BLESS OR CURSE

Let me start this post to address various concerns ranging from religious beliefs and pitiful comparisons with the Suez and Panama canals.

The SSCP what it is called a Rs. 2,400 crore project aimed to give sea connectivity between Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal i.e between Cochin, Tuticorin ports to Chennai port without heading to Colombo.

It is an open sea channel that is 167 km long, 300 metre wide, with a 12 metre depth to permit two-way transit by ships below 32,000 Dead Weight Tonnes. It has three legs - southern, central and northern. Only dredging is carried out in the southern and northern legs. This will involve dumping 70 million cubic metres of dredged mud in dumping sites located in depths greater than 25 metre.

Let me put the reasons why the SSCP is not economically viable:

• It is designed to take ships below 32,000 DWT, while the international shipping is heading towards for the ships of size larger than 60,000 DWT. So the bigger ships will not use this route.
• The rapidly growing indian Coastal Shipping is reducing its ship size from 4,000 DWT to 1,900 DWT, results in loss of the toll tax collected by the SSCP, because the toll tax is calculated based on the size of the ship.
• Also, the ships which are planned to sail through this needs to first slow down before entering the channel, use up time to embark and disembark a pilot ship.
• The ships in the channel must proceed at a snails' pace in the channel to avoid grounding damaning due to "squatting effect".

It must be noted that the SSCP, which reduces the distance by mere 340 to 434 nautical miles, cannot be compared to the "true inland canals" like the Suez and Panama which save thousands of nautical miles, fuel, time and not exposed to the vagaries of ocean currents, rough weather or sea borne attacks.

This means that the SSCP is located in one of the five known "high siltation" areas. This means that regular "maintenance dredging" would have to be carried out, perhaps every 1 to 3 years, to keep the channel open and safe for shipping. Indeed, dredging is the primary reason for the high cost of SSCP.

Add to this fact that the Tamil Nadu coast is cyclone prone and, according to statistics, has been hit by 64 cyclones between 1891 and 2001, with 23 hitting the SSCP site.

So think who is ruining whose money what sake??? To be continued....

INTRO

A very warm welcome to my blog Nation's Sorrow

You can wonder why i named it as above. Every citizen of this country will at some point of time in their life feel that their nation and its resources are being ruined by some dirty politician and their politics.

This blog will be a drain for those feelings.

A single opinion can't change this attire of these politicians, but if it changes into a massive movement, then the people who are at the top they have to answer it one day.

Lets bring that day very closer to us.