Independent of the success or failure of the third round of bilateral fishermen association talks between India and Sri Lanka held in Chennai on March 24, 2015, it would be remembered for a few things. The joint statement issued by the fishers’ representatives at the end claims that the long hours of talks were held under Puratchi Thalaivi Amma’s guidance, a reference to former Tamil Nadu chief minister and ruling AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalithaa.
More importantly, the short but nuanced joint statement is pregnant with ideas that the talks were not as smooth or as conclusive, as a section of the Tamil Nadu media sought to make it out to be during the days after the conclusion of the talks. It may also be an indication that the fishermen on the two sides are acquiring diplomatic skills, in saying what they want to say, and not having to have the rest of the world hear what they did not want them hear.
It does not mean that the talks were a failure. It was the first round of talks between the two sides after new governments have taken over in the two countries. It’s more so in the case of Sri Lanka, where the change of government did eliminate an overbearing air of suspicion and suspense at the talks. It’s a good beginning for future talks. If however, this round itself did not produce any tangible results, it owes to the complexities of the issues involved, the solution available and also the missed opportunities.
It was thus possibly that the Sri Lankan Tamil fishers’ representatives did not protest loudly to the one-sided references to Jayalalithaa, who does not hold any constitutional position in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, or to subsequent references to the state government and the Centre, without similar mention of either the elected provincial administrations in the North and the East of the nation, nor that of the central government in Colombo. It being a fishermen level talks, and not between the governments, such laxity did not come too much under the scanner, for words to be split and meanings to be read, when none might have existed in the first place.
Tamil Nadu government commitment
The four-paragraph joint statement is accompanied by a six-point set of demands put forth by the Indian fishers (from Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry, whose Karaikkal enclave lies closer to the Sri Lankan waters). The joint statement said that the Sri Lankan fishermen would take it up with their brethren back home, in Sri Lanka’s North and the East, and communicate their position before end-May.
The taste of the pudding is in the eating, and in this case, for the first time, the Indian fishers (including Puducherry fishers) have acknowledged the Tamil Nadu government’s initiatives, taken at every turn at the instance of Manpu-mihu Puratchchi Thalaivi Amma’ (honb’le revolutionary leader’), to end their use of vessels and nets banned in Sri Lanka and which also harm fish population and fishermen’s livelihood on the other side of the Palk Strait. The demands’ note thus points out how the Indian fishers are committed to follow the state government’s directives in the matter, and recalls how it had extended a 50 percent grant not beyond IRs.3 million, for converting banned trawlers on to deep-sea vessels, capable of tuna fishing.
In this context, it also refers to Jayalalithaa’s request for the Centre to grant Rs.975 crore for such conversion, when she met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when she was still the chief minister. It is another matter that the Centre is yet to come out with its decision in the matter. If anything, some state leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the centre began speaking about it to the local media and elsewhere, but to no avail.
That the Indian fishers’ were serious about the entire process became equally clear when their proposals brought down to three years, their original demand of five, for conversion of their (destructive) bottom trawlers to deep-sea vessels and reiterated their earlier commitment not to fish within five nautical miles from the Sri Lankan coast, lest the boats and gears of fishers from that country should continue to suffer damage and destruction. In part thereof, the Indian fishermen also committed to reducing the number of fishing days in a year from 120 to 83, during three years.
Problems still galore
Left to themselves, the fishers on the two sides might not have a great problem accepting or adapting a version of the Indian side’s demands, with mutually agreement amendments and changes, if any. The problem might arise as and when officials from the two sides, as the ultimate enforcers of any fishers’ agreement, sit down to give finishing touches to any agreement of the kind. The current joint statement having said that the Tamil Nadu government would examine’ all future decisions at the fishers’ level before implementation with the approval of the two national governments, it becomes inevitable that the governments got involved at the appropriate time and levels.
One of the possible implications flow from the Tamil Nadu government’s repeated assertions about historic waters’ and traditional fishing rights’ would make it that much more difficult for any government in Sri Lanka and equally so for an elected administration, such as the present one, in the island nation’s Tamil-majority Northern Province, to attest any fishermen association level agreement. While neighbourhood nations across the world have agreed to sharing of the sea wealth, particularly fish and other living marine produce for similar reasons, such agreements in the past have been without any specific and formal reference to historic waters’ and traditional rights’, etc. Significantly, there is no reference to such terminology in the fishers’ joint statement this time. In the past, the state government’s official releases notifying impending talks would assert such rights.
Mandated by their respective governments to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the respective nation, their navies and coast guards would be hard pressed to look the other way if they had suspicion or intelligence’ that not all vessels crossing over to the other side were indulging in innocent fishing, with or without use of right to innocent passage’. If the fishermen’s agreement implies that the Sri Lankan government would direct its navy not to stop or otherwise harass genuine Indian fishers, a similar situation would arise in the case of Sri Lanka’s mainly Sinhala fishers on tuna hunt in Indian waters, at times not very far away from strategic assets in the Andaman Sea and along the coast line of states like Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and (northern) Tamil Nadu.
The navy/coast guard duties are thus linked also to the international maritime border line (IMBL), over which Jayalalithaa in her political and personal capacity had moved the Supreme Court of India, challenging the ownership of Katchchativu islet, conferred on Sri Lanka by the twin bilateral agreements of 1974 and 1976. Domestic legal issues over the need for Indian parliamentary ratification apart, the agreements having been notified under UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Laws of the Seas) little purpose would be served by challenging the same in international fora other than vitiating the Palk Strait atmosphere more than already.
The present Tamil Nadu government is also a party to the Supreme Court case and has supported petitioner Jayalalithaa’s position in the Supreme Court. The deployment of Sri Lankan Navy thus could become problematic if the Katchchativu-linked IMBL issue is not resolved to mutual satisfaction. What was essentially considered as a part of the livelihood issue of Indian fishers has thus become a contentious and complicated territorial problem’, with national sentiments’ getting added on with greater effect. It may thus become necessary for the Indian stake-holders to view/review their known positions on the issue if the fishermen were to reach a meaningful and actionable agreement in good time.
While terms like historic waters’ and traditional fishing rights’ may or, may not, if one were to hear the Sri Lankan side apply to Palk Bay fishing, it cannot necessarily be extended to Indian fishers from Nagapattinam and surrounding localities, to miles on either side. Both Palk Bay and other fishermen from India are also reportedly caught far away from what might have been acknowledged as shared seas and fishing grounds. The fishers’ representatives might have to address these issues, too, as and when those relating to the present demands from the Indian side are satisfactorily addressed.
The role of the respective navies under the circumstances would also need to be considered by the governments concerned. For all the problems that it has left unsaid, what the fishers’ talks achieved this time is very substantial, in content than in form. It needs to be built upon, faster and quicker. The joint statement wholly reflects the seriousness with which the Tamil Nadu government in particular has approached the issue, and the kind of cooperation that the state and its fishermen expect from the other side, in the interim for most parts. That the talks did not suffer from prejudices or attempts at further procrastination, particularly after Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had made and repeated his controversial statements on the fishing dispute only weeks before the talks were being scheduled, should, for now, show that the stakeholders, particularly those on the Indian side, are genuine and serious about it all, from this time round on.