, many institutes are very worried. Some- where the shortfall is 50% of their capacity or even more, based on the November CET- are obviously more worried than others are. They claim that demand surely exists, as they have been filling up seats in previous batches before the CET. Then there have been whispered stories about some of the candidates who have passed the CET being unable to even fill up a form when they land up at the institutes- their English is insufficient. Allegations, also, of 'union approved' candidates passing the CET. Confusion since some cleared candidates failed their medical tests at the institutes subsequently, or held dubious academic record documents. Confusion with candidates who had opted for certain institutes being allotted others instead. Quiet questions as to how certain institutes have had all their seats filled up while others have had just a few candidates show up. Declarations by the odd institute that they would fill up their seats under a 'management quota' system, since they stand to lose a fortune if they run the course with just a few CET approved candidates. Rumours that the DGS is using the CET to reduce overall intake of Ratings, given the terrible record of post-training sea berth 'placements' in the industry. Protests that the institutes alone can do little to address this problem on their own- it is shipowners that can provide sea berths, not MET institutes, they point out.

All the confusion and suspicion has vitiated the atmosphere somewhat, in my opinion- something that can hardly be good for training. To be fair, while there have been problems with the conduct of the CET- admit card delays and other teething issues, for a start- these issues can be easily improved in time with a little experience. In addition, making the process transparent in future will go a long way towards addressing most of the other concerns to do with the conduct of the CET and the allocation of successful candidates to institutes.

Many grievances of the MET establishments are not without merit. However, they conveniently ignore some of their own shortcomings and malpractices. For example, question on the ethics of using middlemen to fill up seats in previous batches remain unmentioned when they talk of the 'demand' having been hitherto sufficient to fill up all their seats. So, too, with the widespread practice of false-selling courses by painting a rosy picture of the industry and employment opportunities post training when the truth is quite the opposite. Some training institutes misdeclare the fees they actually charge to the DGS, indirectly misleading students who are disseminated this information at the CET; others cut corners and nickel-and-dime trainees at every opportunity post admission. And, while I agree that the placement of GP Rating graduates should not be the responsibility of MET institutes, they should not be allowed to claim, to the Ratings, fictitious records of past placements either, or use meaningless phrases like '100 percent placement assistance' in their advertising. Or indeed, allowed to be conduits for placements made conditional to a Rating paying a hefty bribe to a third party.

In the end, however, this leaf storm of shortcomings- whether of the CET or the institutes- will settle sooner rather than later, if only because maritime institutes are in no position to antagonise the DGS beyond a point. And, while I agree that the targeting of institutes for the shortcomings of the industry seems unfair, all this is finally a sideshow.

For there is an elephant in the room nobody has yet deemed fit to ask this two-part question: Given the fact that hardly any rating can get a sea berth without bribery or connections today, and given that there is an extremely low demand for Indian ratings anyway, is the Directorate General of Shipping obliged to guarantee to any maritime training institute that even a single seat of their DG approved Pre-Sea Ratings course will be filled in future? Is the first responsibility of the DG to the MET institutes or to the hapless Ratings who are trained- and cannot be 'placed'?

The answer to that question will tell us a lot about the future of MET in this country, our plans to increase seafarer market share- and, indeed, the viability of training in India. Because I cannot see people investing money in institutes in future- in an era of market or regulator driven uncertainty- if some of the present ones shut down for lack of demand, or for any other reason. And I cannot see demand for Indian seamen rising- not for the next few years, at least.

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