Sunderban Fishing in Troubled Waters

October 2002 will be quite unlike any other October for the fishermen in the Sunderban delta. After a seven-year battle, West Bengal Forest ...

October 2002 will be quite unlike any other October for the fishermen in the Sunderban delta. After a seven-year battle, West Bengal Forest Minister Jogesh Chandra Burman has convinced both Fisheries Minister Kiranmoy Nanda and the government that the environment was paying too high a price for the fishing industry in Jambudweep, one of the 48 protected islands here.

The subtext, however, runs deeper. According to officials, more than the environment, it was the free run Bangladeshi fishermen had of the area that worried the government. ‘‘I came around to Burman’s point of view only because I agree that most of the fishermen were Bangla-deshis,’’ says Nanda. ‘‘But if the suspicions are correct, what was the home department doing all these years?’’

There in lies the rub. Sources say it is a letter from the Supreme Court, seeking to know what was being done to ‘‘free’’ Jambudweep, and ‘‘a very disturbing letter from the South 24 Parganas district magistrate’’ that finally led the government to move into Jambudweep.

Story continues below this ad

Burman admits as much. ‘‘The DM said that if there was more complacency on this front, it would amount to opening the door for the ISI and smugglers,’’ he says.

Without specifying Bangladeshi infiltrators, Burman says, ‘‘It’s been going on for 20 years. They come, damage the island, stay in the protected forest area, raise permanent structures. That’s why we have pulled down 109 permanent structures, 40 godowns for dried fish and even a small township.’’

Subhas Dutta, of a Howrah-based NGO that surveyed the islands in January 1999, remembers, ‘‘With the help of the locals, these seasonal fishermen — some 20,000 of them — had set up a township in Jambudweep. Steamers would anchor here, and leave full of dried fish.’’

While Dutta wrote to then Union Home Minister L K Advani about the infiltration in 1999, no action followed; if anything, the local mafia only strengthened its grip over the area. In fact, sources close to Burman say that the greatest resistance to the minister’s clean-up drive came from local CPI(M) leaders.

PM Modi releases special coin, stamp to mark 100 years of RSS

India2 hr ago

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh [RSS] had suffered at the hands of British and Nizams for its belief of ‘nation first’. He also said RSS members, including founder KB Hedgewar, had been jailed during the freedom struggle. Modi released a special commemorative postage stamp and a coin to mark the centenary of the RSS.

View all shorts

Live Blog

PHOTOS