By Papri Sri Raman
IANS
Chennai : From persuading fishermen to reduce the number of boats they own, or to change their nets, or to even make pickles is a difficult task a team of UN experts have undertaken – and their success along the Indian coast is no mean achievement.
"We understood that post the (2004 killer) tsunami there were too many agencies into rehabilitation and there was no point duplicating efforts, no point giving short term assistance and leaving the area," C.M. Muralidharan explained of the efforts of the United Nations team for Tsunami Recovery Support (UNTRS).
"We wanted to do something sustainable," added Muralidharan, an expert with 20 years of experience in the fisheries sector and now a coordinator with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
UNTRS is an umbrella organisation for half a dozen UN affiliated agencies that have assisted with rehabilitation in India in the wake of the tsunami that killed 11,000 people and snatched away the livelihood of about 200,000 more. The FAO has been particularly involved in providing viable income generation assistance for the fishing communities.
"Overall, there is a clear need for greater community participation in planning and managing the coastal areas," Muralidharan maintained.
According to him, the current manner of fishing introduced after the tsunami is not sustainable.
"Operational costs go up when traditional catamarans are replaced by motorized boats. Post-tsunami relief brought in more mechanized boats from all over the world, completely displacing the catamaran.
"Now, fishermen burn fuel for three days out at the sea but the catch is not enough to even recover the cost of fuel. If they brought just Rs.50 worth of fish in catamarans, it used to be a profit," the expert reasoned.
"The FAO has now initiated four pilot projects to make fishing sustainable," Muralidharan told IANS.
In one project supported by the South Indian Federation for Fishermen Societies (SIFFS) in Kerala local communities and users of the "ring seine" variety of prohibited fishing nets, have agreed not to acquire any new nets of this type and to gradually scale down the use of existing nets.
Then a group of fishermen that owns mechanised trawlers has even proposed a second ban on fishing apart from the one during the monsoon to save juvenile fish from being caught.
The panchayats of 56 villages in Nagapattinam and Karaikal in Tamil Nadu have agreed that pair trawling with ring seine nets has to be regulated.
The ring seine is a net closed from the bottom and its use is banned as it also catches species of marine life that are not food. Illegal operators use two trawlers to drag the sea bottom with this net causing huge resource damage.
"Now the fishermen's associations are themselves asking for a government order against use of such nets," Muralidharan pointed out.
NGO Centre for Economic and Social Studies, along with SIFFS and the Maritime Institute of the Netherlands have also taken up a study on the possibility of reducing the trawler fleet in the Palk Bay area where tsunami relief brought in too many mechanized boats.
Through a micro-finance consulting group, a study has also begun on providing financial services to the fishing community in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
And, with the help of NGO Dhan Foundation, credit support has been extended to 300 members of the fishing community in Cuddalore.
This apart, during research for an Alternative Livelihood Project (ALP) of the UNTRS, it was found that with adequate training, youths of the fishing community could get good jobs in the IT and ITES sectors.
ALP is also promoting self-employment for 5,000 people from the Kollam region of Kerala and Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu.
One such project in Royapuram in north Chennai, near the fishing harbour, is a unit for producing fish pickle that is owned by a women's self help group called Puthuluga Women's Federation.
It was set up just three months ago at a cost of Rs.1 million with the help of several NGOS and FAO.
The Fisheries College and Research Institute at Tuticorin trained the women. The unit now produces 50 kilos of mouth-watering fish and prawn pickle every day, providing 100 women individual earnings of Rs.100 a day.
Such is what the power of persuasion can achieve.