Blame it on the Gods

In a convoluted scene straight out of a raunchy early 70s Ted Mark novel, like the one where the US President (a parody of Richard Nixon), undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, was asked by a doctor whether he was attracted to his mother, before another inquired if he had ever acted on it—I too was facing a similar situation, but in a woke mid-2020s fashion. First, I was asked whether I identified as male, and next if I had the necessary hardware provided by Mother Nature. And no, this wasn’t some gender rights imbroglio I unwittingly got into, but a questionnaire from a US-based Impact Startup Fund for their fellowship program, one whose DEI agenda far overshadowed their green credentials.

The rest of the questions were pretty staid: what you’re doing, why, who benefits, and so on. Until my non-bionic Terminator brain’s non-electric eye stumbled upon one for which I had no ready answer. It was like being back in college, sitting for a Corporate Finance paper—a subject I utterly detested, never understood, and had zero interest in then, with zero regrets about it now. If I now have the excuse of dyslexia and ADHD for barely scraping through Accountancy and Statistics, in Corporate Finance, I just slept through lectures, eyes wide shut, often helped by ganja smoked atop the library building beforehand, sometimes in the reading hall.

Thus, when I sat for the finals, I just wrote down whatever came to mind, though I am still convinced that I flunked the paper due to a severe stomach infection I had on that day and not my ignorance. The next year they passed me, hoping to see the last of me, not for any knowledge gained.

Coming back to the form, the question was: "Explain how systemic discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or any other factor has affected the field in which you are engaged?" Honestly, I had no answer. I made myself a cup of coffee and tried accessing any remaining archives in my terminator brain related to Corporate Finance exams, or at least recalled how to get back into that mode. And before I knew it, I had my Eureka moment. Despite the urge to run down the street in Archimedes' style and dress, I settled for returning to my desk with mild euphoria, having cracked the biggest puzzle that has plagued me since I began designing and developing green sustainable boats—why the hell wasn’t anyone interested in the subject?

From the first time I pitched for a government-owned refinery's startup ideation grant to the country’s leading tech accelerator, the result was always the same: utmost disinterest and inevitable rejection. Surely, the problems I presented—like the shortage of rescue boats during recurring annual floods, unsafe medieval boat designs, and the fact that scores, sometimes over a hundred people, drown each year in Indian boat accidents—would resonant with someone? My innovative proposal to use bamboo composites, the most sustainable plant material, should have appealed to climate tech advocates and funds. But no, nothing! After about 20 or 22 rejections, I shifted gears and claimed that I would first design an electric boat motor for the armed forces, with bamboo composite boats only as test beds. That's when I finally got my first grant. Fine, I built both.

The reply to the question is that the root cause of apathy towards boats and water transport lies in faith, more specifically, the most nautical sector-unfriendly religion in the world: Santan Dharma, that's Hinduism for the rest of us!

While the ancient Greeks had Poseidon, Christians have St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, the Chinese prayed to Guanyin, protector of the seas, and the Arabs crossed the Indian Ocean under Allah’s protection, the Hindus—except for the merchants of the Chola empire and coastal communities like the Kachis, Malabaris, and a sprinkling of Marathas—all believed that crossing the ocean made them lose their caste and religion. Thus, there is no single pan-Indian Hindu sea god, no matter what the online Hindutwawadi revivalists and YouTube experts claim - at most, some local demi-gods.

Even when Ram had to rescue Sita from Ravana in Sri Lanka, instead of building a flotilla of warships to reach the island, he used an unpaid monkey labour force to build a highway across the strait. In all the branches of Hinduism, water is for drinking, bathing, and pouring over the heads of gods. Rivers are all declared holy and hence meant for rituals, immersing ashes of the dead, and performing daily ablutions—you got it, having a crap.

Most riparian and coastal communities, along with their professions like boat-building, ferrying, and fishing, were invariably relegated to lower castes. Even after many converted to Islam or Christianity, their social standing didn’t change even after independence. They may have got some education, quotas and reservations, and a few health facilities, but nothing has been done to modernize their tools of trade or traditional livelihood. Their boats remain as primitive as they were at the dawn of the century, with not a single government program for affecting any positive change, either with modern technology or by upgrading their skill set.

This is not surprising, since post-independence economic policymaking has been shaped by those with an upper-caste, middle-class mentality. For them, both then and now, river and water transport never played any significant role. In fact, in their zeal to improve irrigation during the Green Revolution to boost agricultural production, they collectively destroyed the hydrology of most Indian rivers with an almost compulsive spree of dam and barrage construction and canal digging. As a result, most rivers today are either running dry, have raised beds from accumulated alluvial deposits, and floods are occurring in places that never had them before. Predictably, all riverine connectivity has been cut by multiple dams, with no vessel locks ever built to facilitate boat traffic. What was once a vibrant river transport system across the subcontinent has been relegated to forgotten history.

This same disregard for all things nautical extends beyond rivers to the sea. Despite India’s massive coastline, relatively cheap labour, and domestic steel production, the country has less than 1% of the global shipbuilding market. Meanwhile, South Korea, a country the size of India’s northeastern region, commands 30-35% of the market.

For once, it wouldn’t be wrong to blame the gods for the current state of India’s rivers and maritime industry. 

And yes, the US DEI chaps didn't select me for their fellowship either...

 

To those interested in learning about the absence of Divine (Hindu) presence in India's maritime tradition, I will highly recommend reading Devdutt Patnaik's article on the subject. The above image has been copied for his article as well, needless to say, without his permission.

Karma of the Fallen

 

It was during a visit to an industrial area near Delhi where by chance I came across a familiar steel rebar factory. Now abandoned, its gates locked and bent, with not even a guard in sight. When I asked around, I was told, "Oh, that plant? It’s been closed for years, the owner’s in hiding." Further digging revealed that he and his sons were wanted by banks, private creditors, and government agencies. Their investments in an African plant had also gone belly up.

How the mighty had fallen, I thought.

These were the same people who caused me immense distress and months of sleepless nights, using legal intimidation and a sham arbitration case, appointing their own foreman as arbitrator. All because I refused to get arm twisted to reveal one of my professional secrets - the formula of a surfactant used in fuel emulsification. Finally, it was only my well-wishers in the government that got them off my back.

A clan of arrogant, greedy, egoistic and unscrupulous scoundrels—now bankrupt and hiding like rats, their factory rusting and falling into pieces.

I played no part in their downfall, as it was all their own doing, and nor do I believe much in karma. But I doubt they've learned anything. They were scoundrels then, and they’ll likely remain so till the last day they breathe.

However, this episode made me quit consulting on industrial furnaces and all further development work on fuel emulsification technology. I also left the steel industry behind once and for all. Thereafter, I faced years of unemployment, financial ruin, and the breakdown of my family. Worst of all, it shook my faith in humanity and in my own knowledge, abilities and self-confidence to the core. Yet, despite everything, I never regretted that decision.

It took another decade to repeat the cycle of clawing up and again falling, but this time due to trusting government officials, whose words I have since learnt the hard way, never mean anything, unless it concerns their bribe or cut. And learning first-hand about the absurd inefficiency and red tape within government machinery. People who love to criticize our government have no clue as to how  pathetic things really are deep inside, especially at the upper echelons. So my grand project of dealing with sophisticated watercraft, which included sourcing a hovercraft for the man himself, which was to be used at the Kumbh Mela, all went splat on the ground due to bureaucratic delays and infighting. So it was back to sleepless nights, an empty bank account and a Covid lockdown thrown into the mix for added comfort.

Last year, it was the "currently most well-known Assamese - Tridip Goswami", a Climate Warrior, then one of the top executives of C-Quest Capital India, the Indian subsidiary of the now disgraced Carbon Credit Creating (out of thin air) Snake Oil firm, who tried scamming me out of my Biomass Stove design under the guise of testing out prototypes. Now awaiting his trials at our Supreme Court and the US Criminal Courts for participating in a multi-million Carbon Credit Scam. Meanwhile, infected by an epidemic of schadenfreude, many of the same people who snorted at me for calling him a conman earlier, are sending me messages with links to news stories from around the world.  All gleefully talking or snickering about his forthcoming OEM (Orifice Enlargement Massage) at the hands of American Blacks in a US prison. Yes, Indians can be perverts and bloody racists as well. Appalling but true !

But, here I am, still around, living, working, writing and trying to design and innovate with whatever means I have. And yes, I just got bamboozled by a car transporter whom I foolishly or, due to lack of time in Delhi, entrusted to transport my 18-year-old heap to Guwahati. Not only they took over two months to transport, I was also overcharged by a third and instead of delivering it at home they dumped it over 36 km away, and finally I could recover and take possession of my car only with the help of the police..

Never a dull moment living India and no lack of reasons for the Blood Pressure remaining permanently high... Maybe karma exists after all...

Phantom Menace of Carbon Credits

 Last year Channel 4 made a major exposé on the Biomass Stove Carbon Credit scam specifically naming US based C-Quest Capital and detailing how most of their distributed stoves in Malawi were out of commission, but still accruing phantom Carbon credits. As someone who's been deeply involved in developing high-efficiency, low-smoke Biomass Stoves with a patent-pending design, I am not surprised.

Having seen many of the stoves distributed by these so-called Carbon Credit companies, I can tell you first-hand that the claimed efficiency figures are laughable. Most of these stoves are poorly made, flimsy, and to put it bluntly, absolute garbage! Worse still, their methods for calculating carbon credits? Accountant meets the Phantom Menace, in other words a spreadsheet fantasy.

Last year, C-Quest Capital's Indian subsidiary approached me for my patent pending biomass stove design. Long story short, they wanted a few units for testing, made me jump through endless hoops for their paperwork, and even had me sign NDAs with their U.S. office, then again sign a contract and submit a quote to their Indian subsidiary in Delhi. The order finally came from some shady firm registered in Bangalore. They also gave me an impossible deadline, which I told them right away that it was not possible to meet, but they implored that I give it a shot and promised an advance.

I ended up wasting two months—one in paperwork, the next trying to get the prototype done—cancelling two flights only on the insistence of one of their top Delhi executives, a fellow Assamese. I never received the advance, but instead, got an obnoxious chiding WhatsApp message from some HR flunky, while their top guy who first contacted me and was responsible for pushing me, started ghosting. I dropped the project and cursed the day I agreed to work with them, but never regretted my decision, despite the loss of time, effort, and money.

It didn't take much time to deduct that their whole operation was a sham and as translucent and smokey as their supposedly 50% efficient stoves, which they were handing out to rake in carbon credits. The more I learned, the less I wanted anything to do with them.

Now the icing on the cake? The same top executive— the fellow Assamese—who later left the company, is the same Tridip Goswami who now being dragged to the Supreme Court with criminal charges by the US government for fraud along with his former Boss.

It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

As insipid as the episode was, I guess not all bad things happen in vain.

It's a shame that something that had the potential to genuinely helping poor communities and the environment by reducing deforestation is being exploited in this cynical way. But isn't everything these days?

Fill her Up..

 When I first dipped my toes into inland navigation, I once embarked on a few zig-zagging trips aboard the local country boat ferries, known as “Bhutbhuti,” on the Brahmaputra in Guwahati. After my earlier failed attempts to engage with country boat operators and nearly getting tossed out by hostile crews, I took a different approach. I played the role of a clueless NRI( Indian residing abroad), out on a nostalgia trip in my hometown. With a big, stupid grin, obsessively clicking everything with my mobile, I asked the most naive questions, looking every bit like a harmless tourist.

 

 

A new government subsidized marine engine in a Country Boat Ferry,

but it still doesn't plug the leaks 

 

 What I saw on those trips wasn't eye-opening as I had seen it all before. The boats were all flooded up to the floorboards. Their propeller shafts, connected to old lorry engines serving as power plants, were so poorly sealed, that they practically poured water into the hull. When I innocently asked, “Why not pump the water out?” I got a surprising answer: “The water toughens up the wood!” 

The reality, of course, is quite the opposite. Constant exposure to water rots the wood, and that's why these boats crumble like matchsticks in every riverboat accident. These boats are made with reverse clinker hull constructions, where planks are nailed atop one another with an overlap, and the gaps are filled with rope and tar. Keeping the wood damp is part of their sealing process — the wood swells, closing the gaps. However, these boats leak at virtually every joint due to poor craftsmanship. But, it took me another half-decade of working in this field to understand why they keep their boats flooded. Most of the reasons are unknown even to the operators themselves.

1. Their design is inherently flawed, making the boats unstable. The water load inside acts as ballast, somewhat improving stability. But it comes at a huge cost — increasing the boat's weight, reducing speed, lowering the waterline, and making them prone to capsizing as the water inside shifts when the boat tilts.

2. There's a deeply ingrained belief that a heavier boat is a more stable and safer boat, a belief that has persisted for centuries. This thinking has even carried over to metal ferry builders and many naval architects. The result? It's not only the Country Boats, but inefficient steel monstrosities, consuming insane amounts of fuel, that continue to dominate our waterways for decades.

 

Water up to the floor boards, a characteristic 

of all wooden country boat ferries.