Vishalakshi Shantaram Tandel is a 41-year-old fisherwoman. Every day, she would buy small quantities of fish from the harbour, clean it, spread it outside her home at the beach, and leave it to dry for two days. She would then sell it locally. Together with her husband, who works as a fish-worker on boats, they would earn enough to feed a family of four.  But she has not worked since the road came up. “I can’t. I don’t have any space. These people don’t want us to do any work,” she told Mongabay-India.

Her home is in a hamlet called Tonka 1, part of Kasarkod village. There are about 300 houses in this hamlet alone. Every household is dependent on fishing. Men work on the boats, or at the harbour. Most women, after marriage, take up the work of selling dry fish. They would buy fish directly from the boat, sort it, dry it and sell it on their own. This made them more entrepreneurial but also meant that sales would be tied to the catch of the day. Some women would be employed by fish traders, who would give them a salary every month for doing the labour of sorting, salting, and drying the fish. Some would do both.

The process of drying fish can get tricky if not exposed to the right elements. It needs to be spread on nets or mats so that it doesn’t get dirty. It needs to retain the right amount of moisture (15-20 percent) and colour, which indicates good quality. The colour red indicates the presence of dust or high salt content and reduces the quality of the fish. “Even a speck of dust will reduce the rate of the fish by half. It needs to be completely white,” said Tandel. “And today we get nothing but dust thanks to the road,” she added.

Ever since the road came up, fishers say they have witnessed at least 15-20 trucks going up and down every day.

Chandrika, 26, lives right next to the upcoming road. “We can’t even wear clean clothes anymore. Every time we put them out for drying, they catch dust before they can dry,” she told Mongabay-India. “So many trucks pass by day and night. They carry mud, bring dust and noise into our lives,” she continued. Her mother, Bharti, used to dry fish out of their house but now has to travel to the harbour to do the same job.

“The road is coming up in the coastal commons, where the fishing community, especially the fisherwomen, uses the space as a fish drying area,” explained Chakraborty, “The whole fight behind the road is that you are encroaching into my coastal commons which is protected under the CRZ law, which gives me the rightful validity to exercise my livelihood,” Chakraborty told Mongabay-India.

Read more: Karnataka’s port-development spree ignores coastal communities’ concerns

Whose land is it?

The area where the road is coming up is classified as “Kasarkod SeaShore land without any Sy number.” Sy number refers to the land survey number, which is a unique number assigned to a particular piece of land. Using this number, one can obtain information about the land’s size, location, ownership, etc. The total area of land being used for the construction of the approach road is about 8.26 hectares. Out of this, 0.76 ha is surveyed forest land, for which the authorities have obtained a forest clearance. The rest 7.4 ha is unsurveyed and has been used as coastal commons by fishers to dry their fish, park their boats and other equipment. “It belongs to nobody, and everybody,” Bhatt emphasised.

“There was a clear direction to state authorities under Coastal Regulation Zone Notification 2011 that the common physical space used by the fishing unit for fishery-related activities should be earmarked and notified for their respective uses,” he said.

According to rules, in the CRZ areas, “the fishing villages, common properties of the fishermen communities, fishing jetties, fish drying yards, … shall be indicated in the cadastral maps.”

“Therefore, states and urban and rural local bodies are mandated to prepare detailed maps for long-term needs of the fishing communities in view of the expansion needs,” Bhatt said.

In August 2013, the Karnataka Port department notified the port limits which declared that all land notified under the limits comes under the jurisdiction of the port, except private land. In a regular situation, even the unsurveyed land would belong to the state. But this is where things get complicated.

In the 1970s, huge swathes of private land, with survey numbers, were submerged in the flood and to coastal erosion. At least 300 families lost their homes and their land. The revenue department cancelled their survey numbers so that they don’t have to pay land tax, and regularised the land that they had migrated to, which includes large parts of present-day Kasarkod-Tonka. The lost land has re-emerged over time and parts of it remain unsurveyed. Experts note that in such a scenario, the Honnavar port cannot just assume ownership of land, and must follow a due procedure to find out the history behind this land.

Queries sent to the Karnataka government, Honnavar Port Private Limited and Karnataka State Coastal Zone Management Authority regarding the road project and its impact were unanswered at the time of publishing.

Read more: Fish famine, livelihood loss because of upcoming Vizhinjam port, say fishers of south Kerala

Why is the road illegal?

Every infrastructural project, depending upon its scope, needs to get clearances from relevant authorities. In this particular case, the project, under EIA Notification 2006, was required to prepare a detailed Environment Impact Assessment report, and seek environmental clearance (EC) from the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA), the Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC), Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearance from the Karnataka State Coastal Zone Management Authority (KSCZMA), and forest clearance (FC) from the state’s Forest Department (FD).

The clearances require the project proponents to provide a detailed report of the project and a map depicting the entire project in CRZ areas. But Chakraborty says, “If you go through the documents, it will seem like they have an environmental clearance and CRZ clearance for the port project only, but the location of the port connectivity road through CRZ areas was completely hidden, and the complete project depicted on a CRZ map was never placed before the authorities that were granting them clearances.”

For instance, according to the minutes of the 54th meeting of SEIAA held on August 6, 2012, the project proponents mentioned that the construction activity includes road and railway network development, but did not provide any details.

“When you embed information in such a way, you deliberately blindside the authorities. The question was indeed raised on the ecological and social impact of the road by the SEIAA sub-committee in May 2012 as clarification on the final EIA report submitted in February 2012. But HPPL in their response did not disclose the fact that the port connectivity road will be built in CRZ areas. Therefore, even when they were specifically asked to study the impact, they willfully avoided it,” Chakraborty explained.

In addition, as per the Coastal Zone Management Plan map, the area where the road is being constructed comes under CRZ III – No Development Zone (NDZ). Under this rule, an NDZ is an area up to 200 metres from the High Tide Line (HTL) on the landward side. No commercial road can be permitted in this area. “A road is absolutely not allowed here. This area is reserved for the use of the fishing community. They completely hid the fact that the road was coming up in the CRZ area. They only spoke about the CRZ clearances for the port construction site, which falls under CRZ I,” said Chakraborty.

In the month of June alone, the port authorities have come to the site with machinery at least twice, putting mud and stones to expand the road. Members of the community told us that the authorities are always accompanied by state police. When fishers protest, they are silenced.

Since the beginning of July, the western coast of India has been experiencing non-stop rain due to the southwest monsoon. The under-construction road at Kasarkod-Tonka is already crumbling.

National Fishworkers Forum, the country’s largest union for fishworkers has criticised the project, asking “Who is this development for?”

Banner image: Fisherwomen at work in Kasarkod-Tonka in Honnavar, Karnataka. Photo by Hagen Desa/Mongabay.

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Mayank Aggarwal Editor

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CoastEnvironmentEnvironmental EconomicsRoadsWaterKarnataka

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