In the cell phone net

Fishermen in Kerala master the market. Over the phone

There are two things fisherman Payyeri Balakrishnan doesn8217;t forget to wrap in a piece of plastic and tuck securely into his dhoti before clambering on to his old boat in Beypore, Kerala. Packets of bidi and his cell phone. He can8217;t do without either.

Till a few years ago, Balakrishnan, like other fisherfolk in his village, would fish for a couple of days or more far out in the sea, keep wandering on the waters for shoals of fish the other boats had run into, pray someone would help if the engine stalled, and keep hoping there would be buyers willing to pay well when he returned with his prized catch.

Many days, it just wasn8217;t worth turning the boat to other markets if he couldn8217;t get a proper price there. Often the buyers would have left with the catches others had brought in earlier. Besides, the buyers wouldn8217;t pay more if they knew he had little choice and much of the selling had to be done at beach auctions that the big buyers controlled.

8220;There were many days when we had to dump part of our catch because the markets we headed for wouldn8217;t have been the right ones to negotioate or the buyers would have left. There were also times when we would waste so much diesel moving from one market to the other hoping for better prices that it wouldn8217;t make any sense in the end,8221; he recalls.

Not anymore. The mobile phone has changed all that. 8220;We now call up the agents on shore after each catch and bargain with them. We try out different markets and choose. Once we know where to go, it doesn8217;t cost much diesel to head straight to the place because there isn8217;t much difference in radial distances,8221; says Balakrishnan. The agents have got wise too: 8220;They have our mobile numbers and begin calling us early morning, checking on our catches and bargaining and buying the catch before we get ashore.8221;

The mobile has other uses too. Balakrishnan8217;s old boat has no equipment to detect fish movement, no GPS or VHF communication equipment. Many boats from his area are not even registered. The mobile is a big help there too. 8220;Now, whenever men in a boat from our area run into a big catch, they call up other boats and direct them there. This helps everyone. And whenever a boat gets into trouble, it immediately calls up others in that area,8221; he says.

More importantly, the mobile keeps him in touch with his wife and kids on the shore, which he says means 8220;peace of mind while at sea8221;. Most mobile services remain within range up to 25 km or more in the sea.

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Now, there are tens of thousands of fishermen like him in Kerala who have made mobile phones as much a part of their fishing as nets and rods. The little SIM card has been the greatest leveller in the state8217;s fishing scene in recent years. If a study last year by Harvard university don Robert Jensen in many fishing hamlets in Kerala is to be believed, mobile phones have not only eliminated the need for fishermen to dump unsold fish in the sea, but actually helped them 8220;increase their margins by about 8 per cent while reducing the prices for consumers by 4 per cent8221;.

Jensen8217;s study said that soon after Kerala8217;s mobile phone coverage spread from 1997 to 2000, the number of fishermen selling their catch outside their home markets rocketed from 8220;zero to 35 per cent8221;. That translated into no more drastic price variations in different markets and very little wastage of catch.

It is not just the fishermen who have benefited from the mobile. Kerala has the country8217;s highest mobile telephony penetration, and workers in other areas too have woken up to the cell phone8217;s potentials in a big way. These include those manning the famed houseboats in the state8217;s backwaters who were out of contact as soon as they left the shore, garbage collectors in Thiruvananthapuram, where the municipality has equipped all trash truck drivers with mobiles, village autorickshaw drivers who now hand out business cards with their mobile numbers to turn into call taxi services, and many more.

The little gadget that were once seen as status symbols now beep from the unlikeliest pockets8212;or dhotis.