May 04, 2020
India’s already-struggling fishing industry ( large and small scale) is heavily disrupted by an unplanned lockdown, threatening lives and livelihoods with lack of food security leaving many lamenting due to shortage of food.
Even though the ban on fishing has been technically lifted, with monsoon shutdown just round the corner, many fisher-folks are unlikely to return to sea. The lockdown has caused many fishermen to anchor their boats at standstill on the shores. With no travel to sea, the fishing industry sees bleak season.
Sudden announced of nationwide lockdown caused public and private industries to shut down to cut the growth of COVID-19. Domestic and international travel by airways, roadways, waterways and railways were suspended until further notice. Fishermen who were at sea at the time of announcement, upon their return to the shore, found the jetty deserted, vacant harbors devoid of traders, transportation facilities at stump, closed ice plants, processing factories, and markets with curfew look.
“We had no idea that a lockdown was going to happen,” says Siddharth Chamudiya, a trawler owner who returned to port in Gujarat, after a 15-day fishing voyage. With exertion, he somehow managed to sell his fish at one-quarter the original price.
For large number of fishermen, those who were unable to sell their catch, had no other option than to dump their costly fish to trash.
“The entire supply chain system has been affected due to the lockdown impact,” says Ramachandra Bhatta, a fisheries economist and senior scientific consultant at India’s National Academy of Agricultural Research Management. “There is shortage of supply at the marine wholesale landing center market, and regular trading has been affected. Additionally, there are losses in the value chain system such as retail markets, food processing, restaurants, domestic traders, and exporters.”
India has a vast coastline spanning to around 7,516-kilometer covering nine states and five union territories. Here 16 million fishermen find their livelihood and operate on a large to small scale range. The large scale fishers are from export-oriented, fuel intensive mechanized fleets of trawlers to medium and small scale boats/dhows serving provincial and indigenous markets.
India’s fish production increased from less than one million tons in 1950 to more than 11 million in 2016. The industry contributes 1.03% of India’s gross domestic product. But fishing industry was already hampered before the onset of Coronavirus. Landing data shows a 9 percent decline in overall fish catch in 2018 compared to 2017, and 2019 was not a good year too due to exceptional number of cyclones on the western coast reduced the number of fishing days.
The pandemic has disrupted dual benefits of fishing business. Firstly, the fishery segment contributes in two main ways to India’s food and nutrition. Fish is a primary and cheaper source of protein for a vast portion of the population, although experts are of the view that increasing exports has caused the reduced availability of this cheap resource to poor people. Secondly, this sector provides high income and employment for those working directly as fishers, as well as in related and allied sectors. The industry together is a massive one pooling all the fishermen and allied sectors and export body.
By mid-April, centre government issued a revised set of guidelines allowing the fishing sector to operate amid the lockdown, but it was too late for the declaration as large part of industry faced a sudden setback with great losses of money and workers on the whole. A recent report published by India’s Central Institute of Fisheries Technology in Kerala evaluated marine fishery’s monthly loss of US $896-million.
“Even if the lockdown is lifted, I don’t see the industry bouncing back before the monsoon,” says Krishna Pawle, a Maharashtra-based trader.
Majority of workers have left for their hometown, the absentism is hampering the hopes to reopen the industry. Most employees in the mechanized fisheries sector come from interior states and the east coast to work in the west, who are often non-contract workers. Judging the instability of their employment, these migrant workers bear the brunt of unplanned lockdown. At the announcement of lockdown those who took quick decision left for their native land, but many were left stranded and still are.
“So what if fishing has resumed? My crew doesn’t want to work, they want to go back home,” says Shashi Kumar, a trawler owner in Mangalore. “We cannot go back in the water without them,” he said.
“They are not interested in going back to work,” says Marianne Manuel, assistant director at Dakshin Foundation, a marine conservation nonprofit coordinating relief efforts for stranded migrant fish workers. “They have very low levels of comfort and hygiene, the food that is being provided to them varies daily in quality and quantity, as does the availability of drinking water. Many haven’t bathed in weeks, their mental health is deteriorating day by day, and some are even falling sick. They are really not in any condition to go back fishing, and are clear that they want to go back home as soon as they can,” she said.
According to the study done, the organization is currently tracking 41 locations across eight states where approximately 14,500 migrant fish workers are need of assistance. n Andhra Pradesh govt has already started working to bring home several thousand migrant fish workers that had been stranded at Gujarat coast.
“It’s a relief to see the migrant fish workers start their journey,” says Manuel. “But the fact that this has taken a week to organize since the second death in Veraval shows that it’s not an easy feat under the lockdown. There are still thousands of migrant fish workers in Goa, Maharashtra, and Karnataka that are desperate to get home and we hope that this is the start of repatriation for all of them.”
The spread of the virus has spread concern amongst customers in the markets, while some regions have closed the fishing completely.
Some fish vendors face are facing difficulty in selling the fish. The myth persists that consumption of fish might spread Corona, they add.
“In some places, the pandemic has resurrected deep-seated prejudices against fish and meat as hygienic sources of food,” says Aarthi Sridhar, a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands investigating the social history of fisheries science in India. “The prejudice tends to extend to people working in the sector such as door-to-door vendors.”
Fish in dry form is the best source of protein and minerals for all. “Due to lack of transportation and logistics the sea produce cannot reach the interior regions to supply affecting the nutritional security of the communities,” says Bhatta.
As with the sudden shortage in food availability, joblessness is hitting people unevenly shaking the economy greatly.
“The Indian fisheries economy largely deals in cash,” said Sridhar. “Many fishers exist in a state referred to as cash-rich poverty, in which cash is given to them on a daily basis by other fishers, traders or moneylenders. Most fishers don’t have anything to fall back on. If fishers can’t catch fish to consume, or exchange as cash to purchase food, they almost immediately have to rely on external generosity like the moneylender or the state’s public distribution system known as rations.”
Fishermen, especially small-scale ones, lack the required documentation to apply for state support. “We understand that many groups, especially women, have not yet received this basic ration since the lockdown and are dependent on neighbors’ generosity in sharing rations,” she added.
“This is a time of great distress for us,” declared, T. Peter, general secretary of the National Fishworkers Forum (NFF), a federation of trade unions of independent and small-scale fish workers. “We have been consistent in our demands for financial assistance. We fishermen take care of the food security of the country, apart from earning foreign currency from exports. The government needs to take care of us. Merely exempting us from the lockdown will not suffice. It is a misconception to think that since fishing is now allowed, this group does not need any intervention from the government”.