Webinar

“Coastal Development and Coastal Livelihoods,”

Hosted by Vidhya Raveendranathan and featuring the EquiP project (Madras Institute of Development Studies/ French Institute Pondicherry) and R. Sridhar

Abstracts

The Vision of the Blue Economy on the East Coast, S.Sridhar.

The objective of this presentation will be to introduce the audience to the East Coast of India along with some of the key programmes being implemented and proposed to set the tone for discussions ahead. We will begin by briefly describing the various coastal ecologies as well as the fishing communities that inhabit these coasts – from the Kaibartas of Sundarbans to the Paravars of Gulf of Mannar! This would highlight how the livelihood specificities are attuned to the geographic and ecological specificities of the region.

This would be juxtaposed with the various interventions by capital on these coasts – which come from a very different vision and understanding of the coast, including the various components of the Blue Economy from ports, logistics to energy, fisheries and the like through programmes like Sagarmala, Swadesh Darshan, Hydrocarbon Exploration, etc. The current era of Blue Economy would be shown as an extension of a paradigm of capital accumulation on coastal resources, with massive infrastructural and industrial projects as well as a reshaping of the fisheries sectorby global majors with the active enabling of the state.

This would be done by listing out some of the key projects currently being undertaken and being planned along these coasts in the 4 states of West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu[1]. An attempt would also be made to provide a glimpse into some of the key players in these new projects, who are the drivers of capital’s vision for these coasts.

In summary, the presentation will bring into focus the divergence in the visions of capital and those of the fishers and coastal communities who inhabit these coasts – which would be discussed in greater detail through specific cases in subsequent presentations.

Industrializing Cuddalore: The State, Private Capital and the Promises of Development, Ajit Menon and Arun Kumar A. S.

Since the early 1980s, the Tamil Nadu government has earmarked coastal Cuddalore as an industrial corridor. This was set in motion through the establishment of the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) in 1971. In 1984, SIPCOT Phase I was started in Cuddalore; SIPCOT Phase II and Phase III followed thereafter. SIPCOT Cuddalore was initially envisaged as a chemical and pharmaceutical hub, but subsequently was to be part of a larger petrochemical investment region (PCPIR) extending into neighbouring Nagappatinam district as well. More recently, the coastline of Cuddalore has become a preferred destination for investments in energy infrastructure projects, promoted by the Government of India. Part of the industrialization drive has also been the modernization of the Cuddalore port, the transformation of the oceans and coasts as part of the Sagarmala project launched in 2016 and the expansion of aquaculture.  All of this is part of a wider Blue Economy Vision. 

Central to the state’s industrialization drive and the more recent Blue Economy agenda has been the promotion of private capital. The state has promoted private-led investment through enabling policies such as land acquisition and the setting up of special purpose vehicles to promote public private partnerships and/or by diluting coastal zone regulations and environmental impact assessment requirements. Discursively, the state has promoted this agenda by labelling the district as  ‘backward’ and one in need of development.

This presentation will focus on the state’s promotion of private capital led industrialization in Cuddalore. It will highlight the ecological impacts of industrializing the coast in terms of changing marine and coastal ecosystems, enclosure of coastal commons and the changing dynamics of livelihoods. Part of this story is how the state has attempted to ‘manufacture consent’ of local people through the promises of development, be it the provision of jobs or better health and education facilities, the latter often as part of corporate social responsibility initiatives. Finally,  an attempt is made to highlight how fishers and other coastal communities respond.

Frictions Among Fishing Settlements: Two Case Studies from the Coromandel, Bhagat Singh, Nicolas Bautès, Prabhakar Jayaprakash

From the 1980’s and more clearly, during the last three decades, the fast changing landscape of the Coromandel Coast of India has been generating frictions among the fishing settlements which are spread all along the coastline. The combination of State-led initiatives both toward the establishment of industrial complexes and infrastructures of all sizes, and government’s orientations aiming at enhancing fishing resources[2] tend to generate not only local fisher’s oppositions against the State, but also complex situations of frictions among the fishers themselves. These frictions not only involve political stands but tend both to confront positions, ethics and values among fisherfolks, and to weaken the very role of their local institutions.

Two types of frictions will help us illustrate the upheaval of the social and political life of fishing settlements in front of exogenous changes happening in space and in relation to fishing economic activity.

The first type of friction analysed in this papers involves the changing influence of the Ur Panchayat, institution historically in charge of local affairs and of mediating issues both within the fishing settlements and with external parties. Within fishing hamlets, the coastal commons and production relations have been traditionally administered by this local governance structure. However, in the post-colonial period, with the advent of mechanization, fishing of targeted species, expansion of market, coastal industrialization and legislation of parallel governing institutions (village panchayat), the structure and the function of Ur panchayat has been fast changing. The asymmetrical power relation between this local institution, private capital and the state have left the fishing communities struggling to find ways of negotiation and resistance on the one hand, and not being capable of arbitrating increased conflicts within the community over differential access to resources on the other. The State as a regulating authority is also avoiding its duties in the guise of “less government and more governance” to build a business-friendly State. Such problems surface acutely in times of crisis (both man-made and natural). In such context, the State opts for a language of monetary compensation rather than addressing fundamental causes. Added to this is the emergent phenomenon of sections of the community yielding to the lure of promises of development, often couched in employment and minor construction projects such as cyclone shelters, not to mention ways of rent seeking from capital. This further alienates fishing labour, women fish workers and the artisanal fishing communities in most cases. This example would capture the experience of these sections to question the hegemony of this prevalent local governance models and suggest ways to nurture agencies for collective action.

The second friction to be explored in this paper lies at the level of families and at the scale of the neighbouring relations between fishing settlements, where the pressure on productivity, associated with the transformations of their living and working spaces due to infrastructuredevelopment, make it difficult to perpetuate the very routine in which artisanal fishers has been involved since centuries. Such heavy constraints force many of them to adapt and adopt new practices under forced choices in order to secure their livelihood, while others choose to remain within their artisanal way of living out of fishing resources. The priority given by the Tamil Nadu Fisheries Department, under the guidelines of the National Fisheries Policy, to industrial fishing, not only turned the everyday resource of fishers into a commodity, but also created the conditions for them to adopt technics used in industrial fishing, namely ring seine, which tend to generate strong oppositions between fishing communities. If conflicts among fishers over accessing and sharing resource tends to be universal, the coastal villages of Cuddalore are highly concerned by conflicts opposing users and non-users of this technics. The ring seine fishing clearly came into use in the coast of Cuddalore and Nagai districts along with the migration of Sardinela longiceps from the western coast of India. It allows catching this fish species in due numbers, as it has good market value in Kerala and provides high exporting value. While ring seine technology has been banned by the Tamil Nadu government (2003) for its ecological destruction and dwindling of fishery resource, few profitable individuals and villages are maintaining this practice, at the cost of facing the opposition and condemnation from other villages and the Fisheries Department. The government has miserably failed to regulate and prevent the use of this technology even after it was legally banned, in spite of various laws and orders issued in the last ten years. Some fishing villages, which voiced their concerns against mega companies like thermal power plant and chemical industries, are now fully focused on ring seine issues, revealing the very necessity of part of the fishers to adopt such illegal practice due to livelihood concerns.

By deploying these two examples of frictions happening at the level of fishing settlements, this contribution aims at analysing the conditions through which new economic policies, both applied through industrialisation and through rationalisation of fishing, reveals the rather ambiguous or failure of the State to create the conditions of addressing the stakes of a socially and spatially anchored coastal development.

Activism and research: Challenges and Opportunities on the Coramandel Coast, Senthil Babu D.

In this presentation, we will outline the changing forms of political activism on the coast, with the onset of aggressive industrialization. Recounting experiences from the sites of attempted resistance to particular industrialization projects, we will discuss the varieties of engagement that became possible. Transient coalitions, formation of specialized collectives doing rights based advocacy and litigational work, and consolidation and fragmentation of political formations of coastal communities pervade this landscape. Through such experiences have emerged a particular body of action research which has brought renewed attention to coastal commons, spatial rights, forms of entitlements, and limitations of legislative and legal instruments, in the process, forging a body of knowledge of political economy and ecology of the coast. These are embedded in localized activist led experiments to mobilize evidence to demonstrate how injustice is orchestrated, manifest in a language of politics at the local, be it in the context of land acquisition, demands for compensation or fighting pollution. The activist-researcher is then burdened to make her evidence credible in the court room as much as to the local public. It is in this fight for credibility that social science research today could play an active role. Validating evidence has become more political than before and scholarship has to contend with active partisanship. What could be the new modes of meeting such a challenge and what kind of possibilities does such research bring  to the ongoing struggle for justice and dignity are compelling questions we need to collectively reflect upon.

Bio Details

Ajit Menon is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and researches primarily the political ecology of forests and fisheries in south India. His interests include the workings of development and capitalism, how they shape nature and conservation, and the environmental justice implications thereof. He is an Editor of the journal Conservation and Society.

Arun Kumar A.S.is an anthropologist currently working in the EQUIP funded Coastal Transformation and Fisher Wellbeingproject as post–doctoral fellow at the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. He is interested in the political economy of coastal infrastructure and development, coastal commons and local livelihoods. E.mail: arunkumar.as@ifpindia.org.

Bhagat Singh A. is a post-doctoral fellow in the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. He is working among the fishers in the Coromandel coast and interested in tracing the social history of the fisher folk and documenting their traditional knowledge, customary laws and systems of coastal governance.  Email. bhagath.singh@ifpindia.org

Nicolas Bautès is working in the field of urban studies, social and political geography. He is currently Research Fellow at the Department of Social Sciences of the French Institute of Pondicherry (UMIFRE 021 CNRS), India, where he works on the city-makers and on the social memories of artisans, among them potters and fishers. He is coordinating the IFP team involved in the research project Coastal Transformations and Fisher’s wellbeing (FisherCoast, Equip ES/R010404/1). nicolas.bautes@ifpindia.org

Prabhakar Jayaprakash is a doctoral scholar from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. He has been working with the fishers of Pamban Island, Tamil Nadu, for his doctoral thesis. His thesis is grounded in labour history and theories of the frontier. He is a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship in 2015 and the International Research Staff Exchange Scheme in 2016. Email: Prabhakar.jp@gmail.com

Senthil Babu is part of the Coastal People’s Right to Life Movement, a platform of action in the coastal regions of the state of Tamil Nadu which continues to resist spurious models of growth and fake promises not to mention the hypocrisies of project finance as an instrument of accumulation. He is trained as a historian and works at the Department of Social Sciences in the French Institute of Pondicherry. 

R.Sridhar is an independent coastal researcher based out of Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu. He has been working with fishing community organisations assisting them on various campaigns and advocacy initiatives towards reaffirming and safeguarding their rights over coastal and marine commons including the recent ‘People’s Tribunals on the Blue Economy in South and South East Asia’ under the leadership of the National Fishworkers Forum, India. He was previously involved with community initiatives for sustainable farming through groundwater management and better market outreach for their produce in ST dominated regions of Madhya Pradesh. He holds an M.A in Development Studies. Email: sridhar.rao@apu.edu.in

[1]It would not include Kanyakumari district of TN, since it would technically be on the west coast of India.

[2] The more recent of these schemes is the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) which aims to enhance fish production to 220 lakh metric tons by 2024-25 from 137.58 lakh metric tons in 2018-19, at an average annual growth rate of about 9%.