Bhaskar Rao Patil looks weary as he talks about his experience with declining catches over the last few years. He is the president of the fishermen’s colony in Bankot, a small fishing village near Mumbai on the Western coast of India. The lines on his face tell the story of his life. His hands are calloused, gnarled and strong. One can tell that he has seen better days. His clothes look clean but threadbare. Seated in very modest surroundings along with a few other fishermen, he talks wistfully about bygone days, while the others nod in agreement. “Gone are the days when we could fish easily. We could catch 50 pamplets (the local term for pomfrets, a high value catch) in one hour. Today it’s hard to find 5 even if we fish for the whole day. In the past, five people depended on one boat but today one boat can support only one to two people. Our life is under pressure.”  His deep-set eyes turn to the horizon far away. He points to the dredgers and the big barges in the distant part of the river. They are his nemesis. The barges are filled to the brim with sand, a commodity that is dredged up from the rivers and transported to the trucks waiting along the banks. He explains how the local fishermen today live in constant fear for their livelihood because of them..

From a distance, the dredgers and barges look pretty harmless, but, they’re destroying the livelihood of these fishermen and many others in the region. Up close, the barges look big enough to hold about 10 to 20 boats of these fishermen. And when they are filled to the brim with wet sand, no prizes for guessing who wins if they crash into small boats of simple fisher folk. The fishermen say accidents happen fairly often and their nets too are frequently damaged but local officials are unwilling to register complaints against the barges as they are owned by ‘Big hands’ (i.e. elites). It feels like a losing battle for these local fishermen. They are up against a powerful, wealthy, well-connected and sometimes ruthless politician-builder nexus. The dredgers use suction pumps to suck up as much sand as they can, all of which is headed to the construction industry in Mumbai, the financial hub of the country. The commodity they take away to build a thriving city is the very lifeblood of these fishermen’s livelihood. 

Fishing is a seasonal occupation here as one cannot fish in the monsoon season which lasts from June to August. What the fishermen earn in three to five months of the fishing season is what they and their families have to survive on for the rest of the year. But seasons don’t matter to the dredgers and barges. They operate non-stop, all year round, shipping away precious sand to more profitable places. Most of the fishermen in these communities are illiterate. The few that can read and write have only completed primary education and most aren’t trained on any other income-generating skills. In the absence of alternate employment, they have to depend on money-lenders and fish traders to survive the lean period and this keeps them in a state of perpetual indebtedness. As the talk continues, Bhaskar Rao Patil’s wife Kanti Bai enters the room with a tray of steaming hot tea and some snacks. She chips in with her part of the story. The women of the village play an equal role in society in these villages. The men fish, but it is the women who sell the fish in the markets. With tears gleaming in her eyes she says “We’d like to send our children to good schools but we hardly make any money to spare these days.” 

Rampant illegal sand mining has resulted in falling fish stocks because dredging destroys the spawning habitat of the fish and muddies the water. As a result, only a few of the most resilient of fish are able to survive and they are not as profitable for the fishermen. When their boats are damaged by the barges, they are often unable to get bank loans to repair or replace them without a registered police complaint and lack of collateral property. So it drives them deeper into poverty. These people have been fishermen for generations and they know their river like the back of their hand. But sand mining is soon making their traditional knowledge obsolete. Indiscriminate sand mining makes rivers more violent as it deepens river channels and causes erosion of riverbanks. With families to feed and fewer fish left in the rivers, the fishermen are forced to head deeper towards the sea. But they are ill-equipped for the dangers this presents and they face a double whammy. Out in deeper waters, the tides have almost doubled in height, thanks to land reclamation around Mumbai. These fishermen are completely out of their depth in these waters and the only skills they have are rendered inadequate.  

It is said that Jesus called his disciples and made them fishers of men. But here around Mumbai, with no leader to show them a way, 80,000 fishermen have turned to fishing for sand. They know for certain that their actions ensure their children will never be able to fish in these waters. At least not the kind of fish they used to catch. They know their identity and way of life is at stake. But that seems to be the only way they can feed their families. They pin their hopes instead on getting their children educated and sending them to the cities so they will never have to live a life of such hardship. For now, they are able to get by. The demand for sand has been increasing. 

Mumbai, a city that never sleeps and never stops. With an urban population pegged at just over 22 million, it is the most populated city in India and the eighth most populated city in the world. The massive growth in population has occurred over a relatively short time span though. In 1991, the city had just 9.9 million people. Nearly half of the influx has been due to the search for better employment prospects. The number of super-rich too has increased exponentially. Across 25 global cities, Mumbai has witnessed the highest growth in the number of  Ultra-High Networth Individuals over the last decade. The world’s most expensive home (at the time of completion) - Antilia , 27 storeys tall, with 3 helipads, underground parking for 160 cars and a staff of 600 people to maintain the house can be found here. It is named after a mythical island in the Atlantic. For the owner, it was the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream. Mumbai after all is the ‘City of Dreams’ and millions flock to the city hoping for a chance at a better life. It plays host to a wide range of industries right from manufacturing to cutting-edge technology and  houses 2 major stock exchanges. The Headquarters of many Multi-National Companies and large Indian companies are based here. The city is also a hub for cultural export in the form of the thriving Bollywood industry. Mumbai alone is responsible for over 6% of India’s GDP. The ports too are a critical part of its success. There is no dearth of jobs or talent in Mumbai. But there is one thing it is short of.

Space. This is its most precious commodity. A prominent journalist Bachi Karkaria says the built environment has increased fourfold since 1925 – and at its fastest rate over the past 30 years – all at the cost of green cover and wetlands. She writes ‘There’s less than 0.03 acres of open space per 1,000 people. The global norm is four; London has a profligate 12.’ Most of the working class lives in Chawls. These are multi-level tenements with small single rooms (usually used by a whole family) with a shared bathroom for each floor. Middle-class families on the other hand, live in one or two bedroom apartments. A luxury in comparison, but it is still a tight squeeze.  Affordable housing is in dire shortage. In the rest of the country, people manage to buy their own homes by their mid 30s. But here in Mumbai, people work well into their late 40s or 50s before they can pay off the mortgages on their homes. The demand is so huge that the government simply cannot keep pace and they turn to the private sector for help. Naturally, developers are hungry for as much sand as they can get. But for various reasons, sand is in short supply. They blame the politicians and the environmental lobby. ‘Roti, Kapda, aur Makaan (loosely translated as food, clothes and shelter) is the dream of every citizen’ says Satish (name changed), the director of a successful construction firm.  ‘How can you deprive them of this dream? It is easy to ban anything but it’s important to provide alternatives.’

‘In thirty years of my career, I have never heard of such a thing. Shortage of sand?!’, he snorts incredulously. ‘It’s not that there is no sand. This is all just a ploy to make you pay more’, he says. To Satish and his colleagues, the hullabaloo around the supply of sand makes no sense. They are more than sceptical and they harbour a deep mistrust. To them, sand is abundantly available and they feel the whole situation has just been engineered to create an artificial shortage. Once the prices go up by more than hundred percent, they never come back to the original price. Instead, they settle at about sixty-seventy percent of the previous price and that then becomes the new norm. ‘In the end, it is the consumer who pays the price. I run a business, not a charity. I simply have to pass on the costs to the customers.’ 

On the condition of anonymity, he talks at length about how developers are forced to buy sand from certain suppliers. He talks about how each region is controlled by powerful vested interests. ‘You can buy sand from elsewhere but you still have to pay these guys if you want your consignment to actually reach you. So in the end, you might as well buy from them.’ In sticky situations, some developers compromise on the quality of materials he says while others like him compromise on the price. ‘Sand used to be about 4-5% of the project cost. Now it is about 20% of the cost. We don’t worry about cement anymore. We worry about sand. Cement, you can pay and tomorrow you will get it. Sand - you will not. The sand supplier used to be the last person who would get paid. We used to stock sand outside and when it rained, it would often wash away. Not anymore.’ Reports indicate that sand is in such short supply that the Government has had to import sand from Indonesia and the Philippines. 

While developers come to terms with the new reality, the government is working hard to promote affordable housing. The Mumbai Development Plan 2034 suggests that it intends to make additional land resources available for development by changing No Development Zones that include salt pan lands and coastal wetlands where scores of migratory birds seek refuge in the summer. Fierce protests are on to save eco-sensitive zones such as Aarey Forest that once used to be a part of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. But many Mumbaikars have no time for this debate. With exhausting commutes and long work hours, all they want is ‘Roti, Kapda aur Makaan’ and some fun along the way. A Mumbaikar friend explains. ‘Yaar (my friend), people buy apartments like they buy a pizza. You don’t care about what goes into it as long as it looks great’. 

• Update #6 - The first print copies Dec. 1, 2020

  Dear campaign supporter,

  Hope you are well. It gives me great pleasure to share with you a video of the very first print proofs that …

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• Update #5 - A quick update about the book Sand Stories Aug. 7, 2018

  

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• Update #4 - So what's happening with Sand Stories? May 9, 2018

  

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• Update #3 - Over 500 pre-orders! It's time to celebrate this moment! April 5, 2018

  

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• Update #2 - The next milestone on World Water Day! March 17, 2018

  

  It's still World Water Day here in the UK and I am very happy that we reached a key milestone on this day. A HUGE thank you …

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• Update #1 - Reached the first milestone on International Women's Day! Yay! March 5, 2018

  

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