Women’s perspectives of small-scale fisheries and environmental change in Chilika Lagoon, India

Chilika lagoon in Odisha is Asia’s largest brackish-water lagoon and a Ramsar wetland of International Importance, recognised for its biodiversity. It sustains approximately 150 fishing villages and over 400,000 fishers. Since the 1980s, not only has aquaculture expanded, but an artificial sea mouth to the Bay of Bengal was opened in 2001 in order to adjust the lake’s salinity and thereby increase fish production. These changes have disrupted the lake’s fragile ecosystem, pushed fishermen into unemployment, and accelerated large-scale outmigration. This paper looks at the gendered ecological repercussions that follow, and find them differentiated by caste as well.

The study is based on work in two villages: Khatisahi, populated by the oppressor-caste Khatia, and Biripadar, by the oppressed-caste Khandra. Khatia women are traditionally restricted by caste custom from paid labour outside the home; as fishermen’s incomes collapse, they find themselves financially precarious and culturally prohibited from wage work. Khandra women do not have such restrictions and have increasingly taken up construction, road work, and rice cultivation for non-fisher contractors. However, 90 percent of them reported feeling unsafe travelling through the village, while 50 percent reported experiencing violence or harassment from non-fishers. Outmigration has become the dominant adaptation for both groups, but its terms are gendered by caste: Khandra women migrate independently for textile and construction work to South India; Khatia women migrate with their husbands and are less likely to earn independently. The paper is included here for its gender- and caste-sensitive examination of the fisheries sector. It demonstrates how the same ecological crisis produces entirely different experiences depending on women’s caste location.