SUNS  4320 Tuesday 10 November 1998


DEVELOPMENT: COASTAL PEOPLE RESIST SHRIMP AQUACULTURE

New Delhi, Nov 6 (IPS/Dev Raj) -- Shrimps may tickle western palates but the insatiable demand has played havoc with the lives of fishermen and farmers living along the long coastline of peninsular India and neighbouring countries.

This week, hundreds of impoverished coastal people, gathered here for the International Conference Against Industrial Shrimp and Trade, vowed to resist shrimp aquaculture and reclaim common lands.

In a show of solidarity, representatives from several countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Thailand and Indonesia joined Indians in a rally in Delhi Thursday and for the deliberations which will continue till Saturday.

"We would rather die than allow big companies to take over our land," said Chittibabu, a farmer forced to stop growing paddy in southern Andhra Pradesh state's Nellore district after industrial aquaculture turned his lands brackish.

Chittibabu said his family has given up its proud, centuries-old tradition of cultivating paddy and are reduced to fishing for shrimp fry for the big companies. "Even my children wade through mud hunting for fry," he said.

The immediate target of the conference is impending legislation in Parliament seeking to get around a three-year-old interim order from the Supreme Court banning further progress of shrimp  aquaculture.

"We are up against the Sea Food Exporters Association (SFEA), a powerful cartel of tycoons backed by politicians and the sympathy and funds of the FAO and the World Bank," said P.K. Prabhakar, an activist for 'PREPARE', an NGO operating in Andhra Pradesh.

The SFEA is hosting in New Delhi this week the World Conference of Shrimp Industry and Trade which Prabhakar described as "brazen attempt to seek legitimacy and continue operations in India."

While SFEA has abbreviated its conference to 'Shrimp-98' the farmers and fishermen are calling their meet 'People-98.'

Going by the record of the SFEA, Prabhakar's accusation is not an idle one. It has badgered several state government into filing review petitions against the Supreme Court order.

The SFEA has also apparently used its money and influence to get amended the Coastal Zoning Regulations and introduce in Parliament the Aquaculture Authority Bill through the Agriculture Ministry bypassing environment regulations.

Prabhakar said the proposed authority has no transparency and no scope for representation by independent experts, social activists or NGOs. "Reports made by the Legislative House Committee and a Parliamentary Committee are being kept secret."

Eyeing India's vast brackish-water hinterland, and warm tropical climate, the industry entered this country six years ago and rapidly turned it, alongside Indonesia and Thailand, into a world leader.

Transnationals which jumped into the fray include Aquastar, the Thailand-based Charoen Pophand, Ralston Purina of the United States and the Japanese Mitsubishi many of them having interests in the growing shrimp feeds and chemicals sector.

In 1993, India exported 74,393 tonnes of shrimp worth $2.7 billion and an enthusiastic government, seeing its potential as a short-duration high unit value crop with a fast expanding world market.

Even the World Bank got into the act and found it profitable to fund a $22 million project in Andhra Pradesh state alone. Another $53 million were spread out in other maritime states.

The project, said Jacob Raj, the founder of PREPARE, was introduced with the promise that it would create employment opportunities for 2 million rural people living in brackish water areas extending over a million hectares and begin a "blue revolution."

"If Punjab state is the best example of the disruption of links between soil and society under the 'green revolution' then Andhra Pradesh is turning into its counterpart under the so-called blue revolution," he said.

As the scramble to set up aquafarms grew numerous issues cropped up such as the destruction of mangroves, conversion of agricultural lands, disease threats, people's rights and their knowledge and child labour. The promise of employment turned out to be an empty one.

In a pattern already familiar in Bangladesh it turned out that for every job created in agriculture, 10 agricultural labourers lost their jobs in Andhra Pradesh's Nellore and Prakasam districts.

Curiously government reports on aquafarms are vague on how fisherfolk are to find jobs on them except as guards or feeding staff and promise a shift in occupation at best and dislocation at worst.

Worse still was the destruction of drinking water sources which quickly turned brackish through seepage from aquafarms and the lowering of the water table. "Every shrimp exported takes with it an aquifer," says ecology and food expert Vandana Shiva.

In Nellore district, overcrowded aquafarms contaminated the environment with pesticides, chemicals, excess shrimp feed and antibiotics turning ponds into breeding grounds for new diseases for people and animals.

Soon it also became clear that prawn farming on the east coast was not a viable proposition because it had to be supported by mechanised pumps to ensure exchange of water in the absence of tidal differences.

When entire villages of fisherfolk such as Kurru in Nellore district were asked by administrators, working hand-in-glove with the aqua corporations, to leave their craft and translocate to the towns, fights erupted.

Police acting on behalf of the industrialists swung and used anti-terrorist laws to detain farmers and activists and let loose a reign of terror on the coast of Andhra Pradesh, Prabhakar said.

What rescued the villagers was a report by the government's National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) which resisted attempts by the aquaculture industry to influence it and presented a damning enough report for the Supreme Court to act on.

A slump in the international prices of shrimp may have also helped, says Daisy Dharmaraj analyst for PREPARE. "Cheap shrimp means increased consumption which creates economic pressure for expansion in a vicious cycle which need not increase profits."

Over the last decade, shrimp consumption in Japan, North America and Western Europe has increased by 300% but prices have dropped from $14 a pound to about $8 and many exporters are beginning to lose the will to fight on, she said.

That is bad news for the government which has invested nearly $250 billion on promoting shrimp aquaculture in spite of warnings from environmentalists, market analysts, NGOs like PREPARE and the Supreme Court.

"The issue of shrimp production is linked with the issue of western consumption and the insatiable need to maximise corporate profits both of which care little for the depleting biological resources of
developing countries," Dharmaraj said.

"We don't want to deprive Europeans, Americans and Japanese of shrimps but we would like to know the moral basis of a system which deprives farmers of their livelihoods," she said.