The coastal highway, a project being pushed by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, requires the entire coastline for its execution.
The fishermen are fearful of losing their land and livelihood if the coastal highway is materialised. (Supplied)
I hail from Kerala’s underprivileged fishing community. For us, the seashore is as important as the sea.
For generations, the relationship of the community with the coast has been vital. It is where we dry and mend our nets during breaks from fishing. It is where all our social and cultural engagements happen. It is where I played football in my childhood with friends from nearby fish worker families.
All our camaraderie and clashes occur on the seashore; it is also the canvas on which we, the fisherfolk, paint our struggles with defiance. The shore — it always bustles with activity.
Of late, we are witnessing some strange happenings on the southern Kerala shores. Pink-coloured “survey stones” now dot our coastline. There are children who use the pink stones as goalposts as they pursue their passion for football. But those pink stones tell us that a great misfortune is about befall us, the fisherfolk of the state, at the hands of a communist government.
Children play football on the coastline with the survey stone as a goalpost. (Supplied)
The coastal highway, a massive project promoted by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, requires the entire coast of Kerala for its execution.
The 625-km coastal highway is supposed to run parallel to the Arabian Sea along the length of Kerala. The project’s estimated cost is ₹6,500 crore, which the KIIFB (Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board) will bear. It will do so by availing big international loans at high interest rates.
The Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the coastal highway is yet to be released. The authorities have not conducted a social or environmental impact study. Yet, the preliminary land acquisition process has begun, as is evident from the pink stones being driven into the sand by the Revenue Department.
No one has discussed the project with fishermen’s organisations or village groups. The project details are not available on the government’s websites.
The fisher communities remain in the dark about a project that will impact their lives in many unfathomable and immeasurable ways.
Clearly, the Kerala government does not consider us fisherfolk as people worth having a discussion with, but rather as enslaved people who have no option but to obey their masters.
Already, the mainstream media is celebrating the project and hyping its “attractive rehabilitation packages”.
Consider these headline: Special rehabilitation package for coastal highway land acquisition: Kerala PWD Minister; Rehabilitation package for Kerala’s Coastal Road project best in the country, says Minister; and Kerala to compensate landowners & landless for a coastal highway project.
The government has indeed announced a compensation of ₹13 lakh for people with land ownership — and an apartment far from coast for those without.
As a first-generation graduate from the marginalised fishing community, I believe the government is playing a double game that we, as a community, need to understand.
At one level, the government is cleverly hiding the controversial project’s details from public scrutiny. At another, it is using the mainstream media to trumpet its generosity to poor fish workers who will lose their houses and livelihood — indeed, lived spaces — to a project that will destroy the precarious coastal ecology.
The coast is integral to fish workers’ existence. An infrastructure project can jeopardise the environmental and social equilibrium of the coasts — if wrongly implemented.
Fishermen in the harbour. (Supplied)
The fishing community is already vulnerable to challenges such as climate change, workplace hazards, discrimination, unscientifically constructed ports that kill people — like the Muthalapozhi Harbour — and other social and health issues.
However, the coastal highway is emerging as the biggest man-made challenge to the existence of coastal communities. It is not purely a land issue for coastal people.
Compared with other segments of disempowered people, fisherfolk are extremely vulnerable while facing such issues as they do not have any existing laws protecting their land rights.
For forest communities, we have the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006 (FRA). It recognises the rights of forest-dwelling communities to own, manage, and use forest resources.
These rights include the right to collect, use, and sell minor forest produce, graze livestock, and build homes and other structures in the forests.
However, we do not have any land rights like this for the fishing community, even though ownership of land is a fundamental human right.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in September 2007. This declaration protects indigenous peoples’ rights to their collective bio-cultural heritage, including traditional knowledge and resources, territories, cultural and spiritual values, and customary laws.
According to Article 26 of the declaration, indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories, and resources they have traditionally owned, occupied, or otherwise used.
They have the right to own, use, develop, and control these. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories, and resources.
However, in India, no laws protect indigenous fisherfolk communities’ land rights. Even though the fishing sector
is a major contributor to the country’s economy, employs millions of people, and generates crores of rupees in revenue.
According to the Economic Survey of India 2021-22, the fisheries sector contributed 1.24 percent to the country’s Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2020-21.
This means that the fisheries sector contributed ₹53,789 crore to India’s GDP in 2020-21. The sector is a major contributor to the agricultural GVA, accounting for 3.98 percent in 2020-21.
However, due to social discrimination and marginalisation in the name of jobs and culture, the 1.45 crore fisherfolk population does not have community growth nationwide.
Due to the lack of laws protecting traditional community rights, coastal people are now directionless in the face of such disastrous projects that come to the coast.
I live in my great-grandfather’s home, to which we still do not have property rights. He built his home at age 20 and would be celebrating his 100th birthday this year were he still alive.
In the past 80 years, we could not obtain land ownership. However, after checking the records, I understand this is not an individual but a community issue. Most people in the community are facing this problem.
The government thinks that land ownership grows in their kitchen gardens and that they can distribute it to the poor people as charity whenever they are in a good mood. This is a shame!
Here is an episode from history. It is about the resistance the fisherfolk put up on behalf of King Marthanda Varma of Travancore, whose expansionist policy threatened the Dutch interests in the region.
The Dutch relied on these kingdoms for their spice trade, but Travancore’s refusal to honour the Dutch monopoly agreements disrupted their business. In response, the Dutch Governor proposed military action to safeguard their trade.
A coalition of local rulers subservient to the colonial force was formed, and the Dutch launched a war against Travancore with the help of soldiers from Ceylon. The early campaign saw success for the Dutch and their allies, forcing the Travancore army to retreat from Kollam to Tangasseri.
However, when the king allowed the fishermen to fight alongside the army, the tide turned.
Eustachius de Lannoy was the Dutch admiral who led the Dutch East India Company’s forces in the Battle of Colachel, fought on August 10, 1741.
The fishermen and the Travancore army cut many palm trees and carved them to appear like the Dutch’s cannons — and placed them along the coast, creating confusion and fear in the Dutch ranks.
The fishermen also used various weapons in their attacks, including spears, swords, bows and arrows. They also used their knowledge of the local waters to advantage, and were able to launch surprise attacks on the Dutch ships and factories.
The battle was a decisive victory for the Travancore fish workers. The Dutch were forced to withdraw from Travancore and marked the end of their dominance in the region — and their decline as a colonial power in India.
The Dutch never recovered from the defeat at Colachel. They continued to trade in India but no longer posed a major colonial threat. The Battle of Colachel is considered one of the most important battles in the history of India and is a reminder of the power of indigenous resistance to colonial rule.
But with the huge Adani container port in Vizhinjam, and now the coastal highway project, the government wants us to leave the land we safeguarded from colonial forces.
A person setting up his fishing net. (Supplied)
The government’s intention is visible now: They only want us, the fisherfolk, give our land for their blue economy. So that they can overfish the sea, mine the ocean bed, and build their tourism resorts. And eventually, the owners of this land will become refugees.
Consider the flats the government is offering. They are at least 4 km from the coast.
How do they expect traditional fishermen to come to the sea for their daily earnings? Where will they place their nets, boats, and other fishing equipment?
What, fundamentally, makes the fisherfolk? Simply, the link between the people and their coast!
If they displace us from our land, we become vulnerable and will face more discrimination.
If the project is implemented and fish workers’ families are displaced, many essential services, such as education and healthcare, will be affected.
Currently, the fishing community of Kerala lives a life that is self depended; we have our ancestral resource, the ocean, for food and survival. But we are displaced, what job can the state provide to the fishers? How will they treat elders among fish worker in mainstream villages? They will become slaves. They will lose their voice and power.
If the coastal highway is built without understanding the social consequences, the “Army of Kerala” — as Pinarayi Vijayan described the fishers for their heroic efforts that rescued over 60,000 people during the devastating 2018 floods (when the Indian Navy rescued only 5,000) — will be diminished.
This is a road that leads nowhere. It promises only disaster. Kerala’s fragile coastal ecology will have to bear the brunt — along with the fisherfolk for whom the coast is home.
(Ibin Nayakam is a first-generation graduate from the fishing community of Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram coast. He is a postgraduate in Mass communication and New Media from the University of Jammu.)
