FISHING IN TROUBLED WATERS: MARKETS AND LABOURERS

Six months after the shocking revelation came to light that fish imported into Goa is preserved in the carcinogenic formalin, the issue is nowhere close to a solution. Recently, health minister Vishwajit Rane announced that the ban on imports will be in place for six months, except for those traders who comply with health and quality regulations. This apparently unstoppable poisoning (or adulteration) not only brings the governmental authorities under the scanner for being unable to stop such malpractices, but also highlights the manner in which the fishing industry operates in most parts of coastal India. It is important to discuss the labor practices and potential policy decisions that would address allied issues, including the issue of formalin.

It appears that all the coastal regions of peninsular India are linked in the manner in which the fishing industry operates. All the states in peninsular India are export-oriented: the best catch goes to the metropolitan markets of Bombay and Delhi. The labor for most of the mechanized fishing on the west coast, such as that in Goa and Maharashtra, comes from the east coast: from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, as well as Bihar. The first reports of tainted fish were discovered in Kerala, linked to fish imported from Andhra Pradesh. Hence it is not surprising that the issue in one place has snowballed into a crisis for other regions. Soon after formalin-laced fish was detected in Kerala, other states, including Goa, Assam, and Meghalaya were on alert. Short periods of import bans, coupled with damage-control exercises by the fish traders associations of Andhra Pradesh, were followed by normalization of business.

But the issue did not die; at least not in Goa with illegalities coming to light every other week since June 2018. Last month, fish traders from the neighboring district of Sindhudurg in Maharashtra were up in arms alleging that local politics in Goa was impeding their exports, and they were facing harassment at the Goan border despite following all the rules and regulations of the Goa Government. Karnataka is also threatening to halt mutual exports and imports from and to Goa if fish from its coastal regions is not allowed to be imported into Goa. The peninsular states seem to be dependent on each other for labor and export markets.

The mechanized and labor intensive nature of the industry, largely through trawl and purse seine fishing, requires that a large chunk of the fish be exported. The economics of the fishing industry suggests that local production for local consumption, or self-sufficiency, is not possible – not in Goa or anywhere else in peninsular India. The quantity of industrially-produced fish is either too much for local consumption, or certain types of fish are not part of local diets. Hence, despite banning imports from other states, Goa’s fishing industry depends on exports. This is the reason why Karnataka and Maharashtra get affected with a fish import ban in Goa. This is also why calls for banning export of Goan fish or threats to stop exports completely cause considerable worry to Goan fish traders.

Apart from the macroeconomic setup, most of the fishing industry is sustained by, as mentioned earlier, poor migrant labor who are mostly men away from their families and who work in extremely difficult and unhygienic conditions. They do not have benefits like health insurance and are informally contracted to work, without much options in case of conflicts with their employers. After the catch is brought ashore, it is transported to various destinations near and far. The drivers and the laborers are the ones who have to deal with the police checkpoints and the ire of the locals if any illegalities, such as in the formalin case, are detected.

Next are the distribution networks through the wholesale and local markets, including door-to-door delivery. In Goa, these wholesale and local markets, in addition to providing employment to local men and women, also once again employ a lot of poor migrant labor. Unregulated markets, along with cheaper imported fish means that local fish vendors inside the markets have to compete with those, generally migrant, vendors outside creating its own set of problems due to an export-oriented industry. We see hundreds of women in local markets and along the roads who sell fish throughout the day whether it rains or the scorching sun beat down on them. In every town and village there is an absence of proper market infrastructure. Add to this is the uncertainty of earning one’s daily wages when the government is unable to regulate illegalities in the industry, and when the big bosses of the industry are not committed to providing proper working conditions to those that service the fishing industry. This is similar to what happens in other profit-driven, high volume industries like real estate: the labor of the poor is appropriated while the laborer is dispensed with. Who will fix all of this and not just the poisoned fish that we are forced to consume?

What is happening with the formalin issue is not just a tragedy for those who are economically dependent on the fish industry, along with those who consume fish daily, but also an environmental disaster in the making. Much of the trawl and purse seine fishing, in addition to the destruction of marine ecology by the mining and tourism industry, is depleting the stocks of fish at alarming rates. This is the right time to integrate worker rights and environmental concerns with debates over our health so that future governmental policies and regulations will be drafted with an eye not only on people’s health and worker rights, but also to safeguard the environment.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 5 December, 2018)

THE REAL (ETHICAL) CHALLENGE

The high-levels of Formalin, a carcinogen, found in imported fish have caused anger, deep anguish, and frustration amongst Goans. This is because the authorities and the elected representatives have failed to convey the truth to the masses, besides checking the irregularities. Goa’s reliability on external sources for fish (in other contexts also for vegetables and grains) has spawned talk about self-sufficiency. Goa needs to produce its own food, this discourse urges. But it doesn’t say who will produce this food, and there is no talk about improving the existing labor conditions.

Take for instance the viral #agrichallenge. It all started when images of an environmental activist group cultivating paddy circulated on social media. Soon many politicians cashed in, including a sarpanch, MLA, and ministers, and started challenging each other to cultivate paddy. While challenging each other to cultivate fields may seem like a new phenomenon, it is not necessarily so. The Rachol Seminary pioneered such exercises. For eight consecutive years, the priests and seminarians have been joined by locals from surrounding villages in cultivating a patch of land.

Members of the Rachol Seminary engage in the cultivation of not only grain and vegetables for the year, but – according to them – to also live as a community. The vision of Rachol Seminary is something that resonates with many Goans who believe that authentic Goan life is found through agrarian cycles. Thus, going back to the rice fields not only preserves a Goan way of life – Goemkarponn – that is cherished, but also buffers us from the onslaught of modern, capitalistic development. It is a way to renew, what many believe, the lost bonds of old community life of mutual affection and peaceful existence. Tied to the issue of community living and Goemkarponn is also the issue of employment. Many would argue that high unemployment rate is caused because land is not cultivated and the young generation migrates elsewhere. It follows logically that such ‘going back to the fields’ exercise will urge the youth to take up farming, mostly by claiming that it is very profitable to do so. 

However, the solution does not seem to be so straightforward and there is no clear indication that harmonious community living is achievable through agrarian reforms. If one takes a long historical perspective regarding Goa’s problem of inadequate agrarian production, migration, and unemployment, it would seem that old events are being replayed for contemporary Goans. These combined issues had vexed Goan intellectuals who wrote in Portuguese, Marathi, and Concanim newspapers from the 1900s; many tiatrs were written during this time depicting the plight of the poor due to price hikes and adulteration of basic items like rice and other necessities. The reality is that, as in the past, there is an acute labor shortage in addition to the unregulated selling/distribution practices and poor quality of the products.

The crux of the problem is the treatment of those persons who provide this vital labor that produces and supplies the basic necessities. The person who does the hard labor, along with the labor or work itself, is disrespected. Generally, in Indian society, this person is forced to do hard labor, with very poor wages. Jobs such as cultivating and fishing/selling fish are viewed as the basest occupations, performed by the socially inferior; often the names of these jobs double up as insults in almost all South Asian languages. (I am not going to reproduce these insults here, but you know what I am talking about!)

So when politicians and well-meaning activists urge the youth today to take up farming and other such occupations, the big issue that they ignore is that these jobs are not considered as dignified labor. This is one reason why many would like to find employment in non-traditional occupations. Very often these are ill-paid jobs as well, and, even worse, they place one at the mercy and patronage of a contractor or a politician (sometimes one and the same) to find the space to work and sell the produce for a good price. For instance, the recent investigation in the manner in which certain individuals control the prices and distribution of fish in Goa, in tacit cahoots, or otherwise, with governmental and political authority, exposed how the laboring Goan was pushed out of getting a fair price for his hard labor. And it is not as if the ‘outsiders’ are the problem, because the lion’s share of the labor of the ‘outsider’ is also cornered by a few kingpins. In Goa, they too are the laboring others who need better work conditions.

So where does this leave us in terms of our great desire for self-sufficiency? The problem of unemployment and self-sufficiency will persist so long as the mass of people provide labor for a pittance from which a handful will get rich. It will persist so long as there are laws that do not protect those who work, but on the contrary sell off everything to the highest bidder. In other words, an unequal and hierarchical distribution of wealth will forever ensure that the laboring classes remain poor and the produce that the rest of us consume is of utterly inferior quality – sometimes even life-threatening. In such circumstances, one can understand why some seek greener and cleaner pastures. So if any demagogue tells you that he/she has a solution for these problems, it is safe to assume that it is empty propaganda. It is actually a slow killing propaganda, much like the formalin-laced fish.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt:  1 August, 2018)

MIGRATION, IDENTITY, AND LABOR JUSTICE

Like me, many would have read the report about shanties being erected close to the Goa airport with much concern. There is no doubt that the safety of travelers cannot be compromised in any way. The shanties and the people living in them (largely migrant labor who have no proper housing), being directly in the landing and take-off zone, posed a threat to the security of flights, the report highlighted. The birds attracted by garbage left behind could pose grave danger for those traveling to and from the Goa airport, the report further argued. Recognizing this, the governmental machinery swung into action: the shanties were cleared, the people were removed, and a local panchayat was directed to clear the garbage. While the shanties and the people in them were cleared away immediately, the news report indicated that due to some logistical difficulties the concerned panchayat body would clear the garbage only a day later.

It struck me that the incoming and outgoing flights were not exactly out of danger considering that bird-hits were one of the major causes of concern. The garbage left behind would still attract birds, with or without the people. After all, the overriding concern was held out to be not so much with the squatters, but the security and safety of the flights.

Does this incident, therefore, tell us something about the way Goan society operates? How it treats people who don’t own much else than their labor which they sell for a few hundred rupees? There is no doubt that Goa is facing unchecked and rampant migration from the neighboring states. The rich who acquire retirement villas and huge tracts of land here, the hordes of tourists landing every day, and the middle classes from the rest of India who are employed in white collar jobs in Goa also affect the local demography adversely. All these pressures create an anxiety within the minds of local Goans. However, it seems that the poor and marginalized migrants whose services we actually use and exploit are the ones who get targeted.

We can juxtapose the abovementioned incident with that of the Vanarmare tribals in Ponda last October, as one of the issue in the Vanarmare case was access to proper housing. If many had argued for a humanitarian approach in dealing with the plight of the Vanarmares, what stopped the same kind of treatment being meted out to others who don’t even have a proper roof over their heads? The problem lies, I argue, in the manner in which we identify marginalized sections. Whereas the Vanarmares were tribal people and few in numbers, the recent case of people who were driven out from their squatting area were identified as ‘migrant labor’, thus forming a part of a larger group of people whose growing numbers (in comparison) could pose a danger to the local Goan.

But this doesn’t change the fact that neither the government nor the civil society in Goa have not been able to develop a proper policy to deal with the mushrooming slum areas and their possible solutions. There is a larger issue of Goan society being unable to respond to the problem of basic amenities being equally available to all. We observe how large scale resorts which guzzle up Goa’s water and gobble up Goa’s land are given a red-carpet welcome; even by bulldozing and beating up the local people as in Tiracol some years back. But nobody seems be interested in thinking of such measures as welfare schemes for affordable housing that could have checked the problem of growing slums, and tighter labor laws that would make it difficult to exploit laborers.

If there is a large population of migrant labor then the direct cause of it is a certain developmental politics that requires a large amount of labor. This largely goes unchecked as the market for such labor is unregulated. There are very little rights that the laborers possess by way of proper housing, health benefits, and minimum wage. Not to talk about these issues while discussing the mushrooming slums or unchecked migration is to deepen the problem further. For instance, in the recent Dabolim case we simply don’t know where the migrant laborer families shifted to. Following the demolitions in Baina in 2004, the residents simply spread to different parts of Vasco and other parts of Goa. Even in the case of the Varnamares, they were given voting rights but nothing was said about proper housing facilities thereby indicating the absence of proper governmental policies.

From the perspective of social justice, one can observe that most of the ‘migrant labors’ have prior experience of marginalization due to various circumstances that necessitates migration in the first place. Many activists who have tried to help out such communities affected by ‘demolition drives’ highlight how poor people who are forced to live in slums are in fact victims of caste and gender violence and are considered dispensable in the event a development project is envisaged. 

The issue ultimately needs to be understood as one of justice and human dignity. Such issues cannot be thought solely from the perspective of identity (or the threat to Goan identity), or the fact that growth in slums stick out as an eyesore on the Goan landscape. There is an urgent need for a system of checks and balances which while recognizing the rights of laborers also arrests the exploitation of the same people, and addresses concerns of local people about basic amenities and threats to livelihood. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 1 March, 2017)