Sindh’s waters and it's kings

Fisher folk of District Sanghar struggle under the yoke of cruel policy and an oppressive landlord, says Emi Foulk

On a warm morning in April last year, two armed men shot holes through the bottom of Yameen Mallah’s boat. It was 8 am and the fisherman was late; if he was to take in any fish before the sun rose too high, he had to do so within the next hour. Had he been out on the lake as usual, perhaps it would not have been he who was targeted when the black Mazda pick-up pulled up, and men, brandishing pistols, jumped out, firing at and destroying six vessels. Perhaps it would not be he who today plies the only trade he knows with an old,
inflated tube in lieu of a boat. I meet Yameen on a recent September evening in his home village of Soomar Malla in a rural corner of Sindh. A cluster of mud and straw huts sitting on the banks of the Chotiari Reservoir in Sanghar District, Soomar Malla feels – and, in many ways, is – isolated in time, even from Pakistan’s often impoverished take on modernity. The village, surrounded on three sides by low lying brush and desert, has no electricity or running water. Its 700 residents are all fishermen and women, and have been for generations. They share the name that designates their profession and their caste: Mallah. They are known as Ameer ul Bahar, King of Water.

The title’s cruel irony is not lost on any- one. The fisher folk of Soomar Malla and its
neighbouring villages are among the poorest in Pakistan. They describe themselves as “wild people,” illiterate, neglected by society and helplessly cast into a de facto system of bonded labour by the wealthy landlords who control the district. Sanghar is known for its entrenched and brutal feudalism even within Sindh, arguably the most feudal of Pakistan’s four provinces. Far from being a king, Yameen can now no longer access much of the Chotiari Reservoir’s deeper waters, where fish are most plentiful. His catch has suffered. “With this tube, I cannot even earn enough to pay for food and clothing. How can I buy a boat?” he asks plaintively as he holds up a dusty black ring of rubber, tied together with strips of plastic. But justice comes slow to Sanghar, if at all. The men who shot Yameen Mallah’s boat are neither anonymous nor in hiding.

One, according to Yameen, is a thug hired by a local landlord, Asif Nizamani, a member of PML-F. The other is Qasim Zardari, a relation of President Asif Ali Zardari. When Yameen turned to the police to protest the destruction of his boat, they arrested him. The charge, he was told, was “stealing fish”. He is currently out on Rs 50,000 bail, though there is no chance of him running. With a salary of roughly Rs 50 a day, he simply cannot afford to leave. Yet, for all of Yameen’s hardships, it did not matter
to Nizamani or Qasim Zardari whose boat was destroyed, as long as a boat was destroyed. It was not the victim that was important, but the message.

On April 21 2007, then chief minister of Sindh Arbib Rahim announced the abolition of the contract system over the province’s inland waterways. The contract system, first implemented as a means to increase government revenue shortly after Pakistan’s independence in 1947, has since been used by Sanghar’s wealthy landlords as a means to bleed and isenfranchise fishing communities. Under the system, contracts for fishing rights on individual water bodies are sold by the state to the highest bidder, who, in turn, doles out permission to fishermen under the condition that the contractor retains the right to purchase a portion of their catch – at the rate he determines.

The last clause has been an open invitation for abuse. In practice, contractors set prices at roughly a quarter of the market rate and then purchase the entirety of a isherman’s catch, thus milking him of all profit. Unable to provide for his family, the fisherman has no
recourse but to borrow from the contractor, ensnaring himself in a downward spiral of debt. It is not unheard of for fishermen, unable to meet the minimum payment on their debts, to “disappear”. Landlords, locals say, throw them into private jails or work them on their estates as slave labour.

Asif Nizamani, who held the fishing rights to the Chotiari Reservoir from 2001 until the abolition of the contract system six years later, had a lot to lose with Chief Minister Rahim’s announcement; and, according to fishermen of the reservoir’s surrounding villages and the
Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), a Karachi based grassroots organisation that advocates fishermen’s rights, he did everything he could to intimidate fishermen into a de facto contract system, new laws eliminating the ‘middleman’ notwithstanding. In July 2007, Nizamani won a court-issued status quo order barring fishing in the reservoir without his consent; and when the order expired this August, it sparked another round of intimidation and protest. Things have improved slightly only in the last two weeks, after now-President
Zardari phoned his relative, Qasim, and told him to withdraw is “personal guards,” who had been stopping and beating fishermen at illegal check posts, from the reservoir “within
five minutes,” according to a local official from Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party.

But the problems of Sanghar’s fisher folk are far from over. Water levels in the Chotiari Reservoir have dropped precipitously, a result, according to PFF, of Nizamani’s influence over the Sindh Irrigation Department. The Nara Canal, which funnels water from the Indus River into the reservoir, has been all but dammed up. The contract system has been abolished, but the fisher folk, it seems, remain under the yoke of the ex-contractor. After spending a night in Bhulal Village, I wake up just after dawn to witness the fishermen at work. Aboard a motorised fishing boat – a rare sign of prosperity among fishermen here – I am able to overtake the lone wooden boats adrift on the reservoir. When we come upon Shan Ali Mallah, he is scooping water out of the bottom of his boat with a broken plastic jug. Even a small leak costs money to repair, and Shan’s catch this morning, one tiny shrimp of a fish that will bring in Rs. 20, won’t be much help. Others aren’t doing much better. Though they’ve been on the water for four hours, Ibrahim Mallah and his brother and father have netted only two mukkar fish.

Mukkar are an inexpensive breed that sells for Rs. 40 per kilogram, and the two fish won’t be enough to support Ibrahim’s family. But at 8:40 am, the sun is already high on the horizon.

The day’s fishing, until evening at least, is over. Back in the village, Mahmoud Umar Mallah, a 25-year-old father of four, describes the current situation. “When we were under the contract system, we could not survive. We could not buy extra food, clothing, anything. But it’s not only the contractual system but also the fish in the water – there is no water
and there is no fish.” With Rs. 50,000 in debt, Mahmoud cannot envision a better life even for his children. Residents of Bhulal hired a teacher last year, but families were unable to meet the Rs. 50 per month fee and the teacher quit after only three months on the job. Without an education, Mahmoud worries, his children will have no alternative but to follow in his footsteps, fishing for a pittance under appalling conditions. Fishermen are treated with more disdain in Sindh than anywhere else in Pakistan, where landlords’ attitudes, and in turn fish rates, are better, Mahmoud’s father, Mahmoud Hashim Mallah, 58, tells me. But, he says, fishermen here have no choice but to struggle and to pray.

Poverty keeps the fishermen ignorant andcompliant, or at least that is what the landlords hope. Here in Bhulal, many cannot tell me what America is and insist India is a city. If anything is to change for these humble villagers along the Chotiari Reservoir, it must begin with a reformation in the sale of fish and with it, in the oppressive, lawless rule of Sindh’s feudal lords. The words of PFF’s Sanghar branch president, Abdul Rehman, are worth remembering: “Our message to the entire world, to Lahore, Karachi, to other fishermen fellows, is that we need support to completely abolish this contract system and educate our children about their basic rights so that they can live an esteemed life, a respectable life, the life from which they are not living as an outcast.” ????

This article appeared in The Friday Times.

A longer version of this article will appear in Naked Punch Asia. Emi Foulk is a features editor at TFT.