Owners to occupiers: Phumdi hut dwellers on Loktak
- Part 1 -

By Thingnam Anjulika Samom *

Forty-year old Salam Tamu has a tough time trying to sleep at her home in Arong Nongmaikhong in Thoubal district of Manipur, around 52 kilometres from the state capital Imphal.

On moonlit nights, she would spend hours gazing across the vast glistening sheet of the Loktak Lake wishing she was back in her one-room lake hut built on the floating vegetation island, locally known as phumdis.

The Loktak Lake at 236.21 sq km is the largest freshwater lake in Manipur as well as in northeast India. Around 12 % of the total population of the state - mostly living in 53 settlements in and around Loktak in Bishnupur, Imphal East and Thoubal district areas -- are dependent upon the resources of the lake for their sustenance, according to official reports.

While the lake water is used for irrigation, domestic purposes and power generation, the vegetation is harvested for use as food, fodder, fibre, fuel, handicrafts and medicinal purposes. The projected population of the state as of March, 2009 is estimated to be 26.91 lakh, as per the Economic Survey of Manipur, 2009-2010 report.

Ten years back, Tamu had been on the other side, standing on the phumdis and gazing homewards across the horizon to the distant lights on the mainland. "I would cry, missing my family and neighbours there. Now whenever I go to Arong Nongmaikhong, I am unable to stay there long. This hut in the middle of the water is more than a source of income, it is my home now," she says.

Phumdis in Loktak lake Photo by: Thingom Premarani

As per reports of the government implementing agency Loktak Development Authority (LDA), a census conducted among phum hut dwellers in 2001 recorded a population of 1977 fisherfolks living in a total of 733 phum huts. Among them 84 % are permanent dwellers who do not have a house in the mainland. Around 8 %, like Tamu, are temporary dwellers who have a house in mainland and keep their families there. The rest are migrant fishermen who come to the phums only during the fishing seasons.

Tamu and her husband Sobha cooks, eats, sleeps and dries fish on the roughly 250-300 sq ft of floating biomass. In the evenings Tamu would smoke some of the smaller fish she caught during the day using her dip net. Her husband Sobha is out fishing most of the day, staring with the first harvest from the trap cages at dawn. Tamu would row out early in the morning in their canoe with the first harvest and the smoked fish to sell it at the nearest market.

"This is how we have survived for so many years," she narrates. Her only son, Chaoba, had stayed back with her in-laws in Arong Nongmaikhong to study at a nearby school. He got a job with a security agency about a month back.

With almost 6.5 lakh educated unemployed looking for placements, there is little scope for Tamu and her husband, who had barely literate, to find proper earning avenues in both the organized and unorganized sectors in the state. The situation is compounded by the fact that apart from the government jobs, there are very few avenues in terms of industries or private organizations in Manipur.

Tamu's neighbor on the lake, 39-year old Ayingbi too had left behind three of her children with her in-laws at Thongam Mondum when she came with her husband Herachandra and youngest child, four-year old Thoibi, to eke a living on Loktak.

As Ayingbi and her husband had earlier fished at Pumlen pat, another lake located in Thoubal-Bishnupur district border area, the hard work is routine for her. However staying on a hut built on a floating island of vegetation in the middle of the lake is a new experience.

"When we were working at Pumlen, we could return home in the evening and be with our children. But when our expenses rose with the children's education and rising price of essential commodities, whatever we earned was not enough. We heard that earnings were more on Loktak, so we came here last winter," she said.

Life on the floating huts is no idyllic vacation either, even if the setting is. Dwindling fish stock and increasing competition means that profit depends on how much one can invest. "For us poor people, even Rs.10,000 is a huge sum. But for those investing from Rs.30,000-40,000 on nets alone, earning Rs. 1000 a day is no big deal. We have to make do with Rs 100-200," says Tamu.

Added to that is having to buy all essential commodities from the mainland. "Fish and water are the only freely available items," says Ayingbi, adding, "But we have to be careful about the water too." The Loktak water is getting increasingly polluted due to inflow of polluted water from the rivers, especially those like Nambul and Nambol whose course falls through urbanized sectors of the state. Also, the phumdis have no sanitation or drainage system - everything going straight into the water body.

Medical facilities and schools are also all on the mainland. Small children staying with them are confined to their 10ft by 10ft one-room huts where they sleep, cook, eat and also process their fish. "When we are at the market selling the fish, our hearts are always unsettled thinking of our children back at the lake. Water surrounds them, there have been so many cases of young children drowning in the lake," says Ayingbi.

Despite all these shortcomings, the lake is their guardian. "Loktak is our mother. We are able to feed our children and run our family only because of her grace. Where else will we go?" says 27-year old Salam Pramo of Nongmaikhong in Thoubal district who has been living in a phum hut for three years now. Pramo and her husband Kabi too had chosen Loktak over the Ungamen Lake located close to their home in view of the better fish catch and earning avenue that the Loktak offered.

But insecurity dogs them here too. A recent legislation passed by the state government, The Manipur Loktak Lake (Protection) Bill, 2006, defines "a person who dwells in huts or houses on the phumdis or uses the phumdis" as "occupiers."

The Act aims "to provide for administration, control, protection, improvement, conservation and development of the natural environment of the Loktak Lake and for matters connected with as incidental thereto."

The Act further prohibits building of hut or house on phumdis inside the Core Zone of the lake as well as engaging in athapum fishing in the lake, among others. The 70.30 Sq. Km. Core Zone demarcated under the act include the area where the phum huts of Tamu, Pramo and Ayingbi are located.

To be continued....

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* Thingnam Anjulika Samom wrote this article for Hueiyen Lanpao (English Edition). This article was webcasted on September 30 2010.

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