Monday, May 28, 2007

Why a mariner be paid so much…………….(the answer)

Why a mariner be paid so much…………….(the answer)

So here I m attempting to answer the question which I had only raised to my own self

This is what I think…---

Salary of a mariner is rooted more in its historical backdrop than elsewhere. The very line of thinking—it’s for staying away from home; it’s a risky profession, -- are all a secondary line of reasoning. The primary and the basic line, in my opinion, would be the history of the profession. Men of seas had been raking the mullah from the time immemorial. Their traditional rights cannot be suddenly overthrown by arrival of a so-called the modern management thinking. The mariners have been getting it, and they should continue to get it, putting away any attempt to divert the treasure of the seas to any land lubber sitting miles away from the galore of green waters, in safe homes, doing what is called the commercial operations.
Now in this above viewpoint, I would want to make clear the fact that I have no intentions of underplaying the importance of management-thinking trained the commercial operators in this new-order world. So the treasures may at the most be shared between the hunters and the facilitators. But the facilitators should not be made to tower the hunters.
If were a management consultant, working with any renowned consultancy firm, I would have taken it to be extremely foolish to snatch away the righteous proportions of the booty being taken way from the bringers and giving away to the white collars. The newborn stake holders can and must join the party but without underplaying the importance of the original hunters.
In fact, during the year 2000 revamping consultancy of the SCI by Prise Waterhouse Coopers, the suggested methods were also in concurrence with the above. All that they had suggested was cutting down on excessive staff both on land and on ships and then increase the wages on the remaining ones. Their working methodology was in line with those foreign operators who are known to be the best in ship operations.
But owing to its Public Sector Undertaking status, the SCI could not put behind its other objective of public welfare. Hence it is continually exploring the path of business with social objectives fulfillment. The rightsizing could not have been affected overnight. So here we are, still on the warpaths, conflicting egos with other and striving each other’s fall.

Friday, May 25, 2007

TELL ME WHY should a mariner be paid so much????

TELL ME WHY should a mariner be paid so much????

Economics of nation has played a terrible game in deciding of this factor. My personal honest understanding is that it’s all because of the utter mismanagement. There is absolutely no reason for the soaring salaries of mariner vis-à-vis other professionals. They are not so high- caliber people, especially with the advent of the GPS. Navigation is a waltz now, I know for sure. Cargo- operations is a cake-walk, and marine engineering a vestige of un-complete semiconductor automation. Then why this tumescent salary?? In Indian scenario nothing can best explain it than the very effect of all pervading mismanagement.
During the early years of my cadetship, the crew was getting some Rs 80K salary. Then in year 2001, the massive policy change in the company due to governments impending Disinvestment plans, the SCI took up a Revamping, and reduced the crew salary to it’s real worth. They are ‘right’ paid now; so do the officers’ think. But what remained undone was the salary structure of the officers’ themselves. They could still soar high above only for the artificially, or say mis- managerially, created dearth of people. Year 2003 saw a brief glimpse of such nature only, when due to excessive flooding of officers’ in the market, they ran around on all kinds of vessels. The moral>>> with the abundance, the demand, and effectively the monopoly, can be easily curbed.
Give me a reason why the employer should not induct away so many people so as to ‘flood’ the market and then sit on the negotiation table??! Who will demand, and who will grant??! Tell me?? There is a sheer over-estimation of owns worth from the mariners’ community all over.
My disparate views cannot be the reasons for putting me outcast anyways. The strength of unity can never bring dead to life, or overturn the face of truth; period.
There are so many kinds of professionals in the market all over. They all have their right and the justified payment structure. What decides the true worth of a mariner in relation to the true worth of a software professional, or even a doctor?? What? He stays away from home for so long? , or takes so much risk as to go out to sea?, or the cargo he carries is worth millions? Does no other category of professionals fill up these lines? Is a patient’s life not worth a million? Then why not a doctor? Is a software guy not so high educated? Does an engineer not do an ingenious job?
Then how do the Europeans pay their mariners? Are they so much hi-salaried people there also??
Okay then, how do we decide who should be paid how much? Where will all the money earned from such hi-cost running of ship be disbursed? To its commercial managers, who sit-back safe in their offices with no inkling of the power of green seas? To the company? Will it not be a case of Profiteering, then? A profit-bringing worker must get his rightful money anyways. So how do we decide?
Don’t judge the side of righteousness by the side of the fence you are born in. it may even be on the other side. Make an unbiased honest observation, please.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

A brief history of Time—after reading……

A brief history of Timeafter reading……

Stephen Hawkings has vividly drawn the chronology of the entity upon which any chronology itself is drawn..the Time. How man’s idea of the world around him changed as ‘the sun moved round the earth’. A ‘Day’ itself is a unit of time and man could have realized that until he sensed something like that!!the idea of space and time has not occurred to other species of the planet. The whole story of Evolution moves along these edges..the two spectra of dimensions.—the space and the time.
As a mariner, sometimes I wonder how the whole very concept of navigation occurred to Man for the first time. I mean I have been looking at this same sky even before I became a mariner, but did I know that those star told a direction to move to?? Hah..we mostly think that they only tell our future. But they truly had more to say than what I, or you, or anybody for that matter, thinks. Mankind, as collective, sees and hears more from those stars. And going by Mr Hawkings account they also have the story of our life and death guised in the language of their own. The gravity, the relativity everything that encompasses our daily life has its origin from these same stars. And how comfortably do we live out our lives without bothering a bit about them.
Even more mesmerizing is the story of how man’s idea about the space has clicked, re-clicked, revised, improved, interpreted, re interpreted, amended, reverted-- over the passage of Time. And the whole process is forever ongoing. The search of Time is the search of our Life and Death. It’s much beyond the making of a clock. The science amalgamates well its mother, the Philosophy, as also reinforces its fraternal relationship with the Arts.. The Time is the strongest and the most omnipotent entity, they say. And then the Philosophy joins hand with the Religion to search for the strongest, perhaps the real super power of the Universe, the Time.
We started off with a thought to measure out the passing of time by our clocks and end up searching for the formation of our whole universe, the Big bang theory and the Steady State theory of it’s formation. And I am sure somewhere in between must have come the GPS(Global Positioning System) which has changed art of navigation to a child’s play forever. The sundial, the hourglass, the past, the present, the future, the idea of time travel, the gravity, the relativity, quantum theory, the light, whole very idea of a simplified theory of Governance of this Universe, how they all get rolled up into one is best described by this book. Individually they appeared so different and unconnected to me, before. Physics, chemistry, biology, Arts, Literature, Language..that’s how we see this sphere of Science and Arts. How they form a single sphere of Philosophy is understood when the thread of Time stitches through them. And yeah, they do have the ‘space’ for Religion and God as well. For, as Einstein says, ‘God doesn’t play dice’( to contravene his own theory of Quantum Mechanics!!!), he surely may be needing space, possibly as large as this universe, to play his game.