Mumbai Terror Aftermath – Part IIIAnosh Malekar, Commodity Online Fishing is not a round-the-year business in Diu. The fishermen work hard for nine months and have no choice but to remain idle during monsoon due to the rough seas. If they do not earn in those nine months, their families face starvation throughout the year. It is worse for the families whose men land up in Pakistani jails. “How do I feed my four children?” asked Deviben Sidi, who was 27 but looked 40 with worry written all over her ashened face.
Her husband, Ramu Sidi, was the ‘tandel’ (captain) of the fishing boat, Nandini Sagar, which was captured by the Pakistanis in early 2003. He had ventured out into the sea a day after his mother’s cremation. “We badly needed money, there was no other option,” recalled his distraught wife. Now she was left to feed their children – Yagnik, 9, Milind, 7, Pinkesh, 4, and Jenil, 2 – from the meager Rs 30 she earned as daily wages.
The family of Chunilal Jiva Sidi, 27, who accompanied Sidi, was relatively better off. His brothers, Sonji and Vijay, earned enough to feed his wife and eight-month-old son. Iruben, their mother, was concerned but helpless: “I cannot ask my sons to give up fishing. The currents and tides are part of our lives”.
Click here for Part I of this series : Fishermen in dock after terror attacks
Click here for Part II of this series : Gujarat’s porous coastline is pristine but dangerous Manish Lodhari, a fishing boat owner from Porbandar in Saurashtra, said: “The captured men are often tortured by Pakistani authorities for no rhyme or reason. The torture had got worse when India beat Pakistan at the cricket world cup in South Africa. Our men suffered blows for each six or four hit by Sachin Tendulkar and Virendra Sehwag”.
The boat owners complained there was nothing in the sea to indicate the Indo-Pak territorial divide. Nor were all fishermen equipped with global positioning system or wireless technologies to guide them in the high seas. The Kolis, Kharvas and some Muslim fishing communities of the Gujarat coast depend solely upon their traditional knowledge of the sea.
Futures prices of commodities on your mobile. Click here to subscribe Fishing is on its deathbed along the entire Gujarat coast. Increasing industrial pollution from hazardous units manufacturing petrochemicals, pesticides, agrochemicals and cement, and drying up of several rivers has adversely affected the coastal ecology on Gujarat shores, once a good fishing ground fed by fresh waters from rivers of the Saurashtra peninsula and the mainland in south Gujarat.
The fishermen allege that Sewad, a sea plant on which the fish feed, have stopped growing near the shore due to high pollution levels. So fishes has gone further inside. “Earlier we could get a good catch within 20 km of the shore, but now we have to go as far as 40 km,” said Ramjibhai.
Authorities at the Central Institute of Fisheries Education based at Versova near Mumbai confirm the quantity of catch has declined considerably over the years. Fish come to the mangroves for breeding, but there are barely any left on the west coast. Where will the fish breed? The recommended size of each fishing net mesh was 2” to 3” so that it traps only the adult fish and not the young. But with rise in human population there has been over-fishing. The fishermen reduce the size of the mesh and often young ones are caught and never allowed to grow up to breed.
The fishermen counter: “What are we supposed to do? Do we save our children or the children of the fish?” Then there is increasing competition in the high seas with globalisation, foreign fishing vessels, import of fish, and lack of marine fishing regulations in the EEZs. The new refineries and private ports have compounded the misery of the fisherfolk.
All this is forcing Gujarat’s fishermen to move further northwest, off the Kori creek in the Kutch Sea, to catch pomfret, tuna, shrimp, squid, cuttlefish and prawn, breeding in abundance at the mouth of the Indus.The Gulf of Kutch is the richest fishing ground in this part of the world and fishermen from Umbergaon in south Gujarat and Vanakbara and Bucherwad in Diu, who are known as the best in the business, head straight to the Okha Custom House in Kutch for the mandatory creek pass.
“The fishermen of both India and Pakistan have a long history of fishing together and do not believe in boundaries. Nobody can snatch away their right to share the fish resource on either side,” said Kocherry.
India has an agreement with Sri Lanka on the maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mannar and the Bay of Bengal allowing fishermen from both countries to share the catch. The fishermen of Gujarat and Diu have long hoped the external affairs ministry would think of a similar solution with Pakistan.
Ramjibhai Solanki, the village head of Vanakbara and a local leader of the BJP, has written several letters to the prime minister, external affairs minister, members of Parliament from Gujarat and the chief minister of the state, but there has been no response.
And now, coast guards say the GPS recovered from MV Kuber points to a four waypoints-route indicating the trawler with five fishermen from Gujarat may have halted at Diu. “The Diu angle needs to be probed,” said officials in Mumbai.
For the fishermen of Gujarat this is disturbing, like the silence of the high seas. But they will have not option but to continue to venture out in the troubled seas in absence of a livelihood option.
The impoverished fishing villages along Gujarat’s coast are a sorry picture. There is no drinking water, no sanitation, no primary healthcare centres and very few schools. The women and children are the worst sufferers under the circumstances.
At last count, some 336 fishermen are still languishing in Pakistan jails. Many of Diu and Gujarat’s 25 lakh fisherfolk will feel ignored by the world, swept up in a gigantic brawl that is being fought largely over their heads.
Click here for Part I of this series : Fishermen in dock after terror attacks Click here for Part II of this series : Gujarat’s porous coastline is pristine but dangerous
