Sea Weeds in the Gulf of Mannar

An understanding of ecology and its inter-related existing livelihood practices of the community is essential for conservation as well as livelihood promotion. However, our present ideas of conservation are bereft of the community and our ideas of livelihood are bereft of the local ecology.

Just as the physical ecosystem of the coast is immensely complex, the livelihood activities of the coastal communities are also very diverse. Apart from the plethora of fishing related livelihood activities, seaweeds are another coastal resource that have been part of the livelihood spectrum of the coastal communities. This has been thriving in this region for the last 40 years at least, ever since a viable market opened in India for Agar extracted from sea weeds. This is heavily used as raw material in the food processing and healthcare industries. Seaweed collection is by diving underwater, without any oxygen support and picking them by hand. 

In the Gulf of Mannar region near Rameswaram, natural seaweed collection of the species Sargassum is done especially by women as a livelihood activity. Men are involved in the fishing works, most of them as labourers on trawl boats, but a minority have their own small country boats. An average trawler labour can earn about Rs.10,000 per month. In this context, women earning an additional amount is invaluable for the household. However, this would only be secondary. Unlike the fishing activity, this sea weed collection is an entirely female controlled activity – from collection, to processing and sales. The money is more in the control of the woman. The seaweed collectors are a group of women sea-divers. Let it sink in again. Sea weeds play an important role in their lives.

Flawed conservation:

In 1986, the Gulf of Mannar was declared a Biosphere Reserve in view of the unique coral ecosystem. But from 2002 onwards, restrictions became strictly enforced and fishers were denied access to the corals and the 23 sea-islands. The concern of the Forest Department was that these activities were a threat to the fragile coral ecosystem. That’s when the community started feeling the heat of the forest department’s harassment, in a bid to clear them from fishing and seaweed collection. There would be physical beatings and threats against men and women alike. Their fish laid out for drying would be thrown away, nets would be confiscated or torn, several worse crimes I choose not mention as well. The actions of the department deserve strict action, focussing on human rights violations.

In a bid to de-escalate the situation and seek a permanent solution, the fishing unions came together with some NGOs and had joint meeting with the Forest Dept and the district administration. The women collectors agreed to scale down operations from 25 days to 12 days a month. The women also agreed to ban the usage of metal scrapers to collect seaweed, and instead only handpick them, like picking tea leaves. The women also decided to clean, dry and sort it manually so that the quality of the product improves. In return, the district administrators helped by negotiating with traders to give higher prices per kilo. 

Figure 1: Collected Sargassum laid out for drying

The women unions enforced these regulations quite forcefully among them. A few villages went even further. They enforced rules of what time of the day to collect seaweeds. They were to collect seaweed only during low tide timing. This was to allow fishes to feed on the weeds during high tide. These timings would keep changing by 30 minutes daily, in keeping with the moonrise times. Some women have prepared tables displaying timings when they could leave each day of the month. They also rejected the Forest Department’s core assertion that collection destroys corals, as sargassum grows in dead coral areas, and not in live corals. The women avoid the live corals. These women say that with these newer regulations in place, they have witnessed marginally higher returns. This despite collecting for 12 days instead of 25 per month, and the number of women increasing to 3 times. Basically, these rules of sustainable commons management are so intricate, displaying a very high degree of understanding of the resource ecology.

But the forest dept doesn’t recognise these extra steps the women are taking, it doesn’t understand these nuances of the resource. Instead, the dept has continued its harassments. They don’t seem to accept that weeds are collected from dead corals and not live corals. The rights of these women to collect seaweed are yet to be sanctioned. 

Flawed livelihood programmes:

In a bid to wean them away from sea weed collection, the govt promoted Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Trust as well as several NGOs in coordination with Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Mandapam came up with sea weed cultivation as an alternate livelihood. They introduced an ‘improved’ species of sea weed from the Philippines called Kappaphycus alvarezii, known for its fast growth and maturation in under 45 days. Many women groups were given extensive training on cultivation techniques. The technique used bamboo rods, attached in circular fashion. Strings were attached end to end all throughout the circle. This was called a raft. Tiny grafts of the seaweed were placed at regular intervals along these strings. This raft, would be covered on the bottom side with fishing net and placed in sea water. The net prevented fish from eating off the growing sea weeds. Heavy rocks were attached to these to act as anchors for these rafts.  25 gms of grafts would yield 20 kgs of sea weed in 45 days. A part of the harvest would be kept as the input for the next cycle. These became like seeds for a farmer.

But as experienced in several other govt promoted projects, the uptake wasn’t by these women, but by others who weren’t as involved in the seaweed collection trade. 

Figure 2 : Bamboo rafts, before tying strings in the middle

This gave good rewards for 3-4 years. Several women made quite a good amount in these years. There were quite a few who said, “this weed sent my daughter to college!”. One can imagine the number of NGO-sponsored Case Studies and Impact Assessments such stories of “Women Empowerment” would’ve given rise to.

However, after that initial success, harvests began to plummet. So much so that in less than 2-3 years, yields almost stopped. For the last 6 years, none of the women here have been cultivating this sea weed. The entire cultivating activity has come to complete halt. These empty bamboo rafts had been kept aside for a while now. What could possibly explain such a decline?

Theory 1: 

Some of the former women cultivators said that the decline wasn’t just for this species but also for the sargassum also. The waters are getting warmer, and even the composition of the water is changing. One mention of water temperature rise, and our minds immediately ponder about Global Warming. If this were true, this activity can never be revived here. And this would also mean a gradual end to the sargassum collection as well. However, that’s not what is experienced by the seaweed collectors.

Theory 2:  

A few others opined that the seeds had become old. This logic appealed to me. Good farmers replace seeds every 3-4 years, regardless of the variety – native or HYV. It’s considered good practice to use the same variety seeds, but from a different soil every 3-4 years. This theory was the marine analog of the same agrarian logic. If this were true, then if CMFRI were to get new grafts from their labs of the same variety, it would start working again. But the need for getting new ones every few years would be there.

Theory 3:  

The sea weed cultivation was done on bamboo rafts as shown in the pic. Each woman would use about 4-5 rafts. And there would around 20-25 women who were involved in each group. Hence, one would have about 100-125 rafts almost permanently stationed in one enclosed shallow section of the gulf. The seaweed would grow well spread out, with each plant occupying a fairly large volume. Women would insert next round of grafts onto the raft periodically. Meaning that their timings would so synchronised that there would always be some harvest ready raft, and some rafts ready for next round of planting. Thus, this shallow section of the gulf would always be clogged. The natural movement of the nutrients from sea in this section was affected, along with the water flow. The sand accumulated below would not get fully flushed out by the sea waves, due to this clogging. So, essentially 3-4 years of intensive cultivation had drained this section of its nutrients necessary for sea weeds. It could also be that this variety of kappaphycus was too nutrient intensive, like a marine-analog of HYVs, which require dosage of chemical fertilisers.   

This was the most appealing theory for me, as it was very detailed and nuanced in its understanding of the marine ecology. This was propounded, not by a woman who did Kappaphycus cultivation, but by one involved in natural sargassum collection. This just goes to show the extent of understanding that these women have. If this was indeed true, then we could wait for a certain period of time for that section of the gulf to regain its natural depth, for the sea to replenish the nutrients and we can resume cultivation.

I should also caution that I have written this from interacting with people from a very limited section of the gulf. In other areas, there are reports that this kappaphycus has become an invasive species and multiplying rapidly, to the detriment of native sargassum species. However, these weren’t witnessed in the section of the Gulf that I visited.

Whichever may be the correct explanation, it remains that introducing new species to an ecosystem must be done with great care and proper attention to detail. This risk is further increased, when we want to make people’s livelihoods dependant on these species. It was the foresight of the women sea weed collectors not to get into cultivation. How do we expect people to give up what they have been doing reasonably well to take-up something new, and fraught with unknown risks?

We need to gain an integrated understanding of an ecology and people’s livelihoods. It’s part of the same whole, and not two separable entities.

Two approaches to resource problems

The world is beset with resource based problems. Modern market-based development has been an extremely resource-intensive process. It could be argued that the extreme resource intensive development process of the west, has resulted in both the extreme plunder of third world peoples, called colonialism, and the plunder of natural resource, leading to several disasters, including what’s now called climate change. A lot of the world’s poor rely on forms of livelihood that are directly dependant on natural resources such as soil, water, marine fisheries, forests, etc. With modern development, it is always these communities that lose out first. These communities have the largest stake, have the most to lose as these resources come under more stress. There is no doubt that its high time we change our resource usage systems, our resource management systems, to meet the needs of equity and sustainability, ie, changes are needed in our livelihood practices. 

There are two streams of thought here. Lets call them the livelihoods perspective, and the political perspective.

The former says that resource problems can be solved by bringing about changes in livelihood practices, like say, chemical farming to organic farming, water-intensive crops to less-water crops, changes in irrigation methods, bottom trawling to traditional fishing nets, etc. But in order to bring about this change in practices, there needs to be an enabling ecosystem, a support structure, a market ecosystem that enables people to adopt these new practices. Just like how with Green Revolution, one had changes in rural banking, core sector focus, seeds, fertilizers, changes in agri-input service delivery, agri-extension services, govt-mandated crop purchases, and a whole host of services in the core GR regions. Such a basket of end-to-end services were needed to bring about a switch from traditional farming to GR chemical farming. So lets make things clear, GR was not a single variable, technological intervention alone… it was an end-to-end basket of interventions.

Similarly, for sustainable farming, a lot of NGOs operate on this approach with a number of support interventions like Watershed development for water augmentation, SHGs for credit support, farmer groups and lead farmers for extension services, producer companies for organic input and marketing support, etc. The push for Participatory Guarantee, along with third party Organic Certification and the water focussed NREGA works for instance, are some of the ideas that have arisen from this approach. In a nutshell, this approach says that people need to be guided through various incentives and steered towards sustainability. The support ecosystem itself would be a regulator that ensures bad practices aren’t done. “Incentivise, enable” is the buzzword.

The criticism of this approach is that the process of change it advocates is also rooted within the same market paradigm that caused the initial problem in the first place. The process that this puts forward is at best a stop gap, till the next problem. It doesn’t change any of the fundamentals.  

  

The other approach is the political one – one that lays stress on public pressure. If a certain practice is seen as harmful, this approach would not want to incentivise and enable the practitioner to change, but mobilise the community and ensure public pressure is used to stop such harmful practices. Let’s take an example, say the anti-liquor movement in many states. The movement doesn’t need to propose any alternative, it seeks a pure and simple ban on liquor shops. And its success has come from the public support it has garnered. The TN govt has definitely closed down so many shops. There is now a social pressure against liquor sale. Another example would be Chipko movement, that used public pressure to curb state-supported deforestation in the hills. India’s history has shown that the state alone being the regulator against specific practices has rarely worked. Non-state, community-driven, informal regulations work much better in many instances we have witnessed. The amount of public support enjoyed would dictate the effectiveness of regulation. These work through public will. And this is generated through politics – the art of persuasion, and gathering support towards a certain cause. In fact, this approach is impossible without mobilisation and agitational politics. “Mobilise, Regulate, Ban” are the buzzwords here.

Especially when it comes to resource management of finite yet essential resources like water – which we can broadly call ‘commons’, some sort of regulations on usage practices are a must.

But changes using people’s power have seldom ever lasted goes the pessimistic argument. Well, that’s because of the disproportionate power the state has, in our largely undemocratic and crony-capitalistic state. Crony-corporates control and exercise so much more power over the legislative, executive and judicial branches than the people as such. In a more democratic polity, mobilisation and public pressure once generated, would bring about sufficient change in state policy and implementation. But, in our democracy, powers that be always find a way back. But sustained people’s power is the only way to mend this! This approach does challenge the present status quo.  

A criticism of this is that it is clear on what is to be opposed, but does not point to a solution, or a realistic way forward. It builds public pressure, but without a constructive way forward, it falls flat when faced with other realities

Two real life instances where these 2 approaches play out are

   1. Water depletion:

A livelihood approach would be to incentivise less water-crops, water-effective agricultural practices, getting necessary support structures on the ground that farmers can use, and make appropriate policy changes in markets supporting water-efficient technologies in industry, etc.

A political approach would be raising a campaign against borewells (predicted by a few in Maharashtra), tankers of the water-mafia, or stop diverting dam water so someplace, or the more popular campaign against water sucking industries like in Plachimada and various others.   

   2. Marine fisheries depletion:

The understanding is that trawling and ring-siene nets in the near shore seas has deeply impacted fish stock in the seas, making fishing less and less viable. The livelihood approach would make one imagine alternatives to trawling to gradually weed out trawlers. Many problematic schemes are also launched by the govt like deep-sea fishing, tuna longliners, etc to encourage and enable people to adopt such alternatives.
A political approach would be to actually press for the ban on trawling and ring-siene, like what has happened in Sri Lanka. TN in its 1983 marine fisheries act, actually laid down several rules and regulations against trawling, including ban on trawling within 3 miles. But as said, the state has been unwilling to implement such bans properly.  

In a nutshell, the livelihoods approach could be said to emphasize ‘the carrot’ and the political approach emphasizes ‘the stick’. However, one must add that just like any other classification, we must refrain from seeing these as polarities. In the real world, all interventions will have combinations from both, but just that the proportions would be different. In a society that views agitations as unrealistic and without a grip on the livelihood realities of the communities, and NGOs and policy thinktanks as not being political enough – it is essential to understand the importance of the two approaches and not refrain from adopting both, as the situation demands.   

Would Cattle Make Sense Anymore?

Sharing an overview I wrote of the recent notification regarding Animal Markets, popularly known as Cattle Slaughter Ban, and what it could mean for small farmers, pastorialists and other cattle rearers.

You can read it more comfortably at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B71R_DY8_oV6NTJWMWJDcnFJeFU/view?usp=sharing

The classical and the folk

Classifying the arts as classical and folk has been an idea that’s long been embedded our mainstream thinking. Classical has always been the art forms such as Carnatic, Hindustani,etc. Forms that have been viewed as higher art, as catering to a higher sense of aesthetics. These are enjoyed by specific castes and communities in India, who've been traditionally powerful. Whereas folk music is seen as the contra. This classification is intriguing.

I used to disagree with the mainstream definitions of classical. I thought they were too narrow and ridden with casteist and hierarchical mindsets. I formulated my own definition of classical as being music with feeling. For instance, mainstream pop music I wouldn't have considered classical. As I see no bhaavam in it. It is not music that lingers, makes you think, titillates your hearts. It doesn't go deep. Our enjoyment of it is mostly aesthetical. However, even metal music when performed with Bhaavam, in its music, lyrics, tone, raagam, etc would be considered classical in my definition. Some rock and metal connoisseurs would approve of the feeling that’s evoked by specific songs when performed by specific performers. I truly believe music with bhaavam of any kind is a higher art. The experience of that art will always be emotional. It is this bhaavam component that makes for certain music a truly enriching experience. Such music always is spiritual…regardless of what our spirituality is.

But does that mean Folk doesn't have the Bhaavam??

This last question proved my definition as wrong. Ultimately, I've now settled for a more social based definition.

All arts are pursuits of people in their spare time, whatever little they have of it. It is when we are pure - free from the clutches of materialistic concerns. The Bhaavam is embedded in the passion of the performer, and the passion of the receiver.

'Classical' arts had passionite performers. But it also had enormous patronage - from courts, rich merchants, temples, etc. There was a market for it, an ecosystem of livelihood. People could become full time performers. Hence, their continued patronage depended on how well they're able to perform.  If lyrics and Bhaavam and the Mehfil is what patrons wanted… that’s what the performers focussed on… they lyrics, their intonations, their deviations, all carefully practiced and crafted to evoke certain feelings, and provide an experience for the patron. It was a committed effort. This effort manifested itself into the disciplined, a set of rules… all of which evolved over years of practice, innovation and adaptation. The art evolved through such a process.

Folk arts have been performed by certain people in different communities - agrarian, forest, coastal, etc when they had free time. Performers were hardly full time. They were always part-time.  This kind of patronage ecosystem never existed. Even if it did, it would've been part time patronage of a very localised, village level. Those incentives for the practitioners to keep refining and developing their art weren't there. The kind of focussed effort to cultivate their art were never necessary from a market angle. One dare says, folk arts have existed only due to the pure passion of its performers, as there was a lack of market patronage ecosystem.

The bhaavam of folk music… I'm yet to discover, but when I do… I feel that it shall be a slightly different one. One that’s travelled a different path.

I also look forward to discovering folk music histories. If any reader has any interesting links or stories on folk histories, I would be thankful if they could paste it in the comments. Just so that I can discover their trajectories of how they’ve evolved over the years. So that once again, I can change my thinking of the arts :)

The Old Tree

There was this old big tree. It stood by for a long time. No one really knew who planted it, no one knew who nourished and  grew it. But the people around it did water it from time to time. A few came to pluck its fruits, a few came to enjoy its shade, a few needed a place to pee. But to most, the tree was just there… it was a reality of that place, It was the landmark of that place. But there was something wrong.

It was a sick tree. Its roots were deep, dry and rotting.

Some said , its rotten to the core. Burn down the whole thing… it isn't worth saving… we don’t need a tree. The fruits numb you. We should learn to live without it.

Some said, uproot and throw it away. Rotten roots give poisonous fruit, the shade will whiter away. Let's get rid of this, and plant a new tree. A good tree, with sweet fruit. It will take time; but it shall be worth it. It'll be better than this rotten tree.

Some said, the fruit is already sweet, the shade is cool and large. Let us fix the rotting roots with care. It shall take even longer, but it shall provide shade throughout, the effort shall be worth it.   

And some said, there's hardly anything wrong with it. A few blemishes on stem, leaves or the fruit perhaps… nothing a few sprays can't fix, nothing major. It's mostly fine.

They keep talking about it. Each one does their own thing.

The tree also does its thing.

The tree keeps changing.

A wedding, and after

She stayed with her uncle and aunt. Her parents were long dead. And she wasn't 16 yet. Her uncle and aunt did raise her up for a few years, but were also seeking for a suitable house to marry her into. They probably didn't want to keep supporting her for much longer.

Soon came a proposal from a nearby village. It was a similarly poor family, with just sufficient land to produce a little surplus. The horrible monsoon had badly affected all families in the region. They had a 17 yr old healthy son, who had to now offer his labours elsewhere to pay their debts, in the absence of a good harvest. The mother was a gem of a woman. She was hard working, straightforward, confident, and overall, known for her progressive values. She had managed to tame her alcoholic husband out of the habit, made important decisions for her family, became a leader of the local SHGs and encouraged others to get out of the debt trap. All this, and she wasn't loud. In short, she spoke little, spoke with amazing clarity and firmness whenever she did. She was respected.

But the last few seasons weren't great for her too. Some medical bills, crop failures and family emergencies all made her household slightly precarious. She was also getting old, and couldn't maintain the entire farm on her own. She thought its high she had some extra hands to help out. There weren't too many others at home too, it wasn't a large and unmanagable family for anyone new, she thought.

So she approached this family she had heard of. She met the girl, her uncle and aunt, and seemed to like them. They too agreed.

They soon got engaged. Our mother here thought it would be a reasonable idea if she  moved over to her new place for a few days. After all, Rakshabandhan was approaching , the girl anyway had to get back to her uncle's place for the festival. The mother felt a few days of familiarising before the wedding would be good. Everyone agreed, and the girl moved.

Soon it was Rakhi time, the girl got back to her uncle's. a few days later, the young couple got married too. As per custom, the groom's side paid a bridal price of Rs.30,000.

They decided the girl could stay for a few more days with her folks. And reach her new home later. The mother said, "you may not have parents, but you now have a home".

As in any place, this uncle did have his share of rivals in his village. The next few days presented an opportunity for them to mouth their opinions to the girl.

The day to leave had come, the girl was all ready. She boarded the bus and finally she left her village once and for all.

The bus halted for a bit at a town midway. The girl got down, boarded another bus, met a few of her villagers, went over to the police station, and lodged a complaint that she was a victim of child marriage, and the wedding to be annulled. And thats that...   

The night of cleansing

I stay with a very generous and sweet family in this village. The couple are from a nearby village, but have been staying here for long. The house we stay in has a soakpit for sewage waste emanating from the washrooms. The house also doubles up as a makeshift office for my organization, hence always has a steady stream of visitors from nearby villages. Since its one of the few houses in the village to actually have toilets, you do have a few people who use the toilets placed just outside our rooms. So, compared to its traffic, the soakpit is comparatively small, and fills up pretty soon.

We periodically pump it out with a motor to our small backyard farm. Even though it is partially decomposed human excreta, it still counts as liquid manure, albeit not a great one. 2 nights back, we had started the motor pump for the same purpose, but it was taking much longer than usual. It was 11 pm and my host and I decided to go to sleep, and wake up at 4am to check and switch off the motor. I slept well. Not a single dream, nothing to remember about the sleep, just blankness, the hallmark of a sound sleep.

I then heard this soft voice calling out, I awoke to find my host  guy calling me out. It was 3 am, and I told him the pumping wouldn’t be done yet. He called me out, smiled and showed me the soakpit. Sometime while we were asleep, the pipe got clogged, and the pressure loosened the pipe. The result was glaring in front of us, the pumped sewage waste, spread out on our's and our neighbour's front porch. Many days of partially decomposed toilet sewage just out there… the sight was plain and simply awful.

The village was all asleep, it was still and silent. We were lucky.

We thought... If we wait till morning, the entire village would get to know of this - not a pretty sight. The sight of everyone watching while we clean up was also not to be avoided; for all we know, some might begin to boycott us.  Also, the neighbor whose porch was filled, wasn't the best of friends and was a source of constant complaints over small issues. Compared to the minor issues we have argued profusely on, this was ‘End of Days’.  But personally, my biggest concern was that the neighbour’s place was also the venue for the village’s mini-Anganwadi, with many tiny tots expected the next day. This is the last place to leave in an unhygienic manner.

It was clear what we had to do. My host and I stared at each other, laughed a while. The heavens opened then and it started drizzling too… we were going to be cleaning shit in the rains :P

We assembled a bucket and a mug each, collected the dark viscous liquid waste on the floor by hand, filled the buckets and emptied in on our backyard farm. We had to race against time, we had to finish this entire operation before 4:30, when folks start waking up. Getting caught in such an activity, was not a position we wanted to find ourselves in. It was dark, and we had a tough time handling the torch while operating. It also meant there was no photo opportunities :P

Once we were mostly done, we decided to water down the remaining bits, and wiped them far away. We then prayed for intense rains so as to remove all traces of the night’s work. And as luck would have, it started raining hard. Standing there with all filth on us, with the rains pouring on us, one could so easily visualize an epic scene from a film climax.  

To take a bath at 4:30 after cleaning so much shit with our bare hands, was a truly satisfying experience. I shall remember this bath for a long long time to come.