Transcript

The Lost Kolis of Mumbai | Ganesh Nakhawa | TEDxPalmBeachRdWomen

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnjm_jByzP4
Video ID: Hnjm_jByzP4
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[Music] hello everyone as you heard introduction from me my name is Ngoc wah basically the Aqua means a boat owner and a fisherwoman was called Naquin Volta she is also the boat owner but things have changed I'm as you can trace from my last seven generation I am a syringe Alicia fishermen and the every last man in my family was a fisherman also at the same time if you trace the woman they have been equally involved in the fishing as well but things have changed drastically if you know in the monsoons after the monsoons when there is a Raksha Bandhan and we also celebrate the coconut day so before we celebrate coconut day we pray to see the sea our God but when we prayed to see we have to first pray to our sisters our mothers we don't pray to see unless we tie Rakhi from them so that's how important the fisher woman is in a fisherman's life so we'll be talking about my work and what i'm trying to do through the various platform for the fisher woman in our community so Cole is if you trace back have been a traditional fishermen for centuries and centuries Mumbai is basically which has dozens dozens of creeks Mumbai Dharam Thor rygart Thani Mahim maillard Gauri Gow things were quite different if you go 40 50 years back but things are changing now lot of topics are going on about the fisherman fisher woman who tried to sell fish every day at the fish markets at the local markets or at the bigger markets of sundog Ferry Wharf and the shivaji markets as well what comes to your mind when I say fish a woman a basket and a lot of gold but right now only the baskets on the head which aim is to balance when she's travelling in the train bus auto from few villages they go in the terror boats as well it's a small fishing village called mora we were hundreds of daily fisher woman travel in the morning as early as 3 o clock to reach the dogs pick the fish from there come back to the local markets or travel as far as briefly Mira binder to their local places where they have been selling fish for years and years the gold is gone what I'm trying to do is to save the basket when we talk about woman empowerment as the speaker was saying we the to use the word human empowerment is a not right word but due to that woman embodiment due to the modern techniques today fisherwoman are sitting back home they have lost the livelihood why because modernization population boom urbanization has made our creeks which were all fishing grounds completely polluted and acts like unacceptable for us due to that most of the fishes which we used to form which is found in creeks are lost the livelihood was to catch the fish to drive the fish who take that fish who the markets to save that speech for the future consumption there was a vital system everything is gone so what we are trying to do I've been trying to analyze the problem of the fish market of the fish woman and equally V fishermen my grandfather his name is Hari Krishna barber used to tell me when his to fish in 60s and 70s fishing was not done beyond 5 kilometers of coastline you go in small log words u-haul at two hours net you come back used to get a bagful of nets fisherwoman used to sit on boats as well swatting the fish filling the fish doing the high quality fish away saving the dreyfuses again twain is to come back at the post something some fishes to be used for so or selling purpose some for the consumption and some for the vital system so equally for years and years for centuries men and women in fisheries were all together but that has changed due to all the activity of modernization livelihood from the woman has been gone over the period we've been analyzing what went wrong is it the infrastructure or is it the fish man the problem was both the fishermen and Fisher woman as well on the soil infrastructure as well when in 2015 when I actively got into the fishing industry on the social platform I realize that in the the corporation I was working within seventy years not a single fisher woman meeting was taken in my fishing village not a single fisherman or a woman meeting we have 6,000 active members from that there were 3,000 fish a woman and not a single meeting was taken to realize the problems on them what are they demands we came up with a plan that over the years it has taken fisher woman from mumbai rygaard to be precise 275 fishing villages are across the streets on this dotted small small fishing villages take example of nine Mumbai Airport what has it done it has taken away 14 fishing villages from that creeks people are jobless woman can't do anything about it similarly in my regard area there are a lot of fish a woman who want to actively get involved but due to no harbour not to eat no infrastructure they can't travel away this was the image from a fishing society which I called in me meeting in February this year a month before that Chief Minister of Maharashtra had visited our Parranda Harbor which is coming up in next one year so tool to know the demands of this fish a woman I called an meeting first time I thought maybe twenty to twenty-five woman will turned up including my wife my sister and my mother but over 400 turned up equally passionate everybody wanted to be part of that big project which was coming up and after seeing that into his enthusiasm of this 400 fish a woman we created a plan we created a strategy you know to create the first India's Harbor a fishing which was coming after 70 years of independence to be operated by women only so since then I've been running to official authorities government MMRDA PWD also at the same time really really small fishing cooperative societies which are in our this 275 fishing villages gathering everybody together creating policy oh the policy I'd like to mention in spite of we being the indigenous quali community of Mumbai it's such a vast city there is not a single mention of Fisheries in a policy right now also you can see when the climate change is hitting farmers they are forgetting to mention the fishermen as well because there is no policy if you take government documents we've been fishing for centuries but we don't have policy to fish in our waters so I've been chasing that as well because without the policy we won't be able to do anything about the strategy what we have so what activities the Fisher woman can do they are already selling the fish ninety-four percent of the marketing activity is been done by the woman eighty-four percent of the fish feeling of fish cleaning activity is already done by the women but it also happened at a very selected harbors like Sassoon dock and Ferry Wharf when we're talking about getting a new harbour in karanji where ten thousand new opportunities are going to come up we want to give as many as possible to the fisher woman as well but before that the entire fisheries harbour will be run by fisher woman how i'll tell you that when hundreds of fishing boats come to come to marketing at the harbour it's a man oriented business if you come to Sassoon dhaka Ferry Wharf all the auction or the supply this has all been done by the men fishermen only but if you go 40 years back the activity or something else if I owned the board my fish was sold by fisher woman only if smaller boat is coming at the harbour from the creeks all the fish was sold by fisher woman only there was no middleman there were no traders there were no suppliers there is no exporters nothing so we've been trying to create such a supply chain such a logistics change but with the help of women's cooperative with the help of creating a parallel kind of a cooperative society it has already been done why it is needed because in India in city like Mumbai everybody is turning away from the filthy fish markets nobody wants to go in the fish markets fish markets there is no budget there is no cleanliness there is no water facility there is no dispose facility there is no waste management everything is in a mess and to create a solution out of this we want to bring all the fish markets together to be precise 336 fish market across the Mumbai metropolitan region area so want to create a big project to link up fishermen to the fisherwoman so that fish caught by fishermen will be directly sold by fishermen to all these small small fish markets and the bigger markets at the same time creating a value added by creating a good facility with the AC counters and a temperature metal stores where all this fisher woman can work in small small groups and create a value chain system very consumer will have confidence on them so that they can be a policy where you go wherever you will find the fishes of one pricing like all the vegetables or the fish all the fruits you find the prices are fixed by the government but that is not happening with the fishes so with the help of such a large group I think it is possible to do it and that is what we've been trying to do it at the same time the major problem with the government is that they fail to understand the fisherwoman there is a policy coming up in 2019 it is called National Marine Fisheries policies and management and be in 2090 it's a draft after chasing them for four years at least they have a draft in making where they are putting cipolla seas so that fisherwoman fisherwoman they can take funds from the blue ocean and small small projects like getting insulated vans getting iced herbs setting up stores they can get funding from that but the problem is they failed to understand that fisherwoman of fishermen doesn't own any land when I was talking about creeks which were getting filthy you go years back whatever harvesting we used to get we used to come from the creek but the locals of Mumbai now Mumbai have lost the harvesting so the capacity was to do farming so farming for like oysters mussels crabs which was possible in hundreds of acres of mangroves which are still safe but being destroyed few places we've been demanding as well as the farmers on the land we fishermen or fish a woman don't own the land special official woman because if you travel to seem to do Ratna Guinea or parallel districts there are few places where fisherwoman are coming forward you know for to do oyster farming for do mussel farming to do crab farming but the problem in Mumbai metropolitan region everybody's under land grab 275 fishing villages nearby everybody wants the land and that is why destroy the mangroves destroy the wetlands take the fishing villages build the ports that is what been happening to change that we agitated we had protested as on Maidan at the hard words in numbers 5,000 10,000 people and raised our demands but still nothing is happening you can see the number of women there and the age you can see was the problem with the fishing community right now so when I'm talking about infrastructure I am talking about modernization getting the change you won't find younger fish a woman coming in this business that is the whole problem about it and when I'm empowering women for a couple of couple of years I've been getting the same resident from the main as well there was a recent election in my cooperative society where I had to lose election because I was fighting for the women they don't want women to enter this they don't want a parallel cooperative society to come in because they feel their jobs will be taken away but we had given even have enough of chances for fishermen and they hardly did anything about it so now the time with all you you educated all your support we want help to create this market to bring this supply change and at the same time create a new hope so that younger generation younger fisherwoman like my wife my sister has been trying to set up stalls at the fish festivals to go at various quality food festivals try to on a revenue and there are few more like that who wants to come into this valley I did change get get value-added things from the fisherman fishing and Harbor is the new hope for that I like to end it on a good note that these are the few things which want to highlight but at the same time instead of creating policies and all we've been fighting at the government for the fisheries rights as well because as I told you as the like farmers they own lands we don't don't see I cannot talk to a government and say where I'm fishing is my part of you you give it on my name so something like that at least not the sea but where the fishing villages are where my home is even that is not on my name so I've been fighting for these smaller issues so if the home is lost everything will be lost so with all your power with all your support I think we can change this and you can have a word about this thank you very much [Applause] [Music]