ll be required. This can also be a realm to exchange the nuanced traditional knowledge of fishing communities on weather and the sea. Every village should have its own well-trained safety brigade of women and men, fashioned along the lines of a home guard. An FM radio service focusing on the coastal communities can serve the purpose of education, entertainment and safety. Sea safety kits and radios supplied to fisherfolk will be a worthwhile investment.
Protective social security
Fishing is by far the riskiest occupation in the world. The tsunami has revealed the very low insurance coverage across the coastal communities. This should also be the occasion for the state and public sector insurance companies to reach out to the weaker sections in the community with affordable and subsidized insurance policies and social security packages for health, accident and old age pensions for men and women. The mechanism for disbursal of such welfare measures should be decentralized. A fishery disaster insurance scheme that will cover loss of life and property as a result of a collective natural disaster with the premium paid fully by the government is warranted.
Responsible fishery resource management
Considerable lip service has been paid to the need for moving towards responsible fishery resource management. This is the occasion to take firm decisions and positive action by both the state and the community to achieve this. Tsunami affected fisherfolk who wish to leave fishing, particularly the older among them, should be given a good compensation package. Many trawler owners may use this occasion for an honorable exit from the fishery. They must be adequately compensated. Community initiatives for erecting coastal artificial reefs which can act as barriers to nature's fury and also help to rejuvenate coastal living resources should be encouraged. Greater state and community co-management arrangements for the coastal waters need to be negotiated. Aquarian reforms assuring rights to coastal waters and producer controlled arrangements for the first sale of fish should be enacted.
Fishing communities have rarely being at the center of attention of civil society. Now that so many of them have been taken away by the sea and thousands are faced with a shattered future, they are the focus of an outpouring of concern. This swell of human kindness – if it is not to take the shape of a tsunami of misplaced concerns and competing priorities – needs to be properly channeled. The proposals above should be seen as a modest attempt to begin a discussion on the medium and long-term issues that need to be factored into any rehabilitation plan for the survivors. If successful, this can form the basis for a master plan for ensuring a secure future for fishing communities across the country.
(* the author started professional life organizing cooperatives among small-scale coastal fishing communities and is currently Professor, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum- 695 011. E-mail email@example.com) 10 January 2005
By Devinder Sharma
As the first news reports of the devastation caused by the tsunami killer waves began to pour in, a newsreader on Aaj Tak's Headline Today television channel asked his correspondent reporting from the scene of destruction in Tamil Nadu in south of India : “Any idea about how much is the loss to business? Can you find that out because that would be more important for our business leaders?”
Little did the newscaster realise or even know that the tsunami disaster, which eventually turned out to be a catastrophe, was more or less the outcome of faulty business and economics. The magnitude of the disaster was only exacerbated by the neo liberal economic policies that pushed economic growth at the expanse of human life. It was the outcome of an insane economic system – led by the World Bank and IMF – that believes in usurping environment, nature and human lives for the sake of unsustainable economic growth for a few.
Since the 1960s, the Asian sea-coast region has been plundered by the large industrialised shrimp firms tha