Hundreds of fishworkers from 10 coastal states -- Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Puducherry, Goa, Karnataka, and Odisha – marched to Parliament on Monday, flaying the Centre’s demonetisation move and in support of the global call against ‘ocean grabbing’ by big corporates.
The protesters said the Narendra Modi government’s demonetisation effort “that was launched under the pretext of curtailing black money” was hurting the fishing community across India, including many other formal and informal production sectors.
“Without scientifically assessed reasons and a detailed cost-benefit analysis, it is scary that the Central Government has gone ahead with such a scheme, jeopardising the lives of majority Indians, to catch a minority engaged in black money and illegal transactions”, the National Fishworkers Forum (NFF) said in a release.
Gathered in Jantar Mantar under the banner of NFF to mark the World Fisheries Day, the community also expressed concern over projects such as Sagarmala and industrial corridors along the Indian coastline that they feared would further ruin the livelohoods of the fishing community.
Leaders across political parties such as AK Antony (Congress), Bashishtha Narain Singh (Janata Dal-United) Sampath and PK Sreemathi (CPI-M) Annie Raja (CPI), and NK Premachandran (RSP) stood in solidarity and demanded that traditional fishworkers should have the right to own a dwelling space of their own.
NFF also called for a National Marine Fisheries policy to support indigenous traditional fishworkers, notification of traditional fishworkers as scheduled tribes, withdrawal of the Enayam commercial port and Sagarmala projects, a separate Fisheries Ministry, and ban on foreign fishing vessels in exclusive economic zones.