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News reports that Sri Lanka's Fisheries Minister, Dr Rajitha Senaratne, will be in New Delhi this week, for discussions with Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, also in charge of Fisheries, if taken to the logical conclusion and in the right direction, has the potential to take larger bilateral issues away from what is essentially a livelihood concern in the two countries. Considering that fishers' issues, including IMBL violations, arrests and years of detention in prisons in Pakistan in particular, have not been central to bilateral relations, any effort in that direction on the Sri Lankan front too should be welcome.
Central to the problem is the existing politico-administrative structure in the country. Despite six decades of Independence, 7,500-km long coastline and increasing dependence on sea-food for sustenance and protein for substantial sections of the population, the Union Government is yet to consider 'fisheries' worthy of a separate ministry and minister with a mission and mandate to call their own. This has meant that marine food development has received step-motherly treatment at the hands of the Agriculture Ministry, eternally busy with land-based issues, starting with rains that often fail, fertiliser prices and availability, minimum support price, export/import variables, and attendant vote-bank politics. With the result, bilateral and multilateral issues and problems pertaining to fishing, particularly in the Sri Lankan context, have come to be treated as a diplomatic episode, not a livelihood issue, with scope for mutual understanding and cooperation in developing the available resources.
Nothing drives home the point better than the continual instances of the Sri Lankan arrest of Tamil Nadu fishermen, out there in the seas on a livelihood mission. On the reverse side, the Indian Coast Guard too has been known to have arrested Sri Lankan fishers with their catch, for violating the Indian territorial waters. Both end up spending days and weeks in each other's prisons, with no permanent solution yet in sight. This is so despite an agreement between the fishers in the two countries as far back as 2010, covering Indian (Tamil Nadu) fishers in Sri Lankan waters, but yet to be formally attested by any government on either side of the Palk Strait.
In the absence of a 'fisheries' ministry at the Centre, with a minister and secretary to call its own (even if he were a minister of state with independent charge), what essentially should have remained mostly an 'internal issue' of India pertaining to the nation's 'internal waters' (with Sri Lanka in this case) has assumed greater and/or worse bilateral significance than may have been required. Addressing 'internal issues' within 'internal waters' wholesome could have limited bilateral issues with Sri Lanka to stray incidents of arrests of fishers and capture of their boats.
The vastness of the Indian seas apart, fewer Sri Lankan fishers, in contrast, used to be arrested in Indian waters than the other way round. It is also here the 'ethnic issue' in Sri Lanka has had a role to play, almost from day one. All Indian fishers harassed and/or arrested in Sri Lankan waters are from Tamil Nadu. Almost all Sri Lankan fishers arrested in Indian waters are Sinhalas. Rarely is there a Sri Lankan Tamil fisher arrested in Indian waters. If there is one, it would have been for other reasons.
The temptation for the 'competitive' Tamil Nadu polity to mix up the fishers' issue with the larger 'ethnic issue' in Sri Lanka cannot be overlooked. To the credit of their Tamil counterparts in Sri Lanka should it be said that the latter had generally desisted from making a political issue out of it thus far. Their non-political class has stopped with flagging the livelihood issue, alongside the Government in Colombo, with elements that at times tempted to politicise it. However, in the months and years to come, 'competitive Tamil politics' in Sri Lanka's Tamil areas on the fishing issue cannot be ruled out either.
Livelihood, not diplomatic issue
A separate ministry for 'fisheries' at the Centre could have effectively made the distinction in this regard. With the focus, for instance, on the Palk Bay fishing dispute, it would have meant that a ministry would have forcefully taken up not only the problems but also implemented solutions that were within its mandate with greater vigour and vitality, responsibility and accountability than a mere department within the vastness of the Indian Establishment could hope to.
Today, every problem of the kind, when whipped up, lays at the door-steps of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). The latter is expected to resolve the immediate problem of arrests and attacks, post haste. Until the next series of attacks and/or arrests, there is none to address the issues flagged by the earlier one(s). They have remained diplomatic issues pertaining to rights and violations, not governmental/bilateral initiatives aimed at reducing Tamil Nadu fishers' dependence on year-round catch from Sri Lankan waters.
The MEA is not tasked with addressing the 'livelihood' issues of the Tamil Nadu fishers, for instance. The same applies to Gujarat fishers crossing the international borders into Pakistani borders, of their brethren from West Bengal getting into Bangladesh waters. The reverse, in both cases, is as true as those involving Indian and Sri Lankan fishers across the Tamil Nadu coast. Unlike perceived and propagated in Tamil Nadu, Indian fishers arrested in Pakistani waters are held prisoner with no consular or humanitarian assistance for 10-15 years, until a Summit talk between the leaders of the two countries provides an occasion for Islamabad to extend a 'gesture' of the kind.
Addressing the 'livelihood issues' of Indian fishers in Indian waters involve ensuring that there are enough stocks for them to catch and make a decent living out of it, on a daily and seasonal basis. Like in other sectors of the food industry, the Governments at the Centre and the States would be forced to address issues pertaining to marketing, storage, minimum price, replenishing marine stocks, etc - as has become habitual with land-based agro-industries. It would also flow that the Indian fishers do not resort to over-exploitation of the available stocks of fish, to leave the 'internal seas' bare for all times to come.
Other issues apart, this is what has happened on the Indian side of the Palk Bay, for instance. This is also what the Sri Lankan Government and the Tamil-speaking fishers in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of that country are anxious to avoid in their waters, by allowing free access to Tamil Nadu fishers with their unenviable track-record at over-exploitation in India's 'internal waters' in those parts. Through a bilateral agreement in 2008, Sri Lanka granted permission for Tamil Nadu fishers to cross the IMBL, for practising their vocation. The issue of 'fish life' is as relevant as the 'fishers' livelihood', both under the 2008 bilateral government agreement, and the bilateral fishers' understanding, two years later.
There is also a need to restructure the administrative set-up in the States. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, for political reasons, fisheries is a separate ministry, with an independent minister. But for historic reasons, fisheries does not have a separate Secretary. Whoever the official, much of his mentally-allocated time for one of the subjects under his care is often spent on fire-fighting on arrests and detentions - in the Sri Lankan waters, over the past so many years, with similar arrests in the distant Gulf region, adding to his/her woes in recent years. The situation is no different in other States, either, if one were to use the Centre's own apathy as a bench-mark.
Fishers' talks
It is in this overall background that the upcoming talks between the fishers' representatives (possibly accompanied by officials from the two nations, and States) have to be viewed. The non-governmental initiative on the fishers' agreement of October 2010 (Chennai), reiterated in March 2011 (Colombo), has addressed most of the livelihood issues.
What is in store is to revive the process, and for the Governments in the two countries to operationalise them on both sides. This means that the Sri Lankan Government should stick to the October 2008 bilateral official agreement on allowing Indian fishers into the Sri Lankan waters - on the number of days agreed upon in the fishers' pact of 2010.
In the reverse, the Governments in India will have to ensure that the fishers' agreement on Indians not resorting to bottom-trawling and purseine nets, both of which are acknowledged as destroying marine resources totally, and the lives of the Sri Lankan Tamil fishers, on a daily basis. Implementation by the Centre in India is difficult for the Coast Guard to enforce any direction of the kind, once the fishing trawlers are out in the sea. It is relatively easier for a determined State Government to enforce such arrangements, by appropriate directives to the Fisheries, Revenue and coastal and land-based police on the ground.
Otherwise, extraneous issues that have the potential to complicate matters need to be kept out of fishers' talks, as the negotiating teams are not the ones legally and constitutionally competent to address such issues, based on IMBL and the like. If anything, fishers are also not overly concerned about them, they focussing almost exclusively on their lives, livelihood and freedom from harassment and detention in the seas - and long weeks and months in each other's prisons. In the case of Sri Lankan prisoners, given the Indian constitutional scheme, they are spread across prisons in more States than one (namely, Tamil Nadu), requiring concerted Central efforts, but not all the States are as responsive.
Between them, the two national Governments will also have to ensure that the diplomatic initiatives and procedures, with legal complexities attending on them, are suitably addressed and followed, at every stage. That way, all through the future of bilateral fishing equations, with Sri Lanka or other neighbours, the role of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) cannot be undermined. It has to be re-focussed, so as to ensure that their only job pertaining to Sri Lanka is only that of obtaining the release of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry fishers arrested by the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN). There is much more to bilateral relations, but then it is with a resolution to the fishers' issue, they need to start.
(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)
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