Tapping the potential of our marine wealth

Let me now mention a few interesting issues about my tenure as Managing Director, APFDC.

Unacceptable levels of exploitation were taking place with the marketing of the catch of traditional fishermen along the Andhra Pradesh coast line. For want of proper landing facilities, the economies of scale, aggregation (into bodies such as cooperatives and Farmer Producer Organisations or FPOs), and insulated transport facilities were forced to sell their catch to merchants who, fleeced them - fish being perishable. The poor fishermen needed immediate payment, discharge their liabilities, and to meet daily needs. Over time, although APFDC was making no purchase, the fishermen were, getting a rupee per kilogram, more than before our intervention.

A pity that, as the increase in the incomes of fishermen would, in the long run, have resulted in better availability, and access to, basic minimum facilities. The government would have saved the investments required to provide precisely those, for the same people. Unfortunately, by that time, the concept of social cost - benefit had yet to catch on.

It is well known that tribal folk love dried fish. Therefore, rather than throw away the trash fish (as is the habit in when trawlers return from a voyage to fish for prawns), we began to allow them to land, had them dried, and arranged for supplying them to the inmates of Scheduled Tribes hostels situated in villages along the coast.

The fishery and tobacco worlds have an ambience of their own, almost everywhere in the world. Dealings lie largely in the grey area between the proper and the unacceptable. Fisherfolk are known for their gay, carefree and rather bohemian attitude. Intrigue and unwritten codes of business abound. I came face-to-face with the atmosphere in the fishing harbours during my days in the APFDC, when K.V. Rao and I visited them incognito, lest people be alerted to our identity, a truly eye-opening experience.

I encountered hard reality also in export of frozen prawn primarily to Japan. The official of the Export Inspection Agency (EIA), would come literally when the ship was about to sail, and ask for a box at the very end of the container to be removed and shown for inspection! As that could not be done the question of appeasement arose. Being a public sector executive, I could not deal with it directly and had to bend my morals and wink at my officials giving the occasional 'goodwill' gift to the officers!

I had similarly, to acquiesce in such practices being adopted by, my colleagues in the Secretariat being kept, the saving grace being that it was an occasional safari suit or a brief case! I took the opportunity to visit all the national institutes, in the fishery sector, in dealing with marine and inland fisheries, fisheries education and oceanography.

I found the scientists in all the institutions dedicated to the task of expanding the frontiers of knowledge. The heads of the institutions, were courteous and forthcoming. All in all, an extremely educative experience.

Pisciculture, both of the fresh and brackish water types, was catching on very rapidly at that time. Santhanam, a former Collector of Krishna district, was, a pioneer of that activity. In his, steamrollering fashion, he had a large number of tanks dug in the area abutting the Kolleru lake and converted them into freshwater fishery tanks. Farmers not cooperating were made to comply even by the use of force! Subsequently, of course, his approach stood vindicated in the manner in which the technology spread. Freshwater fish harvested from the tanks, even today, transported, primarily to West Bengal and Assam, the largest markets in the country.

Later as Collector of Krishna district, I began a venture to dig brackish water tanks off the coast near Machilipatnam, the headquarters of the district. While the project had some moderate success the sad part was that, I had ignorantly caused destruction of a vast extent of mangrove forest, unaware of the damage it had caused to the environment. What was more, the protection the forest afforded to the low-lying parts of the districts from tidal waves was also nullified by my uninformed adventure.

It was only years later that harm the pisciculture activity was causing to the environment, including the ecological integrity of the Kolleru lake, came to the fore. Finally a large number of steps had to be taken, partly following the intervention of the Supreme Court of India to undo the damage. Luv Agarwal the then Collector of West Godavari (now, incidentally, at the forefront of the government of India team fighting the war against the Covid –19 virus as Joint Secretary dealing with the subject in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare), did an outstanding job in that situation.

Another interesting experience was the effort I made to procure two extra trolleys for the taller operating unit of the Corporation. The idea was to improve economies of scale for the unit as the two existing trawlers which, while functioning profitably, lacked enough capacity to keep the freezing plants of the corporation fully occupied. When local efforts failed, I eyed the trawlers the West Bengal counterpart of APFDC was having. However, despite our reaching the very top of the political leadership in that state, and even after meeting the Minister concerned personally, we not only failed but had the disappointment of seeing, of all parties, the Union Carbide company succeeding.

During that visit I happened to go to the place where the daily fish auctions were taking place. Just as in the case of the marine fish transactions in the landing centres in Andhra Pradesh, a great degree of exploitation marked the activity. The merchants, to begin with, would take away a portion of the catch from the fishermen in the form of 'Daan', a sort of donation to the market yard. And, after that, price and quality were handled in an entirely subjective manner, and, thanks to the perishable nature of the commodity, as the fishermen were always at a disadvantage.

Another novel experiment we tried out at that time was the introduction of outboard motors imported from Japan to add power and speed to traditional craft. It was a sort of halfway house between a mechanised vessel and a catamaran. It caught on very rapidly and was runaway success. A large part of the programme was also funded by Chetana (a voluntary organisation started by Governor Sharda Mukherjee when I was Secretary to the Governor, sometime earlier), as part of the post-1977 cyclone-relief activities.

The stint of one year in the APFDC left me convinced that the fishermen community of the country lives in set of circumstances entirely peculiar to it, and not comparable to any other community. Farmers, weavers, artisans such as potters cobblers, or people belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Tribes all show different characteristics, both personally and professionally, as one travels the length and width of the country. Not so, however, the fishing folk.

Geographically isolated, socially and politically distanced from the majority of the population which lives away from the coast of the country, they show remarkable consistency in their physical, cultural and economic conditions all along the 10,000 km coastline. Their occupation is seasonal, dangerous, risky and extremely unpredictable in terms of returns. Therefore they possess a strong streak of superstition. Coverage by social and economic infrastructure is also scant, and they continue to lag behind in the matter of accessing the benefits of development and growth.

While, in no way, taking away from the interventions of the central and State governments as also non-governmental and community-based organisations, one would like to see more determined and focused effort to enhance the quality of their lives, and mainstreaming them into the rest of the Society, showing a significant improvement.

(The writer is former Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)