From Fisher workers Languishing on their Boats to Supply Chain Being Destroyed, the Covid-19 Lockdown has Devastated Coastal Livelihoods.
By Arvind Khuman, Katira Mansing and Aditya Gujarathi
Imagine being at sea for days together on a boat. Suddenly you hear that the entire country will be under lockdown. You hurriedly come back to the shore only to realise you can’t go anywhere. You are stranded on your boats indefinitely and the little money you were supposed to make for being at sea for days is lost entirely.
This was the plight of fisherworkers in India’s western state of Gujarat as they returned to the shore from deep sea after the announcement of the lockdown on March 26. Thousands of fisherworkers were stranded on boats without any knowledge of the announcement.
Despite orders to the authorities to arrange for their food and shelter, no such arrangements were made. The fisherworkers had to live on boats, and food was provided to them by boat owners. The payment of wages was not an issue, as it has been observed in industries and factories, because both inter-state as well as intra-state migrant labourers are paid four to eight months of their wages in advance. This practice prevents exploitation of fisherworkers in most parts of Gujarat where this practice is followed.
However, the khalasis (helmsmen in Gujarati language) of the boats don’t have such protection, and neither is there a separate association to raise their concerns.
In the third week of May, the Boat Owners’ Association decided not to pay their salaries for the months of April and May. Due to the ban on fishing operations from June 1 to July 31, these helmsmen would remain unpaid for a third of the year. Not just the helmsmen, but also the local labourers working at the shore and others involved were not paid their two months’ due. This led to intense outrage in the helmsmen and there was a conflict between the two groups. The helmsmen, to oppose the Association, entered their office and demanded their rights in an unprecedented act of assertion. There was also stone-pelting and the police intervened and fired tear gas to quell the protests. Police complaints were lodged against 51 helmsmen and 15 members of the Boat Owners’ Association.
With weeks of no fishing operations and inhuman conditions, many migrant fisherworkers decided to return home. Some working on big boats walked to their respective villages from Porbandar, Veraval and Siyal Bet in Gujarat and reached by April 15 and 16. Police complaints were filed against 30 fisherworkers from one batch who returned to their village in Khera in Rajula block in Amreli district in the same state under the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 and the Disaster Management Act of 2005 for violating lockdown regulations. So far, no coercive action has been taken against them but they also haven’t been produced before the Magistrate. About 12,000-13,000 labourers from Veraval have returned to their respective villages, mostly in South Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh state.
But fisherfolk from Una in Amreli district decided to take a different route home. A group of workers from Una villages hired a boat at a hefty cost and travelled from Veraval to Porbandar and then to Una by sea. As these boats are big they could only stop at locations where there were jetties. So the big boats dropped them off two-three kilometres off the coast. They then called villagers to take them ashore in small boats. As mobile network can be caught about two kilometers from the coast into the sea, communication was possible.
The migrant fisherfolk, after staying on boats for a month in dire heat and appalling conditions, just wanted to go home. Since the supply chain was dismantled, demand had reduced. The boat owners could not afford to resume fishing as the value of the catch would’ve been less than the cost of the diesel and labour required to go into the deep sea for fishing.
Devastation of Coastal Livelihoods
The Fifth Addendum to the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) Lockdown Guidelines notified on April 10 exempted all fishing activities, including the entire supply chain, from lockdown restrictions. But there has been a dip in fishing activities affecting the incomes of both the boat owning fisherfolk who employ labour, and small fisherfolk who depend on daily fishing for their food and business — selling the catch in local markets. According to Ahmedabad Mirror, the 21-day lockdown beginning March 24 left 22,000 fishermen stranded in Veraval, Mangrol, Porbandar, Okha, Jaffrabad and Jakhau harbours while catch worth 25 million rupees was wasted.
While restrictions were removed on paper, reports from the field indicate the impact on the ground was dire to say the least. Not only was the local economy affected, but migrant fisherworkers had to stay on boats for days on end, some even for a month as no arrangements were made on the ground for shelter. Some fisherworkers remained stranded on the ports of Veraval, Okha and Porbandar at the time of writing this report. A 22-year-old migrant fisherworker living on a boat at the Veraval Port reportedly died. There have also been instances of the police stopping fisherfolk from travelling to certain areas in autos to dry or sell their fish. This led to severe losses for them, and destroyed supply chains of fisheries across Gujarat.
The Economic Cost of the Lockdown
The fisheries sector contributes 1.03 percent to India’s GDP and accounts for 6.58 percent of the country’s agricultural GDP, with an export value of more than 450 billion rupees. It provides livelihood to about 16 million people in the country. The economic impact of the lockdown has severely affected this supply chain, and it needs to be broken down and assessed.
In Siyal Bet, an island off the coast of Rajula in Amreli district, fisherfolk, especially big boat owners, suffered huge losses. A member of the Boat Owners’ Association explained that it was due to the cost of diesel and providing ration and shelter to the labourers. The Boat Owners’ Association of Jafrabad also cited this as a reason for its inability to pay the helmsmen their salaries.
Despite the notification of the Fifth Addendum, the boat owners did not resume fishing activities as they thought their catch would go waste due to minimal demand in processing units. This is a glaring example of how policies circulated from the top fail to trickle down to the grassroots.
Police pressure was also so high that resumption of normal fishing activities in Jafrabad, Veraval and Siyal Bet took a severe hit, so much so that even inter-district transport of fish was stopped despite a clear mandate that it be allowed. Due to districts being locked down, the transportation of fish to Amreli district was also stopped. As a result, even dried fish could not be supplied. The market demand has reduced even further as the catch could not be exported internationally due to a ban on export operations.
Gopal Fofandi, President of Akhil Gujarat Machhimar Mahamandal, at Veraval port, stated that about 80 percent of the total fishing activities had been drastically affected, the remaining 20 percent was being carried out mostly by small fisherfolk. The lockdown has coincided with three critical months of fishing leading to massive losses for boat owners who had made heavy investments in labour and diesel, he added.
The small fisherfolk who continued to fish saw a reduction of up to 50 percent in the catch due to the broken supply chain. Now fishing is done only for consumption by the families and for sale in the local market, where the rates have reduced drastically. The fish that used to sell for 100 rupees was now being sold for 30-40 rupees.
Fakira from Hirakot, a predominantly Muslim village in Gir-Somnath district, said 75 percent of the fisherfolk in the village were fishers who depended on a daily catch and during the first lockdown, when no fishing activities were permitted, led to an upheaval in their lives. They had to depend on ration from various non-profit organisations to survive. Most of them have now returned to fishing, but their incomes have severely reduced with a lack of access to the market. The prices have dropped by more than 50 percent.
Currently, 4,000 boats are languishing at the port of Veraval as the fishing operations have come to a grinding halt and fisherworkers have returned home, according to Fofandi. To say that the fisheries sector has suffered considerably would be an understatement. The lockdown has broken the back of the coastal economy not only in Gujarat, but throughout the country.
Supply Chain Disruptions
As the Fifth Addendum clearly stated in no uncertain terms that activities related to fisheries, including transportation, marketing, cold storage and processing, were exempted from the lockdown, clear instructions should have been given to the police and district administrations to not interfere in transportation and trade of fish. The focus should have been on active planning of transportation to cities of Gujarat. This would have helped in increasing demand and in alleviating the conditions of the poorest of the poor in coastal villages.
As fish can no longer be exported, the internal supply chain needed to be activated so that the coastal economy survived. Cold storage and processing units should have been activated and an advisory issued to all the collectors to allow the transportation of fish.
The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), announced on May 15 for development of marine and inland fisheries, was in the pipeline since 2019, and was supposed to be passed by a Standing Committee. But with the Covid-19 lockdown, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs perhaps did not get a chance to approve it earlier. If it is implemented in letter and spirit, it can have a significant impact.
The current administration throws big numbers without any form of accountability and without looking at the true impact of its schemes on the ground. One hopes that the government would prove its critics wrong at least in its implementation of the PMMSY.
(Arvind Khuman and Katira Mansing are lawyers associated with Dariya no Dayro, a collective working for the rights of fisherfolk in Amreli and Gir-Somnath districts of Coastal Gujarat. Aditya Gujarathi is a lawyer working as a Research Associate at Centre for Social Justice. He works on local self-governance and legal empowerment in tribal areas of Gujarat.)
This article was originally published in Storiesasia.