SEPPADU : Indigenous Fisheries Commons In Nagapattinam Region

Marine fisheries, much like all direct uses of natural resources has its own systems of tenure rights, resource governance systems, in order to manage the resource in accordance with the values of the resource using communities it serves. In slightly more egalitarian societies, the rules and institutions governing the resource would be fairly equitable, and in others, not so much. For instance, in a totally caste based agrarian setup, the best lands and water drawing rights would be of the dominant castes and as we move down the hierarchy, the lowest castes would have practically no rights over these resources.

Seppadu:
Among fishers in Nagapattinam district, there existed the system of ‘Seppadu’, which was an indigenous resource allocation and governance system. A Seppadu is a fish aggregating device made from various reeds and leaves attached to a central casurina trunk (Soukku in Tamil). This apparatus would be placed out at a specific spot in the sea and anchored with a heavy stone at the seabed. This would act as a source of nutrition, with the nutrients oozing out of the vegetation slowly into the waters. This would attract phyto-plankton and zoo-planktons, which in turn would attract tiny anchovies, and slowly in time, attract species higher up the trophic levels. Such an apparatus would last for up to 6-8 months, after which it would be repeated next season.

Seppadu Rights:
This whole process of preparing the Seppadu, and laying it on a specific spot in the sea would be done by families who invested finance and labour in that Seppadu. In return, boats associated with those families would be allowed to fish in and around that Seppadu. Fishers here traditionally used various types of bag-nets, including one called idai valai, whose operation could be seen as some sort of a precursor to today’s ring siene nets.   

In this way, each Seppadu would be shared by a group of families, and in turn a village would have any number of Seppadus. Thus, the whole village would have fishing rights over the areas spanned by all the Seppadus belonging to that village. This was a kind of spatial zonation of the marine space to distribute and allocate the common fisheries resource. Fishers from one Seppadu would not be allowed near other Seppadus. Fishers from one village would not be allowed in Seppadus belonging to other villages. Thus the entire stretch of near coastal waters in the Nagapttinam-Karaikal region was divided into Seppadus.

Significance of the term:
Each Seppadu would also be named after the families who have fishing rights around that Seppadu. Thus, the term Seppadu would not only mean the actual fish aggregating device, but also a term for fishing grounds, or locations on the sea. To an outsider, all the sea looks the same, but traditional fishers have cultivated a marine sense of location and direction that is a little difficult to appreciate by completely terrestrial communities, who are much more comfortable with sense of direction, routes and location on land. Thus, fishers could be out at sea, and would identify locations on the sea by referring to different Seppadus as landmarks. Even in Pulicat, the term Padu is used in this spatial sense, to refer to specific fertile fishing grounds on the lake. In due course, the term Padu has also come to mean a rich haul of fish, caught from these fishing grounds. The various changing uses and origins of these terms is in itself an interesting question worth pondering by those interested in cultural heritage and linguistics. From a resource governance perspective, this shows how intimately connected fishing rights, access to fishing grounds and actual fish catch are.   

Institutions:
Obviously, for such a system to be operational, it would need dispute resolution mechanisms. Any dispute between boats in the same Seppadu would be resolved within those families. Any dispute within Seppadus of the same village would be resolved by the local village panchayat – which is the traditional panchayat of the Pattinavar fishing caste, and not the Panchayati Raj Institution introduced by the state as part of local self-government. For all disputes between villages, you had the regional head village of Nambiyar Nagar (called Nuzhaipadi in medieval Tamil texts) which was vested with powers of adjudicating inter-village disputes. It was meant to consult all the village heads and take decisions on behalf of the collective Nagapatinam-Karaikal region.

Origins:
Oral history is that Nambiyar Nagar is named after a prominent figure, Nambirajan from this village, who won the favour of Sarfoji Raja of the Tanjavur Maratha dynasty when they ruled the delta areas in late 18^th centuries. It is said that Serfoji Raja made Nambirajan as the representative of all fishers in his court, and thus all marriages, big events, disputes were brought to his village for settling. However, it is also believed that the traditional head village status is much older than this, and that Nambirajan was just a prominent figure in the lineage. The powers of the head village were also etched in religious, social and political affairs. Thus, this is to show that resource governance systems formed the base for the entire organisation and cultural-material life of the Pattinavar community here.

Technology and Decline:
However, this Seppadu system no longer functions, and the head village tradition too is under strain. From the 1970s onwards, the long floating nylon gillnets first made their entry to this region, by a few fishers in Akkaraipettai, another fishing village close to Nambiyar Nagar. These became a commercial success as it was durable and got good catch. However, it would frequently float along with the currents and get entangled and damage the Seppadu apparatus out at sea. This was a cause of increasing conflict between the Seppadu holders and the new gillnetters of Akkaraipettai. Old fishers even say that Akkaraipettai fishers were unruly, and unresponsive to decisions of Nambiyar Nagar even then!

Also while this tension was simmering, trawlers also began to proliferate. The success and proliferation of the trawlers in this region was down to 2 causes – new prawn traders who came from Kerala, and also the jugaad innovation of using second hand 110 HP Leyland bus engines to power their trawlers, which suited these high current waters of Nagapattinam. With the coming of trawlers, many Seppadu apparatus got entangled and destroyed by the fast trawl nets. The combination of new gillnets and trawlers thus put an end to the Seppadu system. Thus bringing to end an indigenous system of commons resource management.    

However, the institutions of the fishing panchayat and head village however havent yet fully died, though under stress. The tensions and politics of these institutions at present, is a story that deserves another post soon !!