Jesuin George Fernandes
When fishing was traditional, Goa was self-sufficient in fish. The whole village enjoyed the bounty of a bountiful catch and the surplus fish, including tiger prawns was used to manure coconut plantations. When there was no catch, Goans quietly enjoyed their ‘xit-koddi’ with ‘khara’ and ‘para’.
A large section of villagers in coastal villages were ‘rampon workers’. They used to be paid a share of the catch depending on rank and seniority, which they either sold off at the site itself or their women carried it to the village fish market, the ‘Tinto’.
The ramponkars who were well-known names in the village were an affluent lot too, with children studying in boarding schools and their women literally covered in gold.
The bhatkars (landlords) on the other hand were losing their hold in the village hierarchy with the socio-economic-political upheaval of post-liberation Goa and legislations like the Mundkar Act of 1971.
It was in this scenario that Pedru Bhatkar, a well known landlord from my neighboring village of Utorda, actually ventured into the hitherto detested by the elites fishing business, became a ramponkar and did pretty well for himself.
The fish sold (wrapped in teakwood leaves) at my village tinto was all local; even during the monsoons when the rough sea made fishing impossible elsewhere, fish came to the Cansaulim fish market from the sheltered, all-season fishing bay of Hollant, Velsao.
Cansaulim was undoubtedly the favourite hunting ground for fish lovers from hinterland villages like Verna and Nuvem!
Now and then, whenever there was a bumper catch of mackerels, huge out-of-state trucks made their majestic presence felt on narrow and winding village roads- one of the spots where these trucks were loaded was right in front of my house.
The whole neighbourhood would gather around this beehive of activity where an army of Lamani women labourers decked in their colourful jingling attires would scurry up and down from the seashore with basket loads of fresh fish while the men handled huge ice blocks and loaded the fish between thick layers of crushed ice.
The guys in charge would invite us to take home as much fish as we could carry, but we children were more interested in the ice! Somewhere down the line the ramponkars may have got over-ambitious “ perhaps they wanted to become bhatkars “ and slowly but surely, fish started going beyond the reach of the common man.
It was at this stage that mechanized trawlers owned by the business community appeared on the scene. The traditional ramponkars/fishermen under the leadership of the late Matanhy Saldanha got into a long drawn tussle with the trawler owners to guard their turf and in the process most of them themselves became trawler owners!
Those who thought that in the issuing competition Goans consumers would get a better deal were all proved wrong: the simple fish business only got more fishy and complicated!
Gone are the days when men would catch and their women would sell. The fish sold at our Tinto today by a cartel of fish vendors could be from anywhere as far as Tamil Nadu and Calcutta. A lot of my fellow villagers now go to Verna or stop over in Nuvem to buy fish because its a lot more cheaper there!
Interestingly, during the monsoon season, the fish vendors in Margao all claim that their fish is from Cansaulim!
Not so surprisingly, even before the recent ban or restrictions on fish imports were imposed, fish prices started soaring - kingfish that was sold at Rs 450 per kg before the ban was announced, skyrocketed to Rs 900 per kg.
How can they bring fish from a thousand miles and still sell it cheaper than the local fishermen can afford; one is left wondering. After all, formalin only preserves the fish and does not multiply it!
If truth be told, local fishermen can sell their catch at a rate cheaper than that of imported fish and still make more money than by selling it to fish agents, but the powerful well-organized fish mafia deviously does not allow this to happen.
A couple of days back, I spoke to Olencio Simoes of GRE and inquired as to why they were not grabbing the opportunity to demand and get a separate section of the wholesale and retail fish market to sell their catch. I am told that such a demand has been pending with the government since a long time.
Fish being a highly-perishable item, lack of cold storage facilities is a prime factor that renders our local fishermen easy prey to the manipulation of the fish mafia who play divide and rule to optimum effect. In the prevailing situation, the local fishermen seem pretty content to sell their catch at low prices to fish agents.
Instead of providing subsidies, the government should think of supporting local traditional fishermen by providing cold storage facilities and a separate space at city fish markets. This can be a win-win for local fishermen as well as the local consumers and could go a long way in breaking the backbone of the fish mafia to make Goa self-sufficient in unadulterated fish all over again!
