APJ Abdul Kalam, the late President of India, had once suggested a very sensible solution to the long-standing animosity between India and Sri Lanka over the two countries’ fishermen’s rights to fish in disputed waters. Kalam had suggested that fishermen of India and Sri Lanka may be permitted to fish in the disputed waters of the Palk Bay, Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar on alternate days. After him, many other commentators have also sung the same tune. But those have not been able to lift India and Sri Lanka out of their deep slumber. Both New Delhi and Colombo have been affirming their commitment to find ‘a permanent solution to the fishermen issue’ for a long time. But very little has moved in this direction.
A tragic incident occurred in the third week of last month when four Indian fishermen lost their lives after their boat collided with a Sri Lankan navy vessel and then sunk. There is an unofficial estimate that since the middle of the 1970s when the bilateral crisis raised its head first as India handed over the Katchatheevu island to Sri Lanka, more than 700 Indian fishermen have been killed by the Sri Lankan navy.
Deep Rooted Business
The problem has now become a deep rooted one and a piecemeal approach adopted by the Indira Gandhi-led government in the 1970s is responsible for it. New Delhi handed over Katchatheevu to Colombo but India’s then External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh asserted that Indian fishermen would continue to enjoy fishing rights in and around Katchatheevu. So how can any government in New Delhi face and deny the assertion made by the fishermen community of Tamil Nadu that Katchatheevu belongs to India?
Let us look at the piquant ground reality surrounding the issue. Tamil Nadu has a large fishermen population depending on deep-sea fishing — the number hovers around 2,70,000. On the Sri Lankan side, the figure is gigantic – nearly 12 lakh. The presence of such a large number of population in the trade indicates that the catches from the sea have a brisk internal and export market. An inevitable corollary is the investment of big capital in the fishing business of the area. So a giant-sized fishing industry has grown in five districts of Tamil Nadu bordering the Palk Bay, which has attracted large investments from several non-fishing communities thus elbowing out many traditional fishermen.
Had it been just a case of small-time fishings by the fishermen of India and Sri Lanka, the problem might not have grown into a festering sore in bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka. But the infusion of big capital has changed the scenario altogether. In 1986, the number of registered trawlers in Thanjavur, Pudukkottai and Ramanathapuram districts of Tamil Nadu was 1,568. But in 2000, this number shot up to 3,339. It is widely believed that Rameswaram alone has more than 1,000 mechanised trawlers today. According to a recent estimate, small coastal stretches of Rameswaram, Mandapam and Pamban have 2,500 trawlers while Kottaipattinam and Pudukkottai have another 400. Add to it the number of trawlers in other coastal locations and the figure becomes stupendous.
Blame Games
Indulging in blame games will serve no purpose because socioeconomic conditions in certain parts of India and Sri Lanka have linkages with the disputed water. Local economies of three districts of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province are dependent on fishing. More importantly, the Northern Province of Sri Lanka accounts for more than one-third of the country’s marine catch. So the marine products segment of the country’s export economy has its stake in this region. At the same time, the fishermen of Tamil Nadu have also no other way but to cross the International Maritime Boundary Line because resources within the Indian exclusive economic zone are becoming more and more scarce due to the harmful practice of bottom trawling by Indian trawlers.
The crisis is no doubt a fall out of the hastily drawn up maritime boundary agreement between India and Sri Lanka in 1974. Neither the then Tamil Nadu government nor the fishermen were engaged by the Government of India in any detailed discussion. The agreement gives Indian fishermen the right to rest, drying up of nets and participate in the annual St Anthony’s festival on the Katchatheevu island but it does not give fishing rights. So Swaran Singh’s statement – assuring fishing rights to Indian fishermen — was perhaps an exercise in assuaging wounded sentiments in Tamil Nadu. But it has made the issue more complex.
Solution
But where does lie the solution? Well, India will have to take the initiative as the bigger country. First, the use of trawlers in the Palk Bay must be prohibited. Sri Lanka has already done it in their side of the said sea route. Second, the fishermen in Tamil Nadu must be convinced not to cross the International Maritime Boundary Line till a permanent solution is found. This will be easy to achieve as any impounded foreign fishing boat in Sri Lankan waters is now charged a penalty of minimum LKR 6 million, which may reach up to LKR 175 million maximum. Thirdly, New Delhi must correct its cardinal mistake of allowing mechanised infrastructure of fishing in Tamil Nadu and instead go back to traditional fishing methods. This will be justice for the traditional fishing communities many of whose members have been forced to become wage labourers in mechanised trawlers.
Quantity of marine catch within the Indian side of the exclusive economic zone is low due to bottom trawling and New Delhi has to look for an alternative mechanism. A good idea is to set up a Palk Bay Authority which would set up downstream processing industries for limiting the number of fishermen going into the sea. Another fruitful step may be creation of fishermen’s cooperatives comprising representatives from both the countries.
Through mutual consent, limited fishing days — a 12-hour time limit for each fishing trip, and for the Indian fishermen, a prescribed distance of three nautical miles from the Sri Lankan shore may be introduced.
(The author is a senior journalist and commentator specialising in politics and international affairs)
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