From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERHOW CHANGE HAPPENS CASE STUDYTHE FISHING COMMUNITIES OF TIKAMGARHTwo hundred men and sari-clad women sit clustered under giant shadetrees on the banks of a dried-up lake: a small pond choked with lilies is allthat remains of what should be a lake teeming with fish, built by kingsover 800 years ago, and recently restored by the community. Birdsong andvoices pierce the dry heat. The land is parched, but the story is uplifting.‘Previously we covered our faces in public,’ laughs one woman.‘Now wetalk back, even to our fathers-in-law.’ And not just fathers-in-law. Thepeople of Tikamgarh have come on an extraordinary journey, winningunprecedented rights to the fishponds, and transforming their own livesalong the way.CASE STUDYLandlords and contractors have traditionally controlled most fishpondsin the impoverished Bundelkhand region of India. Struggles forthe right to fish and to use the fertile land exposed when the ponds dry outduring drought have been violent and continuous, but the 45,000 fishingfamilies of the Bundelkhand seem to be gaining the upper hand.Over the past 20 years, the introduction of new varieties of fish and thepractice of stocking ponds with fish fry raised in nurseries have greatlyincreased yields. Rather than favouring poor people, however, such technologicalimprovements prompted landlords and contractors to seizeeven the smallest of the region’s 1,000 ponds.Protests led the fisheries minister in the Congress Party governmentof Madhya Pradesh, who was himself from a fishing community, to pushthrough legislation in 1996 that granted leases to fishers’ co-operatives.A wave of organisation in poor fishing communities followed. Vikalp,an NGO led by Om Prakash Rawat (a former State Electricity Boardengineer), played a crucial role in helping them to establish co-operatives.Contractors retaliated by setting up bogus co-operatives of their ownand using other tricks to get around the legislation, and when that failedthey resorted to violence. In a particularly bloody struggle overAchrumata Pond, fishers fought a pitched battle with thugs hired by landlordsto steal their fish. The thugs won the first round, burning down thevillagers’ huts, but the victims then turned to other villages for solidarity.146