But when health authorities in Lahore launched an anti-measles campaign in local schools, they learnt that a favourable political and social environment was not the only prerequisite for a smooth vaccination campaign. Some private schools in the city — including the largest and most well known — are denying access to vaccination teams because they first want parents to give them the go-ahead. Why parents should be reluctant to grant permission is not clear. Their behaviour, however, is neither exceptional nor extraordinary. In a socially stratified and hierarchical society like ours it is not strange for people to behave as if they are above all others and, most importantly, above all laws and other societal obligations. What is good for the goose cannot be good for the gander, especially if the latter has a distinctive pedigree. A mass vaccination campaign is a good social leveller because it seeks to save everyone — the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the mighty and the weak — and it is shunned precisely for this reason. But treating some people and places as exceptional amounts to conferring a special status on them and placing them above the rest of society. If those resisting vaccination under religious pretexts were flouting government policy, so are those doing it because of their privileged status. And this is not a matter to be taken lightly. Recently the Belgian government even sent two parents to jail for refusing to have polio drops administered to their children.

OVER five million people in Pakistan derive sustenance from fisheries, mostly in coastal Sindh and Balochistan but also riverine Punjab and the NWFP.

The current situation promises a horrendous future for fisherfolk. There are several indicators of declining subsistence incomes — expanding exclusion, dwindling catch, increasing costs, low and insecure fish prices.

Consider GDP from fisheries: Rs15bn in 1999-2000, but lower thereafter until a sparse increase in 2005-06. Throughout, production remained well below 654,000 tons, the quantum of the catch in 1999-2000. Market GDP is around Rs20bn in fisheries. Even if all of it went to fisherfolk, the average monthly income would work out to be less than Rs400 per capita which is substantially lower than a conservative need of Rs1,000. An insignificant number have adequate supplementary income.

Bleakly, unequal income distribution worsens with fisherfolk’s lopsided shares in losses and gains. Should they make up by perversely consuming stocks? Use ‘trash fish’ as cheap chicken feed? Let’s ask Uncle Sam for soya bean instead of instruments of terror.

Sanitising exports to the EU is a milder issue of (mis)management. A structural diagnosis is essential for a commitment to development for men and women. Central policy goals must embrace ecology and economy, requiring changes in community and polity. An alternative is to encourage innovative self-employment.

Upstream mega dams (Tarbela), barrages (Sukkur) and major canals have devastated Indus fisheries. Tens of thousands of fisherfolk have been displaced by the agricultural pollution of Manchhar lake under governments in ‘civvies’. The fisherfolk of Ghazi-Barotha/Tarbela suffer because Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi ‘need’ air conditioners. Badin slowly vanishes under sea water intrusion.

There is need to make a beginning by halting the widespread ecological degradation of natural fishery systems. This is not possible without eliminating exploitation. If fisheries stocks are to be regenerated and conserved, several restrictions will have to be imposed on harvesting. A (vessel) licence plus (species catch) quota system may reduce excessive and destructive fishing.

Regeneration requires reduced catch, especially in fragile zones. Hence we need subsistence funds for fisherfolk — not as charity but as a citizen’s right to universal socio-economic security. Otherwise debt bondage will worsen, leading to eventual exclusion from richer fisheries.

Maintenance, let alone expansion, of fisheries requires substantial monthly fresh water flows throughout the Indus river, especially via the delta to the sea. Floods are part of the solution. But building more dams, barrages or canals will not help since they vastly diminish fertile silt flows.

Publicly subsidised canal-fed agriculture needs rational water use, thus reducing direct wastage as well as losses incurred via ecologically damaging cropping patterns. This will also reduce waterlogging and salinity which will in turn raise productivity and expand cultivable land.

However much fresh water is available, it cannot offset the enormous load of untreated, hazardous effluent dumped into the Indus by agriculture and industry, depleting and degrading fisheries. When will the government faithfully ensure that private and public polluters fulfil their obligations? Reducing water to agriculture may decrease pollution but residual drainage still requires treatment before it is released into rivers and the sea. The LBOD is a disaster, the RBOD will be another. Why must the Ravi remain a sewer?

Public or private aquaculture is not a substitute. It excludes the landless, and drainage is environmentally damaging to nearby land and water, as seen in Bangladesh and Kerala.

Fisherfolk gain from expanded stocks according to access. The contract system for inland water bodies must yield to a licence-quota system managed by local fisherfolk. Marine fisheries require a complete ban on deep-sea trawlers, perhaps all trawling. SME subsidies to encourage deep-sea fishing will be perverse — ecologically and socially — even as income and exports rise temporarily. Fairness demands uniform entitlement to licence-catch quotas across all men, women and children among boat owners as well as non-owners — i.e. crew members and other labour employed in fisheries.

A natural priority to fisherfolk will retire many vessels except when they ‘purchase’ quotas from other fisherfolk. Cooperatives could replace private ownership of large vessels. Residence in fishing locales can be an effective bar to hijacking by capital. Actual labour in fishing would promote female rights to work. Less waste requires better and larger storage facilities on vessels. Destructive nets and other equipment need replacement while public funds will need to be reallocated.

Even if there is much expansion and greater inclusiveness in fisheries, all fisherfolk are unlikely to escape poverty. Hence public funds must be earmarked for alternative sources of income, education and skill enhancement. Working capital could be set aside for self-employment and physical infrastructure improved.

To provide economic security to offset seasonal variability in catch, it is necessary to enforce the national minimum wage and ensure decent and stable prices for catch. Islamabad should remove irrational exclusion in coastal fisheries. It is unjustified that the failure of two neighbours to sort out their differences on maritime boundaries should cause hundreds of fishermen to be incarcerated, leading to the ruin of thousands of their folk year after year. Why should the UN Law of the Sea be violated in this way?

Islamabad will have to develop local natural resource management by abolishing the concurrent legislative list that allows predatory claims. Action is required at all levels of government and Islamabad can lead the way by reverting authority to provincial governments who should cede power to local governments without which security of livelihood is not possible.

Devolution must go below the district or city government level. This need is amply illustrated by the cases of poverty-ridden Rehri Goth, Mubarak Goth or Bhit Island. Accountable only to international capital, our economic managers consistently demonstrate their inability to facilitate development. Hence any agenda for socio-economic security must be universal: based on larger citizen autonomy and lesser bureaucratic discretion.

This favours redistribution of assets rather than of income. In fisheries this is a relatively easy task, because water is largely in the public domain. Of course, the flour crisis demonstrated the paucity of private resources confronted by gross abuse of power.

Public policy would ban expropriation of islands and beaches, as exclusive residences and playgrounds or to safeguard naval security. Sugarland for yuppies is a poison pill for Abdur Rehman Goth in Hawkesbay. The navy should retreat from encroachment on Mubarak Goth.

No tsunami is needed after the coastal development nightmares of Washington, Manila and Tokyo. Enhancing electoral legitimacy requires a rapid shift in economic policy which reverses market terrorism as pine nuts for a few but peanuts for most.

Citizens across the world need safety nets against predatory state-donor actions. May a constitutional court be more effective than the Council of Common Interests? Or should South Asia emulate the EU in placing citizen rights above state interests?

pakistanfisherfolk@yahoo.com