Vallams ply on, powered by motors

Nattika is an overgrown fishing village in Kerala — an amorphous entity between a village and a town.

The village became world famous when, 50 years ago, noted Malayalam writer Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s novel Chemmeen (prawn) was made into a movie here by director Ramu Kariat. Replete with visual grandeur and soulful music, the iconic movie, which told a tragic love story woven into the lives and beliefs of the fishing community, went on to receive national and international recognition.

Fish is a steady part of people’s diet in Nattika. But the way fish is caught and sold has changed over the decades. The wooden boats, or vallams , that were used for the picturisation of Chemmeen are still in use today. However, since the 1980s, they also have outboard motors, giving them greater reach into the sea.

Complementing these small boats are the slightly larger fishing vessels, which can stay longer in the sea and also go deeper.

These boats cannot land on the Nattika beach and instead go to the Munakkakadavu or Chettuva fish landing jetties, 12 km northwards.

At the beginning of this century, a growing network of mobile phone towers and the decreasing cost of the instruments and usage fee gave a new independence to the fishworkers along Nattika beach. They could negotiate with the trader while still at sea and choose which beach/jetty to land their craft. This gave them greater bargaining power.

Pre-cut fillet

New trends are emerging in the way fish is sold in Nattika. In addition to hawkers going door-to-door on scooters, there are the retail platforms along the highway where, like pre-cut vegetables, cleaned, cut and filleted fish is sold to those returning from work in the evening. The fish travel from the vendor to the pot with minimum effort by the consumer.

That such innovative methods of marketing are being tried out in the coastal villages shows there is a growing market for fish in Kerala. A recent study by the Madras School of Economics (MSE) confirms this, with the finding that Kerala and West Bengal are the only two coastal States where fish consumption has increased among the coastal communities in the past three decades. In others, while fish production has increased, consumption of fish protein has reduced among coastal communities.

“Though increased production and trade could mean increase in economic returns, the decrease in consumption has nutritional and food security consequences for the coastal populations,” said Kavi Kumar, professor at the MSE and one of the authors of the report.

An average citizen of Kerala consumes more fish compared to counterparts in other States, and thus the fish markets in Nattika and elsewhere have robust sales. According to a 2014 report by the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), an average Keralite consumed 22.7 kg of fish annually, compared to the national average of 2.85 kg.

The MSE study notes that fish consumption is highest in Kerala and Goa, increasing in West Bengal, and falling in all the other coastal States.

Rural consumption dips

Within coastal areas, fish consumption has fallen substantially in rural areas while remaining more or less stable in urban areas. On an all-India basis, urban consumption has increased.

In Kerala and West Bengal, the quantity of fish consumed has increased, as also the amount each family spends on buying fish. This is markedly different from the trend in other coastal States — such as Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Pondicherry — where although fish consumption has decreased, the average expenditure on fish has increased.

This implies that despite spending more on fish, they are unable to consume as much as they did in the 1980s, said Kumar.

In the past three decades, production from both marine and inland fisheries grew by 350 per cent across the country. Marine fish exports also grew nine-fold. The infrastructure for processing, storing and transporting fish is more developed for the export market.

As fish is a perishable commodity, domestic sales follow a pattern — about half the catch is sold near the landing jetties, around 43 per cent is sold within a radius of 200 km, and only 5 per cent goes beyond.

The steady demand in Kerala has ensured that the marketing network in and around fishing villages such as Nattika continues to develop. The price difference between the landing centres and the retail end can be 200 per cent or more, even in the small towns and villages.

Fifty years after Chemmeen , the fishing community of Nattika continues to thrive.

The writer is an environment journalist and blogger based in Chennai

COMMENT NOW