lmost every inch of sand is covered with litter, washed ashore. The narrow strip is lined with traditional canoes, which the fisherfolk take out to sea every morning. Litter is strewn about. A couple of pigs stroll around.
“We used to haul ten trucks worth of fish,” says Jose Rodrigues. The 75 year-old calls himself the original pescador (Portuguese for fisherman). He has been a traditional fisherman for the last 65 years, goes fishing every morning, and has been doing so since the age of 10. “There used to be bountiful fish,” he says, and then laments, “It has now reduced to a mere ten baskets of fish.”
Kharewada is a small fisherman’s ward of Vasco de Gama town in Mormugao, lying between, a hillock and the bay. The village has been a fisherman’s space for the last several hundred years. What used to be, according to the locals in the area, a big, clean, sandy beach has been reduced to a few metres wide beach stretch entirely covered with boats and dirt. A space that used to be the go-to beach after a long day’s work for bathing and enjoying the sea and the sunset, is now a place no one goes to for recreational purposes.
“There was only traditional fisherfolk back when I was young,” says Jose Philip D’Souza, a local politician.
“We are traditional fisherman. Earlier there was no mechanised fishing. We had to put the net out and pull it. We used to come to help our daddy. My elder brothers used to be with the father all the time. Our minister at the time came and told my father to go for the small trawler. Because of Bandodkar we shifted from traditional to mechanised fishing,” he says.
Mechanised fishing was introduced in India after the Indo-Norwegian project came into force in 1952. It was an attempt to increase the production of fish from 1 million tonnes to 4 million tonnes to satiate the growing need of the world markets.
Mechanised fishing was introduced in Goa after Liberation. Before liberation, the Portuguese did not interfere much with the coastal maritime communities. According to a May 2004 article in Economic Political and Weekly, called “Ramponkars in Goa” ‘they defended their seaborne possessions, guarded their trade and commerce from local rivals and facilitated their inland trade. Moreover, Portuguese officials and others relished fish and ensured that they received a regular supply.’
According to the same article, in 1961, there were four trawlers and 4,125 traditional fishing boats in the whole of Goa. Dayanand Banddodkar as chief minister of the then Union Territory introduced mechanised fishing vessels in a big way. By 1975, this number increased to 500 mechanised vessels and by 1980 to 1,128 vessels.
Today, at the Kharewada jetty alone there are at least 200 trawlers cramped together in a small space at a given time.
“There was no jetty here earlier. This was all one big sandy beach,” reminisces Jose D’souza. “We used to sleep in the sand on the beach. Remove the sand from the top and put a bedsheet and sleep. No problem no pollution.”
The jetty, according to the locals, came about in 1978, and was a temporary one with metal plates built for five-six trawlers at the time. It remains a small jetty, whereas the number of trawlers has increased several times over.
“Our jetty is extremely small,” says Jerry D’Souza, a trawler from Kharewada. “Our biggest problem with it is maintenance of boats. There is no space to park and the boats get damaged quickly. It is a huge cost for us,” he says.
The locals mostly blame the Mormugao Port Trust for taking over their space, and making continuous demands to shift their area of operation and residence.
“They claim this whole land is theirs. Where is the documentation?” asks Saluzinho Vas, another local of Kharewada.
“I used to live here when I was small. It was quite open. We could see only canoes and would answer nature’s call on the beach itself. We used to go behind the nets. Used to put fish for salting instead of on ice. Since then they (MPT) have pushed us further and further away. They are not allowing us to repair the jetty. They say that we are encroachers. They want more space for their expansion. The canoe fellows need the beach for the parking. Now they are changing things. We don’t have the exact plan,” he says.
Kharewada, like every other fishing village in the country, has a set of traditional fisherfolk that live near the area with its remnants of the beach, and the trawlers owners that occupy the area near the jetty.
Mormugao Port Trust, according to reports, has proposed the creation of a finger pie jetty that plans to divide the village into halves. One half is declared for the fisherfolk, and on the other half, they want to place the POL berth and develop it further for their purposes. The fisherfolk are opposing this. A public hearing was to take place, but has been cancelled on grounds of an improper Environment Impact Assessment.
Custodio D’Souza, a local and native of Kharewada and a traditional fisherman says, “We have been living here for many generations. We are the original guardians of the coast. We want to retain our livelihoods. We oppose their development plan, the way we opposed the mindless capital dredging.”
Capital dredging is a method of scooping out the sea bed to make space for bigger vessels. Over time, it destroys the sea bed and many organisms in the water and locals also say that it is responsible for destroying the beach.
The new date for the public hearing is not out yet. But come what may, the fisherfolk are prepared to protect their coast.
