ns should be provided to fish-farm workers who have lost their livelihoods.
Decentralized, low-energy using fish processing techniques as well as coastal and market infrastructure for hygienic fish marketing should be popularized. They should focus on the domestic market potentials. These investments will greatly help women from fishing communities to attain improved incomes.
Investment in community-oriented social infrastructure should be given a priority. Roads to coastal areas, bridges, community halls, schools and fishery-related infrastructure are major investments that can absorb a sizable amount of aid contributions and community labour. They can also become realms for both immediate ‘food for work' type of programmes and conscious alternative employment training programmes for many of the tsunami-displaced persons who do not wish to go back to sea for a variety of reasons.
Education and training
Post-tsunami rehabilitation is a good occasion to solve the educational backwardness of the fishing communities. They need a greater range of technical skills. This is an opportune moment to involve young men and women from the community to learn-by-doing. This can also be matched with a variety of training schemes to develop skills in trades which are now much sought after in the service sector -- masonry, plumbing, carpentry, home nursing, geriatric care, water harvesting and ecological sanitation skills to name a few. Residential fishery schools starting from the primary classes onwards will also be a boon for the large number of tsunami orphans and the future generation.
Safety and disaster preparedness
Though tsunamis are rare, monsoon sea ingress, cyclones and tidal waves are a fact of life along the coastal belt. The yearly calamities can be reduced if an early warning system is put in place and safety and disaster management training is provided. A village-based IT-enhanced communications network that is linked horizontally across coastal villages and vertically to higher level disaster management cells will 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 arr