by Dr. Iain
Corness
The general manager of Laem Chabang Container Terminal
1 is Anil Singh. He is proudly Indian, even though he speaks English,
dreams in English and followed in his rebellious father’s footsteps in
many ways. Anil’s father went to the UK to study but ended up kicking
over the traces and having his hair cut, which was tremendously rebellious
for his community at the time. Anil emphasized that by adding, “I always
thought of my father as a non-conformist and a pioneer.”
Anil at 10 years of age was sent to the Doon School,
the Indian equivalent of the British public school, Eton. There he did
very well, finishing with high marks and an entry to university assured.
Engineering and Electronics were what he thought were going to be his
destiny, but his real future came in a letter which carried the message,
“Do you want to join the Navy and see the world?” He decided he did!
This did not meet the family’s idea of what the young
Anil should do, but he entered the Merchant Marine Academy, “Much to the
disquiet of my family, because only rogues went to sea.”
But Anil, the son of a ‘rogue’ had this urge to
roam that could not be denied, and two years later he graduated from the
academy, runner up for the President’s Gold Medal. He joined Scindia
Steam Navigation as a sea cadet and sailed the high seas for the next 10
years. In that time he studied and sat examinations to improve his rank,
until by the age of 25 he had qualified as a Master Mariner. This made him
one of the youngest Master Mariners in the world. He was now Captain Anil
Singh. I asked him what drove him to achieve so much, so soon. “Being
from a family of high achievers it was very important for me to do
something myself - not to rely on the family estate. That was the biggest
driver.”
Having been accepted back in the family fold, and now
at 27 years of age, Anil felt it was time to seek a mate. Not a seafaring
First Mate, but a life’s mate. He co-opted the help of the daughter of a
family friend, whom he had known for 10 years, to help him find the girl
of his dreams. It slowly came to his realization that the girl he was
looking for was the girl he had asked to be the matchmaker, and so he
proposed to her. She thought about it, and when she eventually agreed they
had only three weeks before Anil was due back at sea. They were quickly
married and his wife Kavita came with him, but the honeymoon had to be
postponed till after the voyage.
Two years later, Anil felt that it was now about time
for him to settle down, his wife being pregnant. He became a public
servant in Bombay as an examiner for those wishing to become ship’s
captains. All that this did was to keep the urge to travel in his mind,
and he returned to the seafaring life, complete with Kavita and baby son
Akshay.
He continued to roam, but also continued to climb the
ladders to become a shore based manager and troubleshooter who had to
follow the ships into port when necessary. He describes the 20th of
December 1987 as “the most frustrating day of my life.” Kavita was
giving birth to their daughter Ritambra, but Anil was in Pyongyang solving
disputes with the North Koreans. There were communications black-outs and
he could not even phone home to enquire as to how the delivery had gone.
Now with two children, it really was time to keep his
feet on dry land and he accepted a position with Burns Philp and the
P&O group to start a new venture in Papua New Guinea. This was a 3
month assignment, which stretched to four years and then eventually to 10
years. In that time he had taken the fledgling operation “from a
briefcase to a 12 company conglomerate with over 1000 employees.”
Anil speaks of life in PNG at that time, where you
could still be impaled on an arrow fired by a grass-skirted native with a
bone through the nose. However, it was also a time that brought great
personal triumphs for him, including designing and building specialised
ships to carry copper concentrate down the Fly River in PNG. He still
keeps a scale model of his ships in his personal belongings at home.
However, after 10 years, he said, “Enough is
enough!” and he was moved to Sydney, but it was not long before the
family was on the move again. This time to India, to be the CEO of
India’s first privatised container port. “I went there as a change
agent.” From his employer’s point of view, Anil was the ideal man for
the job - an Indian who understood Indian culture and spoke the language,
yet had been in the western world for so long that he was in the position
of being able to bring western ways and business ethics to his own
country. A truly unique experience.
His next role was nominally back in Australia, where he
was to look after new port business - for Asia and South America! Logging
up over 200 flights a year, Anil said, “This was great for frequent
flyer points, but was not the best for the family,” so when the position
of GM at Laem Chabang came up he grabbed it. At last the family had a
fixed ‘home’.
Despite his ‘internationality’ Anil is proudly Indian and his
children were sent to India during vacations every year to experience
their heritage. “You must be able to retain (traditional) values, but be
able to think outside the box.” Anil certainly does represent someone
who has managed to ‘think outside the box’ and who has made personal
endeavour pay off. He deserves all his success.
