The coast is not empty land

From a window in Fort St. George, the Chennai shoreline can look like open space waiting for a purpose. From a boat coming in at dawn it looks very different: a row of villages, landing points, net-mending yards and auction sheds that have stood there for generations, long before the city grew behind them.

This week the fishing communities of the city have reminded the government which view they expect it to take. On Tuesday, residents of 64 hamlets from Tiruvallur to Chengalpattu marched in silence to Srinivasapuram and planted black flags in the sand against the proposal to build a new Secretariat at Foreshore Estate. At Kasimedu, boat owners, vendors, loaders and net menders have voted to stop work indefinitely until seven Chennai boats held in Andhra Pradesh for more than a hundred days are brought home.

Ask before you build

The protesters at Pattinapakkam have been notably restrained. They have said they trust the Chief Minister's goodwill. They have quoted a Minister's own words back to the government: that if the choice were between the fishermen and the Secretariat, the Chief Minister would choose the fishermen. That is an invitation, and the government should accept it.

A new seat of government is a decision for decades. It should be made after a public assessment of alternatives, of the coastal regulation and flood risks, and of what it would do to the people already living and working on the site. None of that has been placed before the public. Withdrawing or pausing the order while that work is done would cost the government nothing but a little pride.

The fishers' wider demands deserve the same seriousness. They say land taken from their villages in the past for staff housing and public buildings was never returned, and that thousands of tenements built decades ago have not been repaired since the 2004 tsunami. These are not arguments against development. They are a record of what "development" has meant for them so far.

The sea needs a government too

The Kasimedu dispute is harder because it crosses a State border. Boat owners say detentions in Andhra Pradesh happen almost every year and end with payments; this year the matter has become political there. Seven single-boat owners have now been without their livelihood since April.

Tamil Nadu should take this up formally with Andhra Pradesh and, if needed, with the Centre, with the energy it brings to river-water disputes. Inter-State fishing grounds, Pulicat included, need a written arrangement that both States enforce, so that fishers are not left to bargain alone with whoever holds their boats.

One principle

Both protests come back to one principle: people who live by the sea are citizens, not tenants of valuable sand. A government that came to office promising change has an early chance to show it understands that.