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Infusing resistance with creativity
ANINDITA SENGUPTA
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K.P. Sasi’s new film is a moving account of the struggles of India’s traditional fishing communities.
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“I derive my creativity from life. You need creativity to jump onto a running bus, to hang on in a local train in Mumbai, to cook sambar well. All protest is creative.”
Long struggle: The documentary captures the heroism of the fishing communities.
Whose sea is it anyway? The question begs an answer. Increasingly, the coast is under threat from industries like sand mining, tourism and organised fisheries, which erode the rich ecosystem and threaten the rights of traditional fishing communities.
The only piece of legislation that stands between these forces and the sea is the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification of 1991, which regulates industrial and commercial activity on the coasts. Since its institution, the CRZ notification has been violated or diluted several times and, in the wake of globalisation, is being viewed as an obstacle to “development”.
Bold indictment
Plans are afoot to replace it with the Coastal Zone Management (CZM) notification, based on the recommendations of the committee chaired by M.S. Swaminathan in 2005. Fishing communities in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, who have been struggling to protect their ‘mother sea’ for many years, are protesting this move for multiple reasons.
K.P. Sasi’s “Resisting Coastal Invasions”, a 52-minute documentary, vividly captures both the magnitude of the threat and the heroism of the fishing communities. It analyses the ramifications of the CZM notification and the dire consequences it will have on the 10,00,000 fisherfolk populating India’s coasts. The film is a bold indictment of the government’s plans to deregulate the coastal zones.
In person, Sasi minces no words either. “The traditional fishing community will be removed from the coast,” he says. “Already in Allepey district in Kerala, 40 per cent of the coast has been taken over by tourism. The same thing will happen everywhere.”
Fishing communities, already reeling from the many violations of the CRZ, are worried that the CZM notification will only make it easier for industries to invade the coast. They believe that the notification will threaten their land rights and open up all “vacant land” of coastal panchayats for commercial development and the proposed system of vulnerability mapping will threaten their livelihoods.
Sasi waxes indignant: “Who decides what is vulnerable? The state will decide and it will be led by the industrial lobby. The fisherfolk will lose their land rights and housing rights. The dilution of the CRZ creates space for the invasion of tourism and other industries.”
If K.P. Sasi sounds more like an activist than a filmmaker, it’s because he identifies himself as one. “I am an activist first. The filmmaking is an extension of that.”
View of creativity
He goes on to expand on his view of creativity. “I derive my creativity from life. Mainstream views of creativity are set in certain norms. If you write, act, make films, sing, you are creative. But I think life is creative. You need creativity to jump onto a running bus, to hang on in a local train in Mumbai, to cook sambar well. All protest is also creative. To make an impact, you have to protest in a creative manner.”
Sasi’s engagement with the fishing community’s struggles has been a long one. In 1985, he directed “We Who Make History” and “That Angry Arabian Sea”, which depicted the social and ecological problems of trawling and the subsequent protests and later, in 1989, he made “A Campaign Begins” on their national march.
“I have a very old equation with the Kerala fisherpeople,” he explains. “They have survived the struggle for a long time. We started working on this film soon after the struggle against CZM started. It took two years to make and I wouldn’t say it is a complete film. The problems shown are representative of the thousands of violations on the coast.”
For the film, Sasi travelled through Kerala and Tamil Nadu to capture some of the disastrous effects that coastal exploitation has already had — a depleted coastline, sea water flooding, traditional fisherfolk rendered homeless and landless.
The film exposes the sand mining mafia in Kolavipalam and the effect of the Sethusamudram project. It talks about how, ironically, the CRZ was used to prevent traditional fishing communities from returning to their homes after the tsunami.
The conflict between commercial interests and the lives of ordinary people is a common trope in Sasi’s work. Many of his films have explored the collision of industrialisation and so-called development with nature and the people whose lives are closely intertwined with it.
“A Valley Refuses to Die” (1990) explored the social and ecological problems created by the Narmada Dams and, more recently, in “The Source of Life for Sale” (2004), he exposed the impact of privatisation of water in India.
He attributes this to his beginnings in the highly politicised environment of JNU where he spent nights discussing both “political ideology and action”. “I came from a Left background,” he says, “so I was always interested in people’s struggles. When I started making films, I visited the fisherpeople communities. I used to go and sit with them. It excited me.”
Space for discussion
Sasi is optimistic about film as a medium of social change but with characteristic humility, he clarifies that he is not a representative of the movement, merely a supporter.
“Different people act at different levels. There are hundreds of ways that people can help. I believe that people respond to stimulus. A discussion is a process. You need several processes like that.” By consistently creating the space for such discussions through his films, Sasi infuses his art with his beliefs — and remarkably enough, does justice to both.
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