"In a none-too-unexpected and possibly a delayed and much-deliberated move, the ruling Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Sri Lanka's Tamils-exclusive Northern Province has said that Indians were among those robbing their people of their fishing wealth. A 32-clause May Day declaration of the party, read out by TNA General Secretary Maavai Senathiraja, put India on the top of the three-name list along with Chinese and southern Sri Lankan (Sinhala) fishers.
The declaration also referred to the 'permit system' introduced by the armed forces through the decades of 'ethnic war' (for Tamil fishers in the North and the East) putting out to sea. The party wanted the scheme withdrawn implying that normal fishing activity in the region should be restored and encouraged. Such a demand puts in question claims by Government spokespersons from time to time that permit-system for the northern fishers has been withdrawn - and makes a counter-claim that it's not so, just as yet.
Even if hidden in a plethora of issues and demands of immediate concern to the Sri Lankan Tamil community, particularly on the ethnic front, it's possibly for the first time that the TNA has spoken openly against 'Indian fishers' robbing their fishers of their catch. It needs no explanation to understand and acknowledge that the TNA is referring to fishers from south Indian State of Tamil Nadu, and the Tamil-speaking Union Territory of Puducherry, whose Karaikkal enclave is close to Sri Lankan waters and shores on the Tamil-speaking areas of the island-nation.
The last time the TNA mentioned the Tamil Nadu fishers, Selvam Advaikalanathan, MP, leader of the TELO constituent in the Alliance, had referred to the same in 2011. It was allowed to die a natural death at the time, but today, with a Fisheries Minister to call its own in the Northern Province, the TNA cannot look the other way. Nor can it allow to let the fishers' constituency of the rival EPDP partner in the ruling UPFA at the Centre, return to the fold of Minister Douglas Devananda, after they having voted for the party once in the NPC polls last November.
There is also the accompanying question of the fishers' issue being taken up one time or the other, at the Northern Provincial Council and/or the NPC Cabinet under Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran, or both. That it has not formed the subject of any of the numerous and oftentimes unrealistic and outside-of-mandate resolutions passed by the House, at the instance of over-zealous and/or ignorant TNA Council members should be a surprise already. Nor can these entities avoid a louder mention of some kind if and when the fishers issue is agitated at the District Development Council (DDC) meetings in the Northern Province, co-chaired by Chief Minister Wigneswaran and Central Minister Devananda.
Wigneswaran having boycotted the first Jaffna DDC meeting, the Chief Minister not wanting to share the dais with a Central Minister on equal and equitable terms, has since relented. Both co-chaired subsequent DDC meetings for Jaffna and Killinochchi districts. The Chief Minister's efforts now seem to utilise every available official forums to get whatever is possible for his war-ravaged people even while keeping the larger issues of 'power-devolution and implementation' alive. The fishers' issue cannot be kept away for long, thus.
The TNA's May Day declaration comes ahead of the bilateral fishers' talks in Colombo, now scheduled for 12 May. It is thus not clear if the mention of the fishers issue in the TNA declaration was timed for the talks or not - and if so, why now. This is a part of the series proposed by the Governments of India and Sri Lanka, and taken up by the Tamil Nadu Government of mercurial Chief Minister Jayalalithaa with a lot of circumspection and a lot more of suspicion - all of which purportedly centred on Colombo, but deflected on to New Delhi at times.
After the first round of much-delayed negotiations between the fishers' representatives from either side of the Palk Strait ended amicably though without producing any substantive results (as was only to be expected under the circumstances), the much-postponed second round now in Colombo can hopefully take the issues on hand and address them more directly and purposefully. It does not mean a negotiated settlement in straightaway in sight.
It is also not unlikely that the official-level talks, either at the Joint Working Group (JWG) on fishing issues between the two countries or any other mechanism of the kind could take up the proceedings of the Colombo fishers' talks to arrive at conclusions. If it's possible, then end would be more in sight than otherwise, but even otherwise any meaningful dialogue at Colombo should be a welcome next step in a long process that has not been tried out earlier.
As may be recalled, the Sri Lankan fishers' delegation for the Chennai talks of 17 January did not include an official representative of the TNA's Northern Province administration. All official representatives, as is the wont under Sri Lanka's 'unitary State' system were chosen by the Fisheries Ministry at the Centre, and represented the Centre. In the long run-up to the US-sponsored UNHRC-3 Geneva resolution against the Sri Lankan Government for which the Tamil community and the TNA hoped for continued Indian support, they too may have chosen not to press for the presence of the Province's Fisheries Minister when Tamil Nadu was represented by a minister, at the insistence of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
Now that the resolution is behind, and India too 'abstained' from voting, it remains to be seen if the political leadership of the Northern Province administration would want to be present at the Colombo talks, even if only as 'observers', based on the Chennai precedent. With a Fisheries Minister to call its own in the NPC, the TNA would be hard put not to demand such a representation this timer round, as internal political dynamics within the TNA and intra-Tamil politics otherwise has an element of the fishers' problem in the North attaching to it.
Making Tamil Nadu fee let-down
Whether or not the timing of the TNA declaration on fishing relates to the fishers' talks, coming as it does after the Indian abstention at UNHRC-3 voting this March, political leaders and people at large in Tamil Nadu may begin asking themselves the question that if it is the true LTTE style, the moderate Tamil polity in Sri Lanka was also using, misusing and abusing the otherwise deserved sympathies over the ethnic issue. It's not without reason or consequent concerns.
Even after assuming elected power in the Northern Province and assigning Fisheries to a Minister there, the TNA had chosen to be silent over the fishers' issue ahead of the 17 January talks, at least in public. Whatever views that the party minister and government in the North may have had on the issue might at best have been shared with Fisheries Minister Rajitha Senaratne and his officials at the Centre - never really in public. Now for the party hence to flag the issue, and declare that the Indian (read: Tamil Nadu) fishers were 'robbing' their fish would be too much for the State Government, its divided polity and over-sympathetic populace, starting with the Palk Strait fishers, to stomach - or, explain to one another and the nation at large.
A lot will depend on how the TNA and the NPC proceeds from here, both during the upcoming fishers' talks in Colombo and otherwise. For any fishers-negotiated solution to be effective, it has to have the cooperation of the Tamil Nadu and Northern Province Governments across the Palk Straits, particularly in terms of enforcement on the shore, if not outright on the seas. Their inputs for policy-making by respective national governments, to put in place an effective bilateral mechanism too cannot be overlooked.
To the extent the TNA-run NP Government and its Fisheries Minister have a role in protecting 'Sri Lankan Tamil' fisher interests, the latter can be at the cost of the corresponding livelihood interests of their southern Tamil Nadu counterparts. The reverse is also true. Such an approach could cause greater concern in Tamil Nadu than the TNA declaration may now have flagged, particularly among the Palk Strait fishers, as the State as a whole could conclude that the party's silence ahead of the January talks in Chennai had owed mostly to the then-upcoming UNHRC vote, and not to the 'umbilical cord' connection with Tamil Nadu/India that they otherwise say, they are all proud of.
It's in this context that the basic issues that are expected to be agitated at Chennai assume importance and relevance. At the centre of the negotiations is what is generally termed as 'livelihood issues' of Palk Strait fishers from the two countries, extendable in the case of India to those in the Gulf of Mannar region, abutting Nagapattinam and surrounding fishing communities. Once the fishers have completed their part of the negotiations, officials of the Central Governments from the two countries would put them together, for the respective State/provincial governments to enforce on the ground.
In both, the respective State/Provincial Governments have a role to play in terms of contributing inputs for the discussion, based on ground realities and their own understanding of the same - and also the enforcement of any agreements to which they are a party, if not a signatory, particularly when it comes to effectively dissuading their fishers to abide by the clauses of any agreement of their own and between the governments in the two countries. It's in this context that the TNA's May Day Declaration pertaining to the fishers' problem assumes immediate importance and greater relevance.
(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)
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