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By Root 723 0

in small canoes. On the other, Coromandel, coast even in the 1970s fishers used catamarans, and masula boats, the latter being sewn-plank craft with no floor or frame ribbing, and using no sail. The catamarans were merely several logs lashed together, yet they ventured out up to 15 miles to fish. As we have pointed out previously, the high surf on this coast was a constant menace when these boats came back to shore. A detailed study of one village in Tamilnadu in the mid 1970s found all the inhabitants were dependent on fishing, and all were from one low caste. The main boats they used were simple log rafts which came from Kerala. Each night the logs were separated and dried, and next day tied together again. These people also engaged in beachseining, when a boat took a large net out and then it was dragged in from the shore, hopefully with a catch inside. This method is clearly very 'low tech', and the returns erratic and unpredictable. The nets, which were large and expensive, could not be used when they were wet, so the fishers needed nine of them for each day's fishing.52

The overall changes which occurred in Indian fishing were analogous to the Green Revolution in third world agriculture. In the 1970s India's potential catch was 4.5 million tons a year, and only 1.5 million was actually being achieved. Part of the problem was low domestic demand; the average Indian ate 3 kg a year, the average Japanese 40 kg. The government, often in alliance with western aid donors, promoted the use of trawlers, hoping to increase exports. But increased exports have led to decreased availability, and higher prices, in India. Most of the trawlers are foreign made and owned, most of the profits leave India, even the labour on the deep sea trawlers is not Indian. On locally owned craft owners sometimes prefer using crew from groups with no background in fishing, they being cheaper and more malleable than traditional fishers.53 Theorists who write about third world 'dependency' would find all this very familiar.

In Kerala major changes began in the 1950s, helped by foreign assistance. This increased in the early 1960s as there developed a huge rise in demand for frozen fish in Japan and the USA. Exports to these markets went from 500 tons at the end of the 1950s to 1,500 tons just three years later. The brokers made huge profits. The landed price for fish caught by artisanal fishers was about Rs 150 a tonne, but the export value could be even Rs 4,000.54 The key change was the move to using European-type boats with inboard motors; this change was promoted by a joint Norwegian–Indian project. Other changes included the use of nylon nets, as opposed to coir or cotton ones, and freezing so that fish and prawns could be exported to America and Japan. Local fishers had to compete with foreign trawlers, which vacuumed up marine life in a totally random way. Especially hard hit were demersal (bottom dwelling) fish species. Once a given fishing ground was no longer productive the trawlers could move on: the traditional fisherfolk could not.

This Kerala case study typifies the dramatic and painful transition. 'The greatest asset of the fishermen of Kerala is their accumulated knowledge about fish, fish habits, waves, currents and stars which they have, through generations of learning by doing, handed down from generation to generation.' Now this was all cast aside. Motors neutralised their skill in rowing and sailing, fish finding equipment made redundant their folk wisdom which told them where to find fish. Wages in the new sector of the industry rose much higher than did those in the artisanal area.55

The decline of the traditional sector was advanced by a shift in demand in the early 1960s. From this time prawns, in America shrimps, have been a major export for India and some southeast Asian countries. The results were mixed and changed over time. Prawns are caught by large deep-sea trawlers, but by the mid 1970s these were, in Kerala, fishing too close in shore, to the detriment of the artisanal sector. Subsequently this sector began