29 december 2023 India’s ship building industry

 India’s stationary course in the shipping value chain

Boosting ship owning, chartering, financing and building would not only push India to the centre of the global maritime industry but also enhance its international trade presence

जहाज स्वामित्व, चार्टरिंग, वित्तपोषण और निर्माण को बढ़ावा देने से न केवल भारत वैश्विक समुद्री उद्योग के केंद्र में आ जाएगा, बल्कि इसकी अंतर्राष्ट्रीय व्यापार उपस्थिति भी बढ़ेगी

The Yangtze river 

1 has been China’s heartbeat through its long history. Tradition, legend, myth, culture, as well as commerce and industry are integral to the Yangtze lore.

2 Today, the Yangtze is modern China’s lifeline while retaining its antiquity. The Three Gorges project has only added to its lustre.

3 It is a unique sight. The modern engineering and shipping marvels of Suez or even the Panama canal see a convoy काफिले of ships, one behind the other. 

4 The Yangtze often sees multiple convoys steaming in parallel. 

5 The ships are either bringing in raw materials from across the world including from far away Chinese-owned mines from Peru and Africa or leaving with finished products to all over the world. 

6 Some vessels are new, built in shipyards that stand cheek by jowl at every bend in the river. Many are repaired in those same yards and dry docks.

कुछ जहाज़ नए हैं, शिपयार्ड में बनाए गए हैं जो नदी के हर मोड़ पर किनारे खड़े रहते हैं। कई की मरम्मत उन्हीं यार्डों और सूखी गोदियों में की जाती है।

where China is and where we are now

The Yangtze is among the best examples of the tiringly clichéd घिसा-पिटा “look where China is and where we are now” story.

 Such stories use statistics to show how India and China were on the same boat until the late 1980s and how China has leapfrogged since then, leaving India way behind.

The India versus China story

1 India was actually ahead 

of China in the real boat until the end of the 1980s. 

2 ship-owning

While China was a late entrant. India boasted of a tradition of modern ship-owning.

 In fact, the most spectacular case of ship-owning the world has seen was a uniquely Indian contribution. 

3 A daring former Indian Navy officer commissioned and owned giant oil tankers

that till today remain the biggest merchant ships ever built. India has been associated very closely with the International Maritime Organization too.

4 private players

With private players venturing in an area dominated by large public sector facilities.

India had shipyards that were beginning to give hope that they may well build ships competitively for the global market. 

5 Labour arbitrage विदेशी मुद्रा का लाभोन्‍मुख व्‍यापार had preceded shipping at least two decades before it happened in IT.

6 शिपिंग के लिए क्या इंपॉर्टेंट

🌺English-knowing Indian seafarers were becoming a routine sight in global shipping as the industry took a step back from employing qualified eastern Europeans whose English was not yet up to the mark.

🌺 Safety is the number one priority in shipping, and knowledge of English is essential for that.

भारत ने किन बातों पर फोकस किया

1 India’s main source of growth and foreign exchange earning has been the supply of labour; in shipping too, successive governments have focused largely on expanding the seafarer population.

seafarer training and employment. 

🌺In the past, Mumbai and Kolkata were the major centres of seafarer training and employment. 

🌺The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decentered maritime training and opened it up to private players. 

🌺Today, institutions across the country churn out seafarers नाविक of various grades and competencies. Across the world, from the Arctic ice class merchant ship to the ore carrier calling on Chilean ports, if there are 20 seafarers on board a ship, it is likely four or five will be Indian.

🌺Along with the growth in seafaring population, Indians, with their talent for value engineering, have grown into ship management. 

भारतीय इस ट्रेड में कितने आगे , इस ट्रेड से भारत को कितनी इनकम

1 Indians with their ken for bargaining know how to run a tight ship, literally. They can take over a ship, quickly understand its systems and run it. 

2 Many ship management companies have sprouted in India, some in-charge of hundreds of ships.

3  Sanjay Prashar, shipping industry professional and former member of the National Shipping Board, estimates that Indian seafarers and their management companies bring in an estimated $6 billion in foreign exchange every year. 

4 According to Sanjaya Baru’s article in The Wire, India’s total foreign remittances are some $125 billion while China’s stands at $50 billion.

ship owning, chartering, financing and building और भारतीय जहाज मालिकों की समस्याएं

1 But ship owning, chartering, financing and building remain largely out of bounds for Indians. India has simply not moved up the shipping value chain. 

2 With successive Union governments letting the state-owned Shipping Corporation of India bleed, the order book of Indian shipyards has been hit. 

3 New private shipowners who are catering to India’s own trade growth typically buy second hand ships as they come cheap and can closely align with their short-term market forecasts that are often the only reliable prediction the Indian market allows

चीन किस प्रकार से आगे बढ़ रहा है

. Powered by a dedicated government plan to ramp up shipbuilding and owning, China, by 2020, was making half of all ships in the world. 

And, just as in Japan and Korea, the previous leaders in shipbuilding, Chinese shipowners dutifully built most of their own ships at state-owned government yards, as Mr. Narasimhan points out.

A negligible share in building

Maritime Agenda 2020

1 The UPA government came up with a Maritime Agenda 2020 

2 It sought to increase India’s share of global shipbuilding from less than 2% to a modest 5% in a decade

and proposed a vague road map that included sops to achieve it.

3  By 2020, however, India’s share in global shipbuilding had dropped to practically zero, instead of inching up.

4 India Vision 2030

The Bharatiya Janata Party government’s Maritime India Vision 2030 outlined 10 key themes 

that include logistics, environment concerns, port infrastructure and increase in seafarer growth and training,

 but just does not mention any plan for shipbuilding and owning.

5 Sagarmala

There is talk of Sagarmala but the yards are seeing only naval ship orders.

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 Shipbuilding and owning would give India a seat at the table not only in the global maritime industry but also enhance its presence in the international trade scene too.

Just as overall industrial might is integral to military might, shipbuilding is integral to a strong naval base as well. 

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Source the hindu