Fishing for solutions

Vivekanandan has worked with fishing communities for over a quarter-century. Most of that was spent with the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies, a cooperative organisation for small fishermen, of which he is currently advisor. He has started a new organisation, Fisheries Management Resource Centre (FishMARC) to promote and support collectives of the fishing community, and is the convener of the Alliance for Release of Innocent Fishermen (ARIF), which has been working on the issue of trans-border fishing on the Indo-Sri Lankan maritime border for over a decade. Chandrika Sharma spoke with Vivikenandan about the outstanding problems of transborder fishing on the Indo-Sri Lankan border and possibilities for resolving these.

First, give us an overview of the issues currently facing fisherfolk in India and Sri Lanka.
There are two distinct issues here. The first is the movement of Indian boats into Sri Lankan waters, especially in the Palk Bay, the shallow, narrow strait between India and Sri Lanka. The second is the Sri Lankan 'multi-day' fishing boats, which fish in many parts of India's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Palk Bay problem arises because the international border is close to the shores of both India and Sri Lanka. Historically, fishermen from both countries have fished amicably in the Palk Bay without any notion of a border. The border was fixed in 1974, but there were no conflicts till the civil war in 1983, after which Sri Lankan fishermen were not permitted to fish normally by the Sri Lankan authorities, due to security concerns. The Indian side saw this as an opportunity to cross over and fish in the Lankan waters; their fleet expanded, particularly the trawl fleet. The smaller-scale fishermen in India have always been at loggerheads with the trawl fleet, which is not allowed to fish within three nautical miles of the shore of Tamil Nadu. So they go beyond this to fish, deep within Sri Lankan waters.