The Indo-Sri Lankan dispute over fishing rights in the Palk Strait, the water body separating Tamil Nadu from the Jaffna region of Sri Lanka, has been an emotive issue of long-standing. It has evoked loud complaints from Chennai, which have often led to a diplomatic furore between Colombo and New Delhi.
The Indo-Sri Lankan maritime boundary agreements signed in 1974 and 1976, allowed fishermen of both nations to “enjoy in each other’s waters such rights as they have traditionally enjoyed therein”. Since maritime boundaries lack physical demarcation, the lull in fishing activity, during the civil war in Sri Lanka, encouraged Indian fishermen to encroach into Sri Lankan waters. With the end of hostilities in 2009, the Sri Lankan fishing community sought to reclaim their rights, bringing them into conflict with Indian fishers. Intervention by the Sri Lankan Navy has often resulted in ugly situations, arrests and even fatal shootings of Indian fishermen.
With dwindling fish stocks, rising fuel costs, and growing tensions, fishing communities of both countries are in acute distress but remain confined to the Palk Strait for lack of finances, which could buy them sea-going trawlers and the means to venture forth on the high seas. This article is, however, not about the India-Sri Lanka dispute, but about its underlying cause — the neglect, by India (and Sri Lanka), of the fishing industry — remedying which, may also help resolve this dispute.
In his 1979 book Sea Power of the State Soviet Admiral Gorshkov wrote: “The fishing fleet is an important component of the sea power of the state. The role of this fleet has grown sharply, and… its most important task consists in ensuring a solution of the acute food problem facing mankind.” He added, “In the two world wars, fishing vessels were widely used as part of the navy for combat tasks such as port-defence and minesweeping.”
China, obviously, took serious note of Gorshkov’s commentary. Since the dwindling availability of farmland forced China to become a net importer of food grain, it has mobilised the fishing industry to meet the rising demand for protein in the Chinese diet. Consequently, China is today a “fishery superpower”, which owns the world’s largest deep-water fishing (DWF) fleet, with boats that stay at sea for months or even years. In 2016, while China consumed 38 per cent of the global fish production, its DWF fleet brought home only 20 per cent of the world’s catch. To bridge this gap, China had begun distant deepwater fishing, as far back as in 1985, and, with an eye on “protein and profit”, struck contracts to fish in the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of other many countries in Asia and Africa. Interestingly, China also uses a part of its fishing fleet as a “maritime militia”, which assists the navy and coast guard in their tasks.
For India too, fish, being an affordable and rich source of animal protein, is one of the healthiest options to mitigate hunger and malnutrition. Since Independence, India’s marine fishery has been dominated by the “artisanal sector” — poor, small-scale fishers who can afford only small sailboats or canoes to fish for subsistence. India’s artisanal fishers deliver only 2 per cent of marine fish to the market, while 98 per cent is caught by mechanised and motorised craft.
Having commenced as a purely traditional activity, India’s fisheries are being transformed into a commercial enterprise. The sector has shown steady growth and has become a major contributor of foreign exchange: India ranks amongst the world’s leading seafood exporting nations. Fisheries provide livelihood to about 15 million fishers and fish-farmers at the primary level, and generates almost twice the number of jobs, along the value-chain — in transportation, cold-storages, and marketing.
These figures could have been much higher had India invested in a deepwater fleet. Since Indian trawlers do not venture into rich fishing grounds, most of the fishing is being undertaken in coastal waters and our fishermen have to compete with those of neighbours, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, in restricted fishing grounds. Fishing vessels often drift, inadvertently or otherwise, into foreign waters leading to apprehension by navies/coast guards and prolonged imprisonment of the crew. Moreover, the rich resources in India’s EEZ remain underexploited and much of the catch from our fishing grounds is taken away by the better equipped fishing fleets of other Indo-Pacific countries; some of them indulging in illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing. IUU also has serious security and environmental implications.
Currently, most of India’s fisheries exports are at a low level of value addition — in frozen and chilled form — without going for higher-order “ready-to-eat” or “ready-to-cook” marine products. As in many other sectors of the maritime domain, India needs to evolve a long-term vision for its fishing industry with focus on four areas: One, mechanisation and modernisation of fishing vessels by providing communication links and electronic fish-detection devices, with artisanal fishers being funded for this; two, developing deep-water fishing fleets, with bigger, sea-going trawlers equipped with refrigeration facilities; third, a DWF fleet will have to be built around the “mother ship” concept, wherein a large vessel would accompany the fleet to provide fuel, medical and on-board preservation/processing facilities; and four, development of modern fishing harbours with adequate berthing and post-harvest facilities, including cold storage, preservation, and packaging of fish.
In September 2020, the government had announced the launch of Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, a flagship scheme for sustainable development of India’s fisheries sector with an estimated investment of Rs 20,000 crores over the next five years. Reaching out across the Palk Strait to form an “Indo-Sri Lankan Fishing Corporation” under this Yojana, with a deepwater fishing fleet and dedicated fishing harbours, could not only provide a huge boost to the fishing industries of both nations, but also remove an unwanted irritant in bilateral relations and send out a positive message of SAGAR: “Security and Growth for All in the Region”.
The writer is a retired chief of naval staff
