The determined members of a threatened fishing community in India’s southern state of Kerala are now in their seventh week of a relay hunger strike outside an airport operated by the Adani Group. The protest has been prompted by Adani’s massive port redevelopment at Vizhinjam, which has been blamed for coastal erosion and impacts on fishing resources. Seventy-one families have lost their homes to the encroaching sea. The sathyagraha (fasting protest) has, of course, been attacked by supporters of Adani’s port development. Yet the beleaguered fishing community is in a fight for its very existence.
The protest, which began on June 5, World Environment Day, completed 44 days on 18 July. It will carry on for an indefinite period as community members participate on a relay basis. Due to severe coastal erosion that some blame on Adani’s port project, many members of the community have been forced to take refuge in warehouses and schools that have been converted into evacuation areas. The people live like refugees in close proximity to the state’s administrative headquarters. (See videos of the tough life at the camps.)
The phrase ‘caught between the devil and the deep blue sea’ has become literal for Kerala’s fishing community. On the one hand, these hardy people have to flee for their lives to escape the increasing onslaught of the seas. On the other, they have to face the devilry of the Adani Group and its backers in the government and development lobby.
Local people say that time balances everything; this holds true for the seas. If the seabed is dredged, it will take sand from the shores. If you drop rocks into the sea to create a shore at one end, a shore from another end will disappear. Humans are helpless in front of this ‘oceanic justice’. But those in power continue to dredge the ocean floor and pile up massive breakwaters while people who reside on the coast are forced to flee. Fishing boats have been destroyed at the Vizhinjam Harbour, with lives lost. Even before the monsoon struck, several fishing villages in Thiruvananthapuram like Poonthura were hit by severe erosion.
Mounting protests
The protests against Adani’s Vizhinjam port project have gathered steam lately. An alliance of fisherfolk, unions, farmers’ organisations, ecologists and conservation NGOs was formed prior to World Environment Day and began the relay Sathyagraha in front of the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport.
The protest alliance is composed of the Kerala Swathanthra Matsyathozhilali Federation (Federation of Independent Fishing Labourers), Rashtreeya Kisan Mahasangh (National Alliance of Farmers), Sewa Union, Coastal Watch, TFM Union, Coastal Students Cultural Forum, Tree Walk, AICUF, Sthri Niket Vanitha Federation, Western Ghats Conservation Society, SUCI, Ekta Parishad and Voice. I.P. Udayakumar, who led the Koodamkulam Nuclear Plant protest, inaugurated the Sathyagraha, whose numbers have been swelling.
The Demands of the Protest Alliance
One of the key demands of the protest is to compensate the people who have lost their homes. The alliance insists that the people responsible for this plight, the government and Adani Group, must offer solutions. Sea walls are ineffective in the long run. Depletion of beaches has impacted the livelihoods of the fishermen as there is a lack of space to pull up the nets from the sea. Coastal residents say that the port project is not even half done and already hundreds of homes have been destroyed. They fear that if the project continues, the beaches, roads, houses and allied infrastructure will be engulfed by the sea.
The alliance has called for:
The Adani Group originally signed the agreement for the port project with the then United Democratic Front (UDF) state government. However, the current Left Democratic Front (LDF) government is also facilitating the smooth execution of the project. Both parties have been taking turns in ruling the state for decades and both are reluctant to oppose Adani publicly. In response, the protest alliance has beseeched everyone who is in favour of shutting down the port project to join them in the agitation.
Udayakumar said in 2016 that the Vizhinjam Port project is a huge scam. Speaking during the inauguration of the Sathyagraha, he warned that the Kerala and Tamil Nadu coasts will be destroyed if the port is completed. He said that this is the struggle of those who depend on the sea for their survival. While visiting the protest camp on 17 July 2022, prominent Supreme Court lawyer Prashanth Bhushan said that due to the construction of the Vizhinjam port, fishermen have been forced into relief camps. People should take to streets against this, Bhushan added. His criticisms of the pro-Adani policies of governments have also been aired through Twitter.
A joint petition highlighting these concerns, signed by 70 acclaimed authors, environmentalists and scientists, was submitted to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on 26 June. The petition said that while the Vizhinjam Port might be a dream project of developers, it will irrevocably destroy the lives and livelihoods of coastal residents.
Constantly Updated Schedules
The minister for ports has predicted that the Vizhinjam development will welcome its first ship towards the end of the year. This is a bold forecast considering with the project only 33% complete. The Adani Group has already made it clear that it will just procure raw materials during the monsoon and resume construction in the sea after the rainy season. In June 2022, the group also submitted a renewed construction schedule to the government which states that the first schedule will only be completed in December 2024. The government claims that it has not approved this new schedule.
The port-construction contract stipulated that the first phase of the project was to be completed by 3 December 2019. It remains incomplete. A legal tussle is occurring between the Kerala government and Adani Group on this failure to complete the project in line with scheduled milestones. The government issued a notice in March 2020 fining the company. Adani argued that its construction schedule had been impacted by ‘force majeure’ occurrences such as natural disasters and the Covid-19 pandemic. The Group has asked for a five-year extension to complete the project. The Arbitration Tribunal is hearing the case.
Poonthura’s curse
Poonthura is one of the highly populated fishing villages in Thiruvananthapuram and lies on the northern side of the Vizhinjam development. Kerala’s first sea wall to prevent tidal waves was constructed in Poonthura in the 1970s. Incursions of the sea began here after small breakwaters (of about 600 m each) were built for the Vizhinjam harbour’s fish-landing centre. The sea wall has been renewed a few times over the last 50 years. Several groynes (small breakwaters of 25 m each) were built along with the sea wall 15 years ago…