Between the city lords and the deep blue sea
Fisherfolk from Chennai’s Nochikuppam are being forced to move to an indoor market, a little away from the beach where they have traditionally sold their catch. For the community resisting this move, it is a question of livelihood security and identity
November 22, 2023 | Divya Karnad
In Cuddalore harbour: the woman and the sea
A fish trader in Tamil Nadu, trans woman Maneesha auctions, loads, salts, dries and sells fish. Covid, followed by the initial ban on purse-seine nets almost sunk her business, but expensive private loans are keeping this entrepreneur afloat
November 22, 2023 | Nitya Rao
Athipattu's idol maker keeps fisherfolk safe
In Thiruvallur district, Dilli anna gives life to Kannisamy – the guardian deity of fishing communities in north Chennai. The idols are made using clay and paddy husk, both of which are becoming increasingly difficult to source in the rapidly urbanising area
September 18, 2023 | M. Palani Kumar
Karuvadu: the wet world of dry fish
With sun, salt and skilled hands, women in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, preserve fish. And their own lives. A visit to Therespuram locality brings home the complexity of their universe
August 22, 2023 | Aparna Karthikeyan
'Fish turned me into a good photographer'
A PARI photographer writes about growing up in a community of skilled lake fishermen, and their daily lives
June 26, 2023 | M. Palani Kumar
Sardine loads are falling in Vadakara
Oil sardines are important in Kerala's fishing industry. Growing unpredictability in the catch is impacting the lives of people who do daily-wage loading work at this harbour in Kozhikode district
May 21, 2023 | Mufeena Nasrin M. K.
Amreli’s fisherfolk wait for a lifeline
Lakhs of fisherfolk in this coastal district of Gujarat risk their lives to go to work in increasingly hostile conditions. Long-promised emergency healthcare services continue to elude them
January 5, 2023 | Parth M.N.
Govindamma: ‘I have been in water all my life’
Wading through the Kosasthalaiyar river near Chennai, Govindamma has been catching prawns since she was a little girl. Now in her 70s, she does it to support her family, despite her bruises and failing eyesight
July 14, 2022 | M. Palani Kumar
Veni’s story: ‘becoming a bold lady’
From vending to auctioneering at the Cuddalore fishing harbour in Tamil Nadu, Veni’s success stands out amidst the struggles of women handling and selling fish. These films tell their story
March 8, 2022 | Nitya Rao and Alessandra Silver
Vanagiri’s women: lifting the lockdown load
In a film on the impact of Covid-19, women fish vendors in Vanagiri, a coastal village in Tamil Nadu, explain how the pandemic reduced their income and pushed them into debt
March 7, 2022 | Nitya Rao and Alessandra Silver
Puli gets by on shells, scales, heads and tails
At the Cuddalore harbour in Tamil Nadu, 75-year-old K. Banumathi or ‘Puli’, sells fish remnants for a living. She and other women have laboured here for decades, but are still barely recognised as workers
March 4, 2022 | Text: Nitya Rao | Photographs: Alessandra Silver
High risk on the high seas, with low rewards
Out on a two-night trip with fishermen off the coast of Ramnad district in Tamil Nadu, who toil, as they put it, 'to make someone else a millionaire'
October 26, 2021 | P. Sainath
In Satpati: ‘No fish. So what will I sell now?’
On International Day of Rural Women, this story from Maharashtra's Satpati village highlights how, with a drop in fish catch and boats, fisherwomen here are working harder or shifting to assembly line work
October 15, 2021 | Ishita Patil and Nitya Rao
Catching stingrays in Lakshadweep
In Tinnakara, a coral atoll near Agatti island in Lakshadweep, Ukkash and his family hunt for fish in the lagoon and open sea. One day in early August, they returned with three stingrays and went to work on them at once
September 03, 2021 | Abdul Rasheed
Mumbai fishermen: no shelter from this storm
In recent years, fishermen who set sail from south Mumbai’s Sassoon Dock have weathered cyclones, falling fish catch, poor sales – but the impact of the lockdowns since March 2020 has proved to be the hardest
August 13, 2021 | Shraddha Agarwal
Koli women: fish, friendship and fighting spirit
Lockdown losses, major surgeries, jobless husbands and other struggles have hit Vandana Koli and Gayatri Patil, who sell fish at Mumbai's Colaba market. But the two find comfort in their close friendship of decades
August 11, 2021 | Shraddha Agarwal
Hook, line and sinker: Malwan's fisherwomen
In Maharashtra's Malwan taluka – as across India – women are central to the fish trade, from buying, drying, transporting and storing fish, to cutting and selling it, but don't receive the same subsidies as fishermen
October 27, 2020 | Trisha Gupta and Manini Bansal
AP fishermen: between lockdown and deep sea
Fishermen in Visakhapatnam make their best profits in the two weeks before the annual April 15-June 14 ban on fishing during the breeding season. This year, that crucial period has come during the lockdown
April 26, 2020 | Amrutha Kosuru
‘Even the boats must be missing their men’
The Covid-19 lockdown has battered the livelihoods of the Nishad boatmen of Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh. Many in the community, like Sushma Devi, a pregnant mother and widow, don’t even have ration cards
April 20, 2020 | Jigyasa Mishra
‘Today we seek those fish in Discovery Channel’
Kadal Osai, a community radio of and for fisherfolk on Pamban island of Tamil Nadu’s Ramanathapuram district, turns three this week. And it's making waves – with climate change as its latest focus
August 12, 2019 | Kavitha Muralidharan
A fishy catch-22 in the Bay of Bengal
Fish workers, who camp on uninhabited islands in the Bay of Bengal for seasonal fishing, say with the fish depleting, water becoming inert and big trawlers taking over, they may be forced to leave
May 29, 2019 | Neha Simlai
Flattened by Prosperity in Chiradpada
Four Katkari Adivasi families living for decades just outside Chiradpada village in Thane district could soon lose their huts and livelihoods to a viaduct of the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Highway
March 27, 2019 | Jyoti Shinoli
Big Pharma kills small fish in Kovvada
After polluting industries destroyed fishing in this village in Andhra Pradesh, the struggling fisherfolk, who have tried other livelihood options, recall a past of abundant marine life – while facing an uncertain future
September 21, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
Powerless in a power-surplus state
Thousands of villagers in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh will have to leave their land and livelihood to make way for a nuclear power plant – when the state has enough energy and the new capacity will cost a lot
September 14, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
Shifting sands and changing tides
PARI presents a documentary on the fisherfolk of Goa’s Calangute village, who describe how tourism and trawlers have eaten their fish, why many have left the trade, and how some continue to go to sea
July 12, 2018 | Sonia Filinto
A ‘food park’ that could heighten hunger
People in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district, battling the proposed dumping of 50,000 litres of polluted water from a mega aqua food park into the Gonteru drain every day, find they are fighting the state as well
January 17, 2018 | Sahith M.
Broken bow: Dhanushkodi's forgotten people
Half a century after a massive cyclone turned Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu into a ghost town, 400 fish worker families still live there. Abandoned all these years, they are now seen as obstacles to tourism development
January 10, 2018 | Deepti Asthana
Islands of hope, oceans of despair
The families of many fishermen in Kerala who remain missing at sea after cyclone Ockhi on November 30, are still hoping that, first Christmas – and now the New Year – will bring them a miracle
January 1, 2018 | Jisha Elizabeth
Unquiet on the riverfront
The fishing communities on the banks of the Krishna in Andhra Pradesh are being forced to leave their homes and livelihoods due to the state’s many riverside projects around Vijayawada and the 'new' Amaravati
October 18, 2017 | Rahul Maganti
Bringing up Mollie in Udayrampur
Ornamental fish farming in the villages of South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, requires meticulous work, and even though income from the trade is uneven, farmers ‘raise’ the fish like their own children
September 13, 2017 | Barnamala Roy
Card games by the bay
September 7, 2017 | Rahul M.
'Not an acre of farmland is left'
The Dalit labourers of Ankennagudem in Nadivada mandal of Andhra Pradesh have seen workdays collapse with farmland being converted into fish tanks. Incomes are shrinking, distress migrations are growing
July 14, 2017 | Rahul Maganti
Networking from home
July 1, 2017 | Samyukta Shastri
Casting a net in Fort Kochi
The signature shore-operated lift nets – or ‘Chinese fishing nets’ – at Fort Kochi in Kerala are now a barely viable source of income for fishermen
March 3, 2017 | V. Sasikumar
The migrant fish workers of Dongarpada
In a fishing hamlet at Madh in north Mumbai, Koli families employ labourers from the villages of Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states for various tasks – to bring the catch ashore, sort the fish, dry them and mend nets
February 24, 2017 | Shreya Katyayini
From river to plate: the journey of the Sundarbans tiger prawn
For village women in the Sundarbans, collecting tiger prawn seedlings is unrewarding and unsavoury work – though the delicacy fetches high prices for others later along the supply chain
January 11, 2017 | Urvashi Sarkar
The sting of bees and the tyranny of tigers
The ‘mouleys’ or honey collectors of the Sundarbans work without safeguards in dense and dangerous jungles – encountering crocodiles, tigers and the diktats of the Forest Department
September 23, 2016 | Urvashi Sarkar
A right to fish, a fight to live
“Why confiscate the canoes and hurt us in the stomach?"
