I have watched Rick Stein’s India on BBC iPlayer. The program is a showcase of diverse cultures, values, beliefs and different cuisines celebrated across India. Rick enjoys fish and seafood dishes, flavoured with mustard in Kolkata and tamarind in Chennai. Rick explores a fish landing site where live fish is carried in water-filled metal pots to local markets and restaurants. He taps into local knowledge of cooking and blends his skills to cook a traditional fish curry with locally available herbs and spices.
People believe this live fish transport is centuries-old and started in 1800s. It is a very simple food preservation technology. Some may mock at it and consider this act very artisanal. However, for generations, fishers have adopted and adapted this technology to changing environment. This has been part of their self-reliant lifestyles.
If you were now in Periya Kalapu Lagoon in the eastern province Sri Lanka, you would find the same technology being used rather differently. Mesh-cages made of galvanized wire are kept submerged in estuarine water closer to the shore. The cages are shackled to a nearby fishing craft. Harvested fish are placed in the cages for traders and consumers. Local markets prefer live fish. The eastern province fishery was in disarray before the war ended in Sri Lanka, during which time many fishers found this simple technology as one of the survival strategies.
Women head loaders in Chilika lagoon carry live fish in metal pots on their heads to local markets. Getting ice to many fish landing centers in Chilika is extremely challenging and time consuming due to narrow access roads twirling around houses. A motor bike can barely go through. No wonder, the fisher women proactively pack live fish in water-filled metal pots. This activity is common place in many Indian rural fish markets.
Across the world, we still continue to see local knowledge-led technologies being practiced in rural economies. Whether rural, urban, settled or nomadic, original inhabitants or migrants, they all have their own local knowledge. It is not just limited to tribal groups or indigenous communities. Rather, it is unique to every society and every culture. Wars, droughts and hardships have shaped and influenced local technologies so they have amazingly existed for generations. Foreign technologies driven by conventional development with shorter term gains seem to force the local technologies disappear leading rural communities into a pool of crisis.
It is their human capital that has helped them in their struggle for survival, to produce food, provide for shelter or achieve control of their own lives. We as development workers unwittingly ruin local economies unless we critically assess the role of local knowledge against the intended objectives and help them do it better
