CAPTAIN LIFEBOAT
When an Indian sailor is stuck overseas, he usually remembers Captain Sanjay Prashar. The Mumbai-based shipping company owner is the lifeline for any Indian sailor in distress anywhere in the globe.
Approximately 300,000 Indian sea-farers make up 10 per cent of the global sea-faring community. This workforce crews and sails thousands of merchant ships plying the globe and their numbers are swelling by 20 per cent each year. There is, however, a dark side to this sunrise sector—shady fly-by-night companies who find it easier to abandon ships and crew in foreign destinations rather than pay their dues, or illegally detain crew and use them in non-shipping-related tasks. Human rights abuses at sea rarely come in the public eye. This is where Prashar—a one-man NGO who liaises with Indian missions overseas to ensure sailors are repatriated back home—steps in. He gets them air tickets and even sends their families there to meet stranded sea-farers.
His odyssey began five years back when the family of Ranjit Singh, a sailor stranded in a busted ship in Iran, approached him for assistance. Prashar discovered there were dozens of similar such cases and met the then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and requested her intervention. She did. In the five years since then, Prashar has handled 95 cases and supervised the rescue of over 600 sailors. Prashar is the vice-president, maritime security study group, of the Mumbai-based think tank Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS) and frequently lobbies for the rights of sea-farers. He uses all the tools a citizen has at his disposal—Right to Information queries, Twitter posts and meetings with shipping ministry officials. Recently, he successfully lobbied the MEA to get sea-farers listed on its E-Migrate portal which fully integrates all emigration agencies on a single portal (seafarers were earlier not a part of it). He is now pursuing insurance for Indian sea-farers on the lines of Pravasi Bhartiya Bima Yojana, a mandatory insurance scheme for overseas Indian workers. His rescue initiatives continue to remain a one-man show. “I do what I do because it’s the need of the hour for Indian sea-farers.” ■
“HAVING BEEN PART OF THE SEA-FARING COMMUNITY FOR OVER 20 YEARS, I KNOW THE HARDSHIPS THEY UNDERGO... I CONSIDER IT MY DUTY TO HELP THEM”