Twenty-one years ago, the BOBP started its tryst with small-scale fisherfolk in the Bay of Bengal region. Three phases later -with a record of hundreds of activities in the seven countries, many successes and a few failures as well - the tryst acquires a new meaning. Hope emerges of a stronger, more enduring partnership - with fisherfolk, with membercountries, with the international community
The bulk of the fish harvested in the Bay of Bengal comes from the small-scale sector. The Bay's many million fisherfolk toil with little reward to catch fish that feed not only people in the region, but outside it too. They belong to the lowest, the least privileged strata of society; they generally earn far less than the national average. With hamlets scattered along the coastline and the interior reaches of the estuaries, the fisher community is the last to receive basic amenities and services such as roads, water, electricity, education, health care. Generally illiterate as a community, the fishers are ever at the mercy of exploitative middlemen.
Sandwiched between land on the one side and the deep sea on the other, the small-scale fisher has very few options. If the land is totally alien to him, the deep sea is inscrutable, unpredictable, enigmatic. The narrow territorial waters and their contiguous areas have been his home and hearth for centuries. His ancestors have for countless decades treasured the near-shore waters. Anything outside the coastal waters is still beyond his ken..read more