Shippies: job and profile

Why do people despise merchant navy job???
Oh, these ignorant land-lubbers.
I have suffered three matrimony rejections by far on the grounds that i am under-educated for the girl. Although i initially felt the setbacks but later i realised that it's coz those girls are too ignorant to understand what today's merchant naval officer's work profile is. Sometimes i even ponder if they would have had courage to speak those words if they knew what my school years profile/achievements were like. If not flabbergasting, i can safely assume myself to be an average or an above average student. and most girls in my co-ed were far below my level. In fact there were hardly 7 or 8 above me in a total strength of 60 students, of which 25 were girls. In my section composed on maths students only there were just 7 girls out of 41, 4 were better than I in terms of final marks sheet. but in overall performance including the extra-curricular, perhaps only 1 or 2 could stand out.
and the matrimonial rejections have been from even those who would be inferior to even the below average girl co-eds of my grade 12th.
But it's not these girls fault totally, as ignorance alleviation should have been our professional responsibility as also the reputation-building to shake off the image of "a wife at every port".
After 12th, year 1997, I was selected in an all-India exam conducted by our central govt PSU the Shipping Corporation Of India(the SCI) Ltd for training as deck cadet, officially called the Trainee Navigating Officer Cadet(TNOC). to me, the training was imparted at the SCI's own institute, Maritime training Institute(MTI), located just opposite the Powai lake, in Mumbai. I took my training from April 1998 to Aug 1998, and enrolled to batch 28-29, the first among many many "batches" i was to enrol with in years to come. Two batches 28 and 29 were conducted together, each consisting of 20 cadets, sorted in Alphabetical Order, hence the batch name 28-29. A parallel set of cadet, total 40 again, were sent to Training Ship Rehman(TS Rehmam), located in Raigarh and accessible from Nhava Sheva, and they too refer to themselves as "MTI 28-29, parallel Rehman".
Thus, total 80 of us were selected by the SCI for that batch, after a written , objective kind, exam of level slightly tougher than the NDA exams, and after one small interview. I wrote the exam on Dec 14th, 1997 in New Delhi and appeared in the interview on 11-12 Feb 1998 at "Shipping House" in Mumbai. (the head office of SCI is called Shipping House, located at Nariman Point just adjacent to the Mantralay(Legislative Assembly) of Maharashtra. In fact the Shipping House and the Express Tower(the Air India HQ) are the two more prominent buildings of this posh locality).SCI would induct some 180 cadets in one year.
After this, I joined my first ship for the on-board training on 22nd Nov 1998, a crude tanker called 'Maharshi Karve', which has been stationed in Mumbai High oil fields to store the crude oil that is dug from sea bed. Karve even till date remains the largest entity of this oil fields, among all its Platforms.
Anyways, just a week after my joining, this ship sailed away straight to Bahrain, for Dry docking. (every ship is bound to undergo repairs/overhauling every 2.5 yrs, in which she is taken off from water into a basin called Dry Dock, hence dry docking.)
I left Karve on 20th May 1998, after a 6 months haul, due to my grandfather's demise, and after that joined my second ship "State of Andhra Pradesh" on 11th of June 1998, from NSD 2( Netaji Subhash dock 2) in Kolkata.
Away from this, the more recognised gate to entry into merchant navy in those years was through TS Chanakya, for which the entrance till date is conducted through IIT-JEE. Actually, looking at the income that we people make by way of working with the foreign companies, the government was planning to put in some more high qualified youngsters into the field. Hence that was considered the core entry and mine was the side entry. the core entry would get a BSc nautical Science degree after a straight 3yrs training at TS Chanakya, located in Navi Mumbai, while we would simply get a Pre-sea Certificate after our 3months course. We were required to undergo 24months (actual time, not calendar time) on-board training to appear for the junior officer's exam, the rank being known as 3rd Mate. The 'degree cadets' would simply join ship directly as 'junior officer' for 1 yr, come back , take their BSc NS degree and join back ship as 3rd mate. But, later it was noted that the ship work required more of practical on-site training, not that the-classroom stuff. and hence by year 2000, the Govt changed its plan to make the 3-months pre-sea course an equally important gate to entry, as the 3-yr degree course. the deeper causes of this are as follows:--
The high-intellect IIT-qualified people from Chanakya were not much impressed with the profession, and even till date look for means to quit sea faring as early as possible. In the job scenario, the govt noted that sea-faring had become the fiefdom of Indian in past so many years, but due to soaring competition, under impact of globalisation, (opening of Chinese fronts to English Language, and the Philippines resurgence), the Indians had started to lose grounds in ship jobs. The growing economy of India was offering better and as much lucrative jobs on shore itself, like in software, engineering and management that IIT kind of people would naturally opt for. hence the only lot of people to stay back and work on ships were the 'pre-sea' kind of people. also, the degree cadets, joining as officers from day 1 of sea career had nil experience, and a few of them underwent some fatal accidents either on themselves or for the whole ship, that the govt was forced to re-consider their training procedure. In years to come, the govt modified it from, 3yrs course and degree straightaway to --> 3yrs course and six months on-board , giving the degree thereafter, --> 1 yr on-board --> 1 yr on-board + oral exam of 3rd mate. for us the course improved on as -- 3 months pre-sea + 24 months onboard , 3rd mate written and oral,--> 3months+24month onboard+ 3rdmate written and oral giving diploma in NS--> 1 yr pre sea+ 18 months on board + 3rd mate written and oral giving BSc Nautical Science from IGNOU.
The govt in its course of time had probably begun to realise that sea-farer, degree or pre-sea, whatever, in any case where not to "unqualified" stuff to be deprived of eligibilities for post like President and MP/MLAs considering the kind of people that flourish there. Also the growing hold of specialisation in all the technical fields was prompting everybody to accept the sea-farer's work also to be of equally high skills for a 'degree'.
All the oldies sitting in the govt were themselves ex-seafarers who didn't have a degree and they knew how stupid it was to imagine politicians of today are more eligible than themselves. The management skills required in the sea-faring job were rising to unparalleled limits, and there couldn't have been reasons to differ a "pre-sea' from a 'degree' guy when both were doing the same job. In fact the 'pre-sea' turned out to be better performer due to more practical lessons from early years. the 'degree' guy being from IIT and someone looking down at the profession was quite often a snooty guy.
in present, it is mandatory for anybody doing a deck cadet course coming from any training institute in India , to do a BSc NS course, by way of correspondence through IGNOU or by classroom course through TS Chanakya(which awards it's BSc degree under Univ of Mumbai).
but at the last, we guys had missed our bus for the degree course. but I personally had identified the importance of a degree in my school years itself, and so enrolled with IGNOU for a BCom course.
Taking the matrimonial rejection issue again, any land-lubber would not be aware of these developments in the shipping field, and continue to see it through of eyes of disparity. In reality, the govt, sort of realised its mistake of giving 'degree' as an Award to the IIT-guys alone, ( because education is every citizen's legal right and the "pre-sea" was also happening through govt defined procedure only, which meant there couldn't be any justification for depriving person of his legal right,) hence govt corrected itself by awarding 'degree' to all officers coming through any entrance channel. It also would aid the country's need for better skill manpower for handling even more advanced technology ships of future. even of now, I feel we are the fortunate few to get experiences of working amidst such high technology machinery, the ships and terminals, that any land-lubber cannot think of.
the shipping field in these many years of my service ,I have witness, has grown in leaps and bounce , in all the lines- the technical, the technological and the managerial. The SCI underwent the pressure of Disinvestment, and all in my seeing exploded out of its India-centric trade to take on the world in every corner it could. the ships began the carry cargos of fully not-India connection. the charters, the consignee, the receiver all from abroad. this until before was difficult as competitive behaviour of ours was lying inactive in the sack of social security. Oil giants of the world, the Shell, the Exxon, the Mobil, the British Petroleum, the Chevron , all had woken up to form one OCIMF(Oil Companies International Marine forum) and the ICS(Intern Chamber of Shipping) to set the highest of standards for ship's design, operation and management. for our desi PSU, adopting those standards till date is a predicament under all those national compulsions of welfare society, to be able to incur same revenue( cargo freight) from the charters that the best of the ships do. The International Maritime organisation, on the other hand has made things more stringent, enforcing more use of advanced technology, in order to attend to world's cry for zero-pollution marine environment. Sometimes I smile within myself that the procedures that I do on board , if they will ever be adopted by my country in its land for controlling the pollution. International regulation under IMO, the MARPOL, forces me to go to those limits to actually attain those standards, which our Air Act and Water pollution act don't call for even in theory.! the commercial operation exposes me to some understanding of the mercantile laws as practised among the traders at international level, the handling of ship's crew, attending to their medical needs, the provisions, the accommodation, the security aspect, bring to me the skills of Personnel management. the handling of cargo, navigation of ship, maintenance of ship and few of it's machinery are purely technical work requiring little bit of the operation management. In truth, as a chief mate, I feel myself to be what a District Magistrate would be to a town. Only thing that my domain is smaller- of length say 300 mtrs, human beings only 25, and property worth some 100million dollars(the petroleum oil) and the ship (worth some 80million dollars).
Wary girls also need to be assured of new-age mariners' faithfulness as life partners, an aspect which has been tremendously maligned with notions like "a wife at every port", and songs like " a little bit of monica in my life...". Actually the modern day sailors, who are coming from background like myself, are highly conscious of such maligned image and end up becoming more sober, good-habited guys than what other guys on land are. To aid us in this, our extremely busy schedule on ships(Particularly on management ranks like Captain/Chief Mate/Chief Engineer/1st Engineer), and very fast operations while the ship is in port, keeps us so tightly chained to our ships that shore leave is not availed in months of sailing tenure.
the other problem beams light over the issue of our nearness to our spouses in times of her need. In this regards, it is worthwhile to mention that one reason why India's mariners are losing the grips of Indians in sea-faring to the Philippines is primarily because they are going all out to settle on shore jobs as early as they could to join wives in setting and running their houses. the prospects of shore jobs are brightened up for Indians as of now. the chief engineers normally take up the technical management of ships from shore, while the Captains( Master Mariner, as they are professionally called) take up shore based personnel management and sometimes the commercial operations related to chartering and brokering of ships. the other lucrative jobs are like - joining as trainer/teaching faculty; as surveyors for the insurance "Clubs"( as they are known as, in our parlance); joining as Govt Authorities for Surveying and examining of ships for sea-worthiness and selection/examination of officers/manning staff; joining as Surveyors with the Standardisation organisation like the Indian register of Shipping, and many more; joining the port authorities; joining as 'Pilots' (professional navigators who haul the ship in/out of the ports).
being a management professional with an excellent work-experience in the field of logistics, many people have also chosen to formally do up an MBA and switch to other logictics, Supply-chain, charter/brokering firms and so on. Additionally, to the shore job in the shipping company, they keep their doors open to us for all ranks including that of the Chairman-cum-MD. In SCI itself, there has already been on Captain Radhakrishnan, who served the company from rank of cadet to CMD, until retirement.Foreign companies also offer job in their branch offices at equivalent portfolios.
Most of us switch over to these streams by the age of 35. Only issue that hangs is that though these all are also high-income jobs, but not so in comparison with our on-board salaries. Sometimes people choose to continue sailing life long as sea-life is more hassle-free than shore jobs, and more yielding too.
If only, the common land people knew that !