Talk:Geological Survey of India

The Geological Survey of India, Marine Geological Surveys-- PIT FALLS

The Geological Survey of India is ready to receive a scientific ship at a colossal expenditure with a promise of Quality Marine Geological work to the Nation. Geological Survey of India has also recruited earth scientists in their hundreds for the same in the last few years. It is also important to note that those who have planned in acquiring the new ship are poised to retire before it becomes a reality. So it is pertinent to put on record the history of Marine Wing Geological Survey of India. Marine wing actually worked under the petrology division Geological Survey of India, Kolkata in the seventies, and luminaries like Dr H.N.Siddiqui who later shifted to National Institute of Oceanography and began 'Polymetallic Nodule Investigation', in the south Indian Ocean. http://www.amu.ac.in/showloa.jsp?did=4

Expansion of Marine Geological Surveys

It took more than a decade for GSI to acquire a ship of its own in the early nineteen eighties, and expand offices to Cochin, Mangalore and Visakhapatnam.

New entrants of Marine wing may learn from a history of the past three decades (1980,1990,2000) and hopefully do some purposeful research.

Here is an account of Marine Wing of Geological Survey of India and its ships after 1982:

R.V Samudramanthan

This ship was acquired in the year 1983, by modifying and refitting Vshwa Vinai a cargo ship, at a shipyard in the United Kingdom.

Instruments and equipment

The ship was fitted with the following instruments which were unfit for the work, or never used due to various reasons. Here is a list of failed instruments.

Shallow Seismic Survey equipment

The equipment which was popularly known as 'Huntec', was misfit for the ship and the record of Shallow seismic survey was of little use.

Side Scan Sonar

This was also hardly used and effective, as the ship cannot reach depths shallower and meant for this equipment for effective survey.

==Vibro Corer==' This equipemt which was on board was never (even once), used. A Director Mechanical Engineer took up a cruise (Samudramanthan-17) and made a great effort (at serious personal risk of injury) to make this equipment useful but failed. This just rusted and became junk, right on-board the ship.

Position Fixing equipment

Magnavox nsvigation system with a computer for processing signals of Deca Hi-Fix, with auto pilot was fitted on board.

Neither Deca Hi-Fix interface nor Auto pilot were ever used or usable. Only the Magnavox Sat-nav was useful.

Boomerang Grabs

These are equipment for sampling for polymetalic nodules, in the (South) Indian Ocean. The ship with only '25' days endurance hardly can work there as the time taken to reach location leaves very little time to work. Inspite of this common knowledge, they were procured for no use. Just to avoid audit objections a scientific cruise (Samudramanthan -8-)was mounted, to test this equipment.

For more than a decade the only equipment Scientific cruises Operated with, just the Magnavox position fixing equipment and an Echo-sounder for measuring depths, other than grab sampler and a meter long corer, which is an apology for serious marine geological work.

Fitting new equipment to G.S.I's Samudramanthan

Inspite of the fact that this ship is very old and has frequent repairs, they have fitted a 'Hull mounted Scanner (hydro-sweep)', which is also not used to a great extent because of this is now a old ship.

Samudra Kausthubh and Samudra Saudhikama

These two coastal launches with wonderful equipment were presented by Holland. These ships (coastal launches), were meant for a -24- hour work, but Geological Survey of India, has its silly reasons (inefficient administration) to use these ships only during day time.

Piston corer

This equipment was used very rarely, which could have yielded long core sample to unravel the secrets of sediments and sedimentation.

Sidescan sonar

This equipment was very rarely used.

Trisponder positioning system

This equipment was used at best only on Samudra Kausthubh, in the east coast giving great accuracy of positioning. After an initial phase of time, Samudra Saudhikama stopped using this and used a less accurate Geographic Positioning System (GPS) with far less accuracy. This was mainly because the west coast of India is not easy for establishing shore operated support stations unlike the east coast of India.

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Initial Section under History needs removed or seriously edited

My previous edit removing the lines "The British Empire colonised India for the systematic financial exploitation of resources,[2] leading to India's deindustrialization and Britain's Industrial Revolution,[3][4][5] by using India as both a significant supplier of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods (see Economy of India under the British Raj).[6]" was undone for i) good faith and ii) cited and relevant.

I do not think this was put there in good faith but more importantly it is not well cited and not relevant. 2 sources ([3][4]) are not from books relevant to British India (one is from a book on China, the other is on a book on the Islamic world). Rajat Kanta Ray's chapter (source [2] does not show that Britain colonized India "for the systematic financial exploitation of resources" (whatever you think about financial exploitation, it was far from systematic). Indrajit Ray's book (source [5] ) finds that Indian textiles became noncompetitive for reasons little to do with the government.

The section about "captive market" also gets a citation wrong. Source [6] says Hobson-Johnson (The Anglo-Indian phrasebook) but actually links to "Reorienting the 19th Century" by Andre Gunder Frank, a book which few credible Economic Historians would take seriously. To make things worse, the captive market claim is also wrong. For most of the colonial period India was open to other country's firms at the same terms as British manufacturers, not to mention local manufacturers. In other periods there was imperial preference but for the relevant imperial preference EIC period, tariffs were low (and therefore the degree of preference given the laws at the time). In the 1930s British textiles had to pay 25% tariffs, non British Empire ones 75%. In this latter period, the Indian market was captive, but forced to buy uncompetitive goods made by the Indian manufacturer rather than British ones.

A relevant introduction would talk about how the EIC became interested in coal deposits as it was planning on building a railway network in India as well as the spread of geology as a science internationally.