Kolis in Mumbai find new CRZ norms a fishy proposition

When US president Barack Obama uncharacteristically took to the floor to join a Koli dance in November, the images were beamed across the world with the tacit affirmation that all was well with the oldest community of Mumbai.

Last week’s redevelopment bonanza doled out to the city’s fishing community should have sealed that image, but has it?

Uday Shanbhag spent five days living on Juhu beach with the Koli community.

His project consisted of him ritualistically scribbling ‘kuberanige niru beku’ on the sand twice a day (a palindrome phrase meaning ‘the sea god wants more water’), drinking tea with Kolis, listening as they got drunk and talkative in the evenings, and accompanying them on swaying boats to pick up empty fishing lines in the early hours of the morning.

Sunil, a Koli fisherman who lives a hundred steps away from the houses of some of the richest people in the city, played his host and teacher.

A friendly and soft-spoken man, Sunil is initially hesitant to comment on either the new legislation or Shanbhag’s unexpected visit. “I don’t know how the laws will affect me,” he shrugs.

“I am happy, but many family and friends were displaced in Thane and Worli because of building projects. Such things should be prevented.”

Professor Sanjay Ranade is the head of the Communications department of Mumbai University, and has been working closely with the Koli community for the past four years.

“Trombe and Worli will be the worst affected, along with Thane and Madh Island, because of their proximity to the water,” he points out.

Ranade believes that the legislation cannot be judged yet. “We made the sea link, and we love the easy traffic, but we won’t know the repercussions for another ten years — how the pillars have changed fish patterns, which currents are broken, and so on.”

Ashok Ram, a fisherman from the Worli Koliwada, places the blame for his diminishing catches on company trawlers whose large catches leave close to nothing for him.

“Look at this,” he says, pointing at his catch for the day — ten small fishes and two large ones. “This is all I will take to the market. Of this, I will take very little back home.” Ashok remembers when he took to fishing in his early teens.

“I used to be able to see the bottom of the sea, and now there is so much pollution that I can taste the chemicals in the fish I eat,” he says. He also places the blame partly on the construction of the Bandra-Worli sea link, saying, “My entire family has been displaced twice because of development. Where is the development for us?”

The new plan, to be implemented within two years, includes amendments aimed at protecting erosion-prone areas, re-allocation of slum development, to public finance to avoid exploitation of the community and providing basic infrastructure facilities for sustaining their livelihood.

Under the liberalised coastal regulation zone (CRZ) rules, the koliwadas have been placed under the CRZ- III category, making them eligible for a floor space index (FSI) — the ratio between the built-up area and the plot area available — of 2.5 as opposed to the earlier cap of 1.33 FSI.

Ranade believes that this will not change much, because of the staggering number of non-Koli tenants living in koliwadas. Some areas have a ratio of one Koli for every ten tenants.

“These tenants have been living here for many years, and their tenant rights will not allow the full benefits of the cap increase to go directly to the Kolis,” he says.

Developers have dismissed the new policies as vague and impractical, environmentalists have attacked them for ignoring ecological issues, while the National Fishermen’s Forum chairperson Mathany Saldhana has called it a “sleight of the hand” by the ministry towards opening coastal lands to large-scale development.

Others have hailed it as a piece of legislation, which, if implemented correctly, could vastly improve the living conditions of more than 25% of the country’s population — more than 10 million fishermen who depend directly on the sea for livelihood.

Jaimram Lochan, a private builder, says, “It doesn’t matter whether land belongs to the Kolis or to the government. The contractor will always be the middleman who benefits.”

Ghanshyam is a fisherman in the Thane Koliwada. When asked about his livelihood, he takes out a small notebook in which he has neatly noted his daily catch for the last two years.

The numbers’ upward spikes become less frequent as the pages turn, with the catch eventually dwindling below a dozen on an average. “It’s the pollution, it’s the trawlers,” he says. “There is nothing but problems. I have very little hope.”

“Mumbai doesn’t care about the Koli community,” Ranade says dismissively.

“But they are multicultural on a level that the ‘other’ Mumbai is not. Every koliwada has a Muslim pir that must be served with a plate of offerings during celebrations. When the Obamas came here, we showed him the Koli dance. The truth is that Mumbai has no cultural identity without the Kolis. But they have been abandoned by us, and are left in a cultural limbo.”