By Chandrika Sharma

"I have been educated through a long and close contact with traditional fishworkers," says Nalini Nayak. And that is not just an idle statement. Her work with men, women and children of fishing communities in India and in other parts of the world, spanning the past three decades, has helped her understand the lives, the challenges and the acute pressures facing them today.

She has learned to respect this culture. She has learned to admire the skill and courage of the fishermen who brave the seas in small boats. She speaks with awe about the stamina and the dexterity of the women who process and sell fish to feed and educate their families. She speaks with rage and pain about the processes that undermine their livelihoods, and with passion and commitment about the need to work toward sustaining both the resources and the livelihood of their communities.

We have a lot to learn from traditional societies. "This certainly does not mean that we return to the past," she says. "But it does mean that we develop a better appreciation of the attitudes of traditional societies towards nature. It does mean that we respect traditional knowledge developed over centuries," knowledge that is "selective and nondestructive, respecting the cycles of nature."

Confronting a History of Discrimination

When she began her work in the late 1960's, small fishing communities and their ways were condemned as backward and inefficient. This was a period of considerable euphoria over the industrial model of fishery development, with its emphasis on technology. Fish catches were increasing rapidly the world over, and the resources seemed limitless.

By the 1970's, however, it had become evident that the fish catch was approaching its limit. Questions were raised about the use of destructive technology and the resulting overfishing. Several countries, including Malaysia and Indonesia, saw violent conflicts between modern trawlers dragging bag-shaped nets along the sea bed and traditional fishermen.

This was the context in which Nalini and several others began to organise artisanal fishermen, among the most marginalised groups in the world.

Nalini (top) with a group of activist
fish vendors in Orissa, India

In Kerala, Nalini and others helped set up the Programme for Community Organisation (P.C.O.), an nongovernmental organization in Thiruvananthapuram District. The group works with men, women and young people to focus them on better management of fishery resources and better education, health, sanitation, transportation and housing.

Emphasising the Role of Women

Through P.C.O., women traders and vendors have been able to confront exploitative taxes and harassment of women at the markets. Several programmes have been undertaken to develop leadership and organisational skills of women from fishing communities, enabling them to analyse and respond to their problems and to take part in decision-making processes affecting their lives. Similar programmes, especially in resource management, have been held with fishermen.

"It is vital to make visible the role of women."

It is vital to make visible the role of women. Nalini says: "Women are an integral part of the fishery sector, especially in countries of the South. They are involved with pre-harvesting operations (such as net-making), as well as in post-harvesting activities-the processing and sale of fish. Selling fish involves transport over long distances, often on foot. It means finding space to sell their highly perishable product in overcrowded markets. It means vulnerability to harassment and demands for bribes by local municipal authorities. Despite this, women are rarely recognised as fishworkers. They are rarely well-represented in fishworker organisations, and their demands are not taken up by them."

Nalini was also an early supporter of the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies, a group of cooperatives. With activities in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, the organisation engages primarily in boat-building, development of appropriate technology, research and documentation. The co-operatives are involved mainly with marketing and arranging credit. These groups can be traced back to the 1970's, when fishermen in the village of Marianad, with the help of several committed activists, including Nalini, developed their own markets to escape exploitation by middlemen and merchants.

Nalini is also a founder of the Kerala chapter of the Self Employed Women's Association. Working with women from fishing communities, the association helps to provide alternative sources of income, a vital program as fishery resources off the Kerala coast decline, and employment opportunities with them. The association in Thiruvananthapuram, for instance, trains women from fishing families to provide catering services to educational and other institutions and nursing services to households.

At the national level, Nalini is involved in organisations representing small-scale fishworkers, and in networks to protect the interests of women, unorganised labourers and other marginalised groups. She points out that new economic policies and the pressures of globalisation are undermining the life and livelihood of such groups. Liberalisation in the fisheries sector, for instance, has encouraged deep-sea fishing and exports, which in turn has implications for resource sustainability, food security and the livelihood of local fishing communities.

It is only because the fishery sector is better organised that it has been able to challenge some of these policies effectively. For example, the government revoked its decision to permit joint ventures in deep-sea fishing as a result of pressure from these bodies.

A Holistic Approach to the Whole Earth

Nalini's work has also emphasised the need to manage natural resources from a holistic perspective. Underlining the importance of protecting and regenerating the coastal ecosystem, she points out that almost two-thirds of marine fish production comes from stocks that spend their first, vulnerable stages in coastal areas. But these are being degraded by activities on land and on sea.

As an Ashoka Fellow in the late 1980's, she worked to help regenerate degraded mangrove forests in Kerala and southern Tamil Nadu. Her work on mangrove reforestation in the Manakudy Estuary of Kerala, done with the Hindu College, has been nationally recognised; the estuary, which was once considered dead, today attracts migrating birds and is full of fish life and juvenile shrimp in the intricate root systems of luscious mangrove groves. Because the work was done through local communities, it helped build awareness about the complexity and diversity of the coastal ecosystem and the need to nurture these habitats.

Nalini has also been actively involved with groups protesting the industrialialisation of shrimp culture along the coast and the resulting destruction of wetlands.

"Aquaculture is being mooted as an alternative to fisheries in the wild," she points out, "and as the solution to the problems of fish food supply. However this has often meant the culture of high-value species such as shrimp for export. In several countries, such intensive forms of aquaculture have had severe social, ecological and economic repercussions, threatening the environment and the livelihood of coastal communities."

"In India, for instance, the practice of brackish-water shrimp culture in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh has affected the livelihood of coastal communities in several ways: people have been displaced from their lands; agricultural lands have been converted to shrimp farms, affecting local employment opportunities; mangroves have been destroyed; groundwater has been rendered saline and unfit for human consumption."

Spreading the Message Around the Globe

At the international level, Nalini is a founder member of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, which defends the interests of small-scale fishworkers. She has been the international co-ordinator of its "Women in Fisheries," which strengthens women's role in decision-making processes in the Philippines, India, Senegal, Thailand, Brazil and Ghana. While each programme has evolved in its unique way, each has documented in detail the role women play in the fisheries in each country, creating a core of leaders.

All this may appear too much for a single person. But not if you know Nalini, her dynamism and her commitment to working with people's movements. "I am a dreamer," she says. "I dream of a different way of living, of a different model of development." For a dreamer, though, Nalini is very practical. She is absolutely clear about her objectives and her strategies: "Each action of ours, each step we take should be a step towards what we want the world to be."

And what is her dream? "We must question what is happening today. We must change the way we relate to nature and work towards a way of life and form of development that respects the natural resource base and recognises its limitations. We need to put life and livelihood at centre stage, and evolve a critique of technology not from the point of view of its efficiency or profitability, but from the point of view of its ability to sustain life in the long-term, both at land and at sea."

Nurture for Nature

Nalini advocates the importance of a nurture. "We must invest our energies in regenerating coastal habitats," she says. "We must protect spawning grounds from pollution and indiscriminate fishing. This kind of nurture, an investment in the future, is a thankless unpaid job in the present. It can be likened to the unpaid and taken-for-granted labour of women to sustain and nurture the family and the household. However, it is precisely such unpaid work, the work that goes towards the production of life, which must be highlighted, given importance, accounted for. It is such work that goes towards sustaining future generation and the resources for them."

She is also critical of the fact that today importance is attached only to the production of commodities and that only activities related to this are reflected in national economic accounts. "Activities related to the production of life remain invisible," she points out. "It is these attitudes of nurture and caring that must be prioritised and adopted by men and women alike."

The work of committed individuals like Nalini has helped put artisanal fisheries on the international agenda. From a time not so long ago, when local fisherfolk and their techniques were seen as backward, there is now a recognition that the industrial model is unsustainable. Small-scale fisheries are now seen as a viable alternative. And artisanal fishworkers in several countries are better organised to put forth their demands. This year artisanal fishworker organisations joined to form the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers, committing themselves to protecting the life and livelihood of coastal communities.

Nalini sees this development as vital. "In a world that is increasingly globalised," she concludes, "artisanal fishworkers are being faced with different threats and challenges. Resources are being subjected to new forms of pressure and appropriation. The right to harvest fish resources and to process and sell fish products is being concentrated in fewer hands as large corporate houses increase their stake in the sector. In several countries, especially of the North, such as Europe and Canada, small-scale fishers are finding themselves phased out of the fishery. In such a context, artisanal fishworkers have to be organised to protect their interests."

For Nalini and others like her the struggle continues.