India’s reiteration at Colombo meet heightens possibility of resumption of fishermen-level talks

India and Sri Lanka aim to resume fishermen-level talks after years of negotiations and unresolved issues on bottom trawling.

India’s reiteration of the need for an early meeting of fishing communities of India and Sri Lanka has heightened the possibility of the resumption of fishermen-level talks.

The call was reiterated at the meeting of the bilateral Joint Working Group (JWG) on Fisheries, a body of officials of the two governments, in Colombo on Tuesday.  In fact, the JWG itself met after a gap of over two-and-a-half years.  If the negotiations take place between the communities of the two country, this would be after a gap of eight years.

Since the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in May 2009, the fishing communities held six rounds of talks, starting from August 2010. The two sides could not resolve their differences, which essentially centred on only one issue - the practice of bottom trawling being practised by Indian fishermen, to be precise, those living in districts of Tamil Nadu which border the Palk Bay. 

In fact, in their August 2010 meeting, the fishermen even reached an understanding, which required only approval of their respective governments. The consensus reached by them pertained to bottom trawling - the number of fishing days getting reduced to 70 days in a year with two days a week instead of three days; the duration of fishing for nine-and-a-half months instead of the existing 10-and-a-half months; no permission to trawlers within a distance of three nautical miles from the Sri Lankan coast inside the Palk Bay, and reduction in the length of fishing to 12 hours per trip.  But, when they met in Colombo seven months later, the discussion was more on when the Tamil Nadu fishermen would end their fishing in Sri Lankan waters. The response of this group of the Tamil Nadu fishermen was that it required more time. 

The two sides again met in Chennai in January 2014 and a follow-up meeting was held in Colombo in May 2014. Again, there was a lull in the process of negotiations. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit to Sri Lanka in mid-March 2015, publicly favoured the resumption of talks, the fishing communities met in Chennai within a matter of 10 days - March 24. The next meeting took place in New Delhi on November 2, 2016, after which the governments of the two countries held high-level talks. The Sri Lankan fishermen had rejected a demand from their Indian counterparts for a three-year transition period.

Given the trend of arrest of Tamil Nadu fishermen and seizure of their boats in the last four and odd months, the situation is far from a solution.