CHAPTER 9

Alternative Market Systems: Mutual

Dependence for Collective Welfare in a Fish
Market in Udupi

Kaveri Thara

Introduction
This chapter explores fisherwomen’s struggles for social reproduction in
Udupi, located in the western coast of Southern India. It draws from
an ethnography carried out between 2016–2018 amongst women fresh
fish sellers in Udupi district, located in Mangalore city in the state of
Karnataka in southern India. It examines the political struggles of fish-
erwomen to protect the retail fish market from incursion of capitalist
enterprises and their negotiations for access to social protection and state
welfare. These are in essence struggles for social reproduction by fisher
women, a majority of whom are small sellers, selling a basket or two of fish
each day, eking out a living and sustaining families. This mode of suste-
nance based selling is inherited through generations of fisherwomen who

K. Thara (B)
Kaveri Thara is the pen name of Kaveri Haritas, Jindal School of Government
and Public Policy, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 187

Switzerland AG 2021
C. Verschuur et al. (eds.), Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy,
Feminisms and Democracy, Gender, Development and Social Change,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71531-1_9
188 K. THARA

bartered fish for rice, construing retail trade in fish as domain of subsis-
tence. This alternative mode of economic practice is steadily under threat
from accumulative practices that has reconfigured the broader fishing
economy in the region. Fish retail within this broader scenario is not
insulated from these developments and is beginning to attract men and
entrepreneurs with access to capital into fish sales and fish markets. The
state is an important agent of this transformation, supporting the capitalist
development of the sector, formalising informal markets and increasingly
foraying into retail fish sales itself. Within this larger context of capi-
talism, this chapter explores the struggles of fisherwomen and their partial
success in obtaining promises from local government to help protect fish
sales from such incursions. I argue that while these negotiated promises
are fragile and tenuous, the threat to livelihoods has brought together
women who have learnt to build and reinforce political network, using
the very metaphors of motherhood to reclaim reproductive rights from
a reluctant state. Collective struggles have resulted in the formation of
political subjectivities amongst women, extending their activities from
vending to that of mobilising politically, reclaiming relations of depen-
dence with a recalcitrant state, thus making the state accountable for social
reproduction.
This chapter relies on 50 interviews, including 5 life histories; obser-
vation and participant observation conducted over a period of eleven
months—nine months in 2016—January to October 2016; and 2 months
in 2018—June-July 2018. I will be continuing interviews again between
December 20,187 and January 2018 (for 5 weeks) and once again in
June-July 2018 (for another 6 weeks). Of the 50 interviews conducted
at present, 34 have been conducted with fisherwomen who are members
of this Association, in addition 16 interviews with staff members of the
Association, credit organizations including the MMVSSN and academics
working in the vicinity, and staff of the other fishermen’s societies in the
area. Apart from observing and often participating in the sales of fish,
this research also relies on observation and participant observation of a
total of 5 meetings of the Association, one of which was video recorded
for the purposes of contributing to the collective documentary film in
this project. Everyday observation was carried out to understand time use
and the distribution of domestic tasks. I followed fisherwomen from their
homes in the early morning as they went to the harbour to purchase fish
and transported the fish to the market, observed their market activities
and finally followed them home in the evening. Though access to their
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 189

homes was limited, I was able to spend time with a few families at the
end of the day during dinner, providing me an opportunity to witness the
heavy domestic burden women carry in addition to the long hours they
spend selling fish. Apart from the field research, a considerable amount of
locally written and published material on the Mogaveera community also
informed this research, many of which find mention in this chapter.
I worked primarily in the central fish market in Udupi which was in
a temporarily allotted traditional market in Beedinagudde till December
2016 and shifted in January 2017 to the new two-storey modern fish
market built and provided by the Government. In the spot where the new
market is, an informal market had been established in the 1950s as this
was centrally located and close to the civil courts, the central bus station,
shops and other bus stands in the vicinity. This market came up informally
on land belonging to the government when some women began to sell
fish here and were joined later by other fisherwomen. In the early 2000s,
the government decided to evict the fisherwomen and sell this piece of
land to a private developer for the construction of a building housing
shops. The fisherwomen resisted this move and refused to move from
the premises and after a series of negotiations the government accepted
their claim to the market, and agreed to construct a modern fish market
to enable them to sell fish on this same spot. I was able to conduct my
interviews in 2016 in the temporary, traditional squat down fish market
in Beedinagudde and later in the modern fish market in 2017.
The majority of Udupi’s fisherwomen belong to the fisherman’s caste
in the region—the Mogaveeras and are the lowest of the four castes—
shudras, in the caste hierarchy. These women consistently speak of their
work as—Jati Kasubu, meaning caste occupation. Fisherwomen have
traditionally bartered fish for rice in the past and with the increase in
transport and the establishment of informal markets around bus stations,
began to sell fish in the region. Fisherwomen consider selling fish as an
essential part of their reproductive responsibilities as mothers and speak of
selling fish to feed their children. The rhetoric of feeding embeds what is
essentially vending work in the reproductive realm of mothering. Even
if fisherwomen sell fish and speak of ‘profits’, the larger majority are
small sellers selling no more than a basket or two of fish to provide for
their families. This notion of providing for one’s children is nourished
by an ethics of mothering tethered in what was earlier a matrilineal caste.
Mogaveera fisherwomen earlier inherited property from their mothers and
were primarily responsible for their children, while Mogaveera men were
190 K. THARA

less important to the family. Sally Cole in her study of cod fishing in
Newfoundland makes a similar observation that the matrilineal system
within the fishing communities wherein women were central to the house-
hold and men played minimal roles, played a role in enabling fishermen
to work far away from home and to be absent from their families for
long periods of time (Cole, 1990). Even though the matrilineal systems
in the region have been since long replaced by a patrilineal system,1 narra-
tives of mothers being primarily responsible for both the care and upkeep
of their children continue to dominate discourses. In this context, the
notion of mothering is not one that is limited to the domestic space
of home, but extends to the vending of women in markets to ensure
children are fed, clothed and educated. Within this broader narrative of
mothering, fisherwomen’s work of vending is socially constructed as an
extension of women’s reproductive roles. Customers frequently speak of
poor fisherwomen who have to feed their children, and the notion of
feeding often spills over into discourses of feeding the community by
making fresh fish available at a low cost. The work of fish vending is thus
socially constructed as a market activity with the final objective of feeding
families. In this sense vending acquires a ‘non-market’ meaning in social
discourses, legitimized by the market function that small sellers offer of
making available cheap fish to the community.
These discourses reveal how the place that social actors occupy comes
to bear on the meanings that their activities take on. Here women’s work
of vending is less a product of the nature of activities she engages in, but
moreso the social status she occupies as a mother and her concrete social
interactions (Rosaldo, 1980). Rosaldo and Lamphere point out that, as
long as women are universally defined in terms of a largely maternal and
domestic role, we can account for their universal subordination (Rosaldo
& Lamphere, 1974). As Beneria points out most societies universally
assign women with two fundamental aspects of reproduction of the labour
force—child care and activities associated with daily family maintenance.
She notes that women’s trading activities are often integrated and affected
by women’s involvement in reproduction as the market place becomes an

1 Certain communities in the south of Karnataka (commonly referred to as South

Kanara) have historically followed Aliyasantana (the lineage of the sister’s son) system.
The Aliyasantana system in the region was abolished under the Kerala Joint Hindu
Family System Abolition Act, 1975. Older fisherwomen for instance spoke of continuing
to inherit property, while younger women under the new laws lost their rights to property.
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 191

extension of the household (Beneria, 1979, 221–222). Seligmann points

out that women frequently enter markets as an extension of household
tasks they perform, as well as to make possible the economic survival of
households and the survival of their children. Though women are social-
ized to undertake the larger share of work within households to ensure
their children’s welfare, in many societies this is not restricted to care-
taking but extends to the economic maintenance of children. Women
thus enter markets as ‘mothers’ and do not limit their actions of caring
for their children to the home. In societies where women are ‘naturally’
considered to be economically autonomous, marketing activities are not
unusual. She adds that this attitude towards women’s work contrasts with
the negative attitude of most men towards women’s paid work in Latin
America and India and the consequent restriction of women to the lowest
levels of marketing where they have little opportunity for accumulation of
capital (Seligmann, 2001, 4).
Women vendors thus ‘move between and knit together household and
marketplace activities in intriguing ways’, so that the domestic space of
home and the public space of markets interact dialectically, informed by
kinship dynamics, gender ideologies, household practices and economies
(Seligmann, 2001, 3). Market practices and the economic principles that
govern them, in turn, are crucial to the reproduction of households and
inform the nature of activities that take place within it. This comes forth
sharply amongst the practices of Udupi’s fisherwomen, as the domestic
often transforms into spaces of production for the market—with drying
and processing of fish at home, while the market becomes an extension of
home with familial relations of bonds of kinship between vendors. These
bonds that are also cultural and caste based in nature, not only enable
mutual support, but also serve to enforce cultural norms of appropriate
behaviour within the market place. Selling thus becomes a function of the
domestic realm in more ways than just enabling the sustenance of fami-
lies. For instance in a study of fisherwomen in Kerala Hapke notes how
marketing work and women’s mobility is constrained in the market place
(Hapke, 1996, 189). In Udupi’s fish markets, the gaze of other women
also restricts and structures women’s mobility and the use of the market
place. Mohanty points to the link between low wages and the definition
of work as supplementary activity for mothers and housewives as reflec-
tive of sexual identity and ideas of heterosexual femininity in terms of
marital domesticity. Women internalize caste and patriarchal ideologies
that define them as non-workers and their identity is as housewives and
192 K. THARA

mothers, rather than as workers dependent on psychic, material and spir-

itual survival (Mohanty 2013). This perception of women’s work defines
the value of what is produced. What women produce for their families
thus often has little value attached to it, even if it is very much a part of
the market system. The definition of women’s work is often in terms of
what their production is meant for rather than in terms of its function
in the marketplace. However, as we will explore in the case of the Udupi
fisherwomen, even if what women produce is devalued, it is precisely their
roles as mothers in the market that has enabled them to protect retail
vending, even if in limited ways, from incursions (Thara, 2016).

Udupi, a Coastal Temple Town

and a Thriving Market for Fish Retail
Udupi is a small town on the western coast of south India. Located in
the city of Mangalore, State of Karnataka, it is a coastal town home to
a reputed temple and thus attracts tourists to both the temple and its
various beaches. The district is thus well lined with small restaurants and
hospitality services, that have contributed to a thriving retail market for
seafood. The district is also becoming an education hub with many private
universities in the region, which also adds to the growing demand for
seafood. The town boasts of a large harbour (Malpe harbour) where large
trawlers compete for space with large and small motorized boats that
supply fresh fish each day. Until the 1950s fisherwomen in the region
bartered fish for rice with agricultural families in the region in what was
known as the Kyeka system. This system that has its roots in the Jajmani
system (Fuller, 2010; Wiser, 1936) linked fishing families with agricul-
tural households (known as Kyeka households) and fisherwomen could
supply fish to the families they were connected to (not others) in exchange
for rice and also provided labour to agricultural families in exchange for
rice during the monsoon season when fish was in short supply. Fisher-
women speak of the Kyeka as a subsistence-based exchange in which
families were assured of food security and support during financial or
other crisis. Fishing families could not aspire to more than basic subsis-
tence in this system and as fisherwomen could not barter fish openly
with other families, agricultural families often determined the value of
fish, ensuring continued dependence and the servility of fisherwomen to
Kyeka households.
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 193

As transportation grew in the region and the first few bus stops and
train stations established in the mid-1950s, tourism began to grow in the
region spurting the demand for fish. Fisherwomen began to sit down
close to bus stops to sell fish and informal fish retail markets began to
organically sprout in the city of Mangalore. Slowly fisherwomen left the
Kyeka system and began selling fish in these informal markets. The Udupi
fish market and the Padubidri fish market where I conducted this ethnog-
raphy came into existence similarly close to the central bus stations in
these small towns.2 These informal markets that sprung up often on state-
owned land were auto managed and controlled by fisherwomen, who
collectively determined the organization of the marketplace and delib-
erated on the entry of new sellers. Since the early 2000s, the state has
begun to take interest in these informal markets, seeking to evict fisher-
women and negotiating the establishment of formal markets, owned and
controlled by the state. The Padubidri fish market was replaced by a state
owned formal market in 2012 and the Udupi fish market was formalized
in 2017. Fisherwomen in these informal markets collectively controlled
and managed the market, determining the entry of new sellers and speci-
fying the terms of sales. So that the markets are inclusive and supportive
of all sellers, this included limiting sales of fisherwomen—specifying the
number of baskets women could sell, the kind of customers women could
supply, segregating big sellers who sell to restaurants from small sellers
who sell to individual customers. These norms ensured that all sellers
could collectively benefit from the market. In both Padubidri and Udupi,
the market thus transformed from a collectively managed inclusive one to
a formal market owned and controlled by the state, in which markets are
open to all, irrespective of gender, with no restrictions on the amount of
fish to be sold and the customers to whom sales can be made. Informal
markets were open to entry of women sellers with rare exceptions of male
sellers often made when men had no other viable employment available to
them. While informal markets were organized on the principle of collec-
tive benefits and inclusivity, the formal market is a capitalist one in which
the state is less concerned about inclusion and is only motivated by rents
paid by sellers for the space allotted to them.
This shift has meant a real threat to women who within the new patri-
lineal system continue to be responsible for families, without any rights to

2 Both Udupi and Padubidri are smaller towns within the larger district of Udupi.
194 K. THARA

inherit property and thus little access to credit. Men who are better placed
and have access to credit due to property ownership are now freely able
to enter fish markets as big sellers, buying and selling large quantities of
fish, at lower prices than small selling fisherwomen. In the case of Padu-
bidri, the fisherwomen had allowed the brother of one of the women
in the market to sell no more than two baskets of fish in the informal
market. On moving to the formal market, this male seller was freed of
the control of other fisherwomen and has in the short span of 6 years,
become the largest seller in the market, employing two more men and
three women under him. This is not the only incursion in the retail fish
market. Male fish sellers, specially from the Muslim communities in the
region, are increasingly occupying the retail market space, by engaging in
mobile fish sales, transporting fish in autorickshaws (three-wheeler trans-
portation vehicles), motorcycles and mini vans, to different regions, from
home to home and also to apartments in the region. These sellers have
resulted in lower number of customers in the retail fish market. While
women have also sold fish from door to door, carrying fish baskets on
their heads and walking from home to home and travelling in local buses,
the quantity of fish they can sell is very minimal as compared to these
male mobile sellers.
A larger threat is from capital intensive fish retail shops. The central
city of Mangalore for instance witnessed growing large fish retail shops
offering attractive prices and home delivery to residents in the city,
thus resulting in the slow disappearance of informal markets. Similarly,
Udupi District has also witnessed such incursions post 2000. The Udupi
fresh fish sellers’ association—called the Udupi Hasi Meenu Maratha-
garara Sangha was founded in 2010 as a response to the efforts of
large fish shops to set up business in Udupi and neighbouring district
of Kundapura. While the dominant majority of fish vendors belong to
the Mogaveera community, those who clean fish in markets often come
from other castes and increasingly from non-fishing migrant scheduled
caste groups (castes outside the Hindu fold entitled to affirmative action).
Women from other castes (most of them migrant and from non-fishing
communities) are also involved in transporting, sorting, cleaning and
preparing seafood for consumption. The Association consists only of fish
vendors and fish cleaners working in fish markets, but do not include
those working in the harbour.
With the fear of losing their livelihoods to large shops with access
to capital and storage facilities, women selling fresh fish mobilized and
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 195

formed an association, which today comprises of 1631 fresh fish selling

women. The Association brings together fisherwomen from 36 fish
markets in Udupi district3 and relies on its strong political, social and
cultural ties in the district. In 2010 when a fish shop was set up in Kunda-
pura, fearing the loss of women’s employment and in a bid to support an
occupation that has traditionally been that of women in the region, the
Association made an appeal to the then Home Minister,4 requesting him
to refuse licences to any new fresh fish outlets in Udupi District as it
would affect the livelihoods of over 10,000 fisherwomen directly selling
fish and about 30,000 women indirectly associated with the sales of fresh
fish. As fisherwomen are supported by other women who help them carry
fish on the harbour, the sales of fish often involve more women than just
those selling fish. In response to their protest, the Minister promised the
Association that he would ensure that no new outlets for sale of fresh fish
would be permitted.5 The District Commissioner issued a ‘government
order’ to this effect, and while this temporarily suspends the threat, the
lack of a more permanent resolution in the form of law or policy means
that this order can be reversed at any point in time by the government.
Apart from the threats of private vendors and the increasing number
of men attracted to fish retail, the state itself has started establishing ‘hi-
tech retail fish outlets’ in various parts of the city. The Karnataka Fish
Development Corporation (KFDC) set up a large fish retail shop in Chill-
imbi, a small town located in Mangalore city. Fisherwomen of Chillimbi
protested against this retail outlet and though the KFDC decided to open
no more new outlets in the city, it has continued to operate its retail

3 The women from fishmarkets that are active members of the Association include
fishmarkets in the sub-districts of Karkala, Kapu and Brahmavara. It also includes fishmar-
kets within Udupi city such as: Udupi-Beedinagudde market, Brahmavara, Santhekatte,
Moodubelle, Shiva Machakal, Ambagilu, Kadiyali, Hoode, Udyavara Bolargudde, Heje-
maadi Kodi, Manipal, Kemmanna, Padubidri, Barkur, Ucchila, Mooluru, Saligrama, Gudde
Angadi, Parkala, Pethri, Doddanagudde, Aadyur, Aadi Udupi, Kodavooru, Kalyanapura,
Shankarapura, Ermal Bala, Mudarangadi, Honnala, Perudoor, Thottam, Katpady, Malpe
Bandar, Hangar Katte and Kodi Bengre. In all it covers 36 fish markets that take active
part in the Association’s activities. Interview with Ashwini, administrative assistant at the
Association, dated 12.03.2016.
4 http://wif.icsf.net/en/samudra-news-alert/articledetail/42985-Fisherwomen’s.html?
language=EN.
5 Interview with Baby Salian dated 9.12.2015. Also see: http://www.bellevision.com/
belle/index.php?action=topnews&type=593 consulted on 10.03.2016.
196 K. THARA

outlet in Chillimbi.6 In this protest too fisherwomen’s leader attacked

the KFDC chairman stating that he had come to occupy his professional
status ‘only because women in his family took care of him by selling fish. But
now, he has dipped his hands in our rice bowl and has cheated the entire
fishing fraternity’. The Chairman of the KFDC himself coming from the
fish community, the setting up of a fish retain shop that threatens fisher-
women’s livelihood is once again depicted as a threat to women’s roles
as mothers, reproducing families and thus communities7 The entry of the
state into fish retail is not surprising as state institutions such as the KFDC
are also in search of profits. Fish retail is becoming a lucrative venture for
both state and private players specially in the context of new demands
from consumers looking for increased hygiene, packed fish and door
delivery. These extra services demand higher investment that fisherwomen
do not have access to. Within this context of capitalism and accumulative
practices, women rely on the state to protect them from competition. In
their struggles they have relied on a vast array of resources to mobilize
political support. The following section examines their struggles in terms
of their political potential to enable women’s livelihoods.

A Common Cause: Mobilizing to Continue Putting Food on the Table

Udupi’s fisherwomen have been able to collectively mobilize political
support to protect retail markets through an array of political strategies.
In an earlier article, I have examined the manner in which they have used
discourses of poverty and livelihoods to garner the support of the state
(Thara, 2016). The head of the fisherwomen’s association Baby Salian
explained in an interview that they had demanded that the state protect
the livelihoods of poor women, who would otherwise have to depend
on the state for their living. The discursive framing of fisherwomen as
poor and vulnerable to poverty has framed fisherwomen as within devel-
opment discourses of poverty reduction and hence the action of the state
preventing corporate fish shops in the region is projected as preventing an
increase in poverty amongst the fishing community, that the state would
then have to address. Fisherwomen have also used political and caste

6 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mangaluru/Fisherwomen-to-hold-protest-
rally-on-Nov-25/articleshow/5258095.cms; see also https://www.daijiworld.com/news/
newsDisplay.aspx?newsID=68812.
7 http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/1596.
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 197

networks to their advantage. Though the larger majority of fisherwomen

are small sellers eking out a livelihood, a small number of fisherwomen
are big sellers selling to restaurants in Udupi. These big sellers have over
time acquired not only economic capital but also political and cultural
capital through their work. Fisherwomen have relied on such big sellers
as representatives to help muster political support for their association.
The agreement that fisherwomen have obtained from the state is one
that needs constant reminders. Despite the state’s agreement to not
provide permits to large fish retail shops, the Association has had to
organize periodic protests when permits or licences are issued by other
departments, in violation of the order of the Deputy Commissioner.
The battle to keep fresh fish shops from opening in the region is a
continuing one. Following the mushrooming of shops in and around
Udupi, in 2014 once again the Association launched a protest before
the Deputy Commissioner’s Office in Udupi, protesting the issuance of
permissions by Gram Panchayaths to shops that have come up in Udupi,
Brahmavar, Sastan, Kota, Saligrama, Saibarakatte, Hebri and Kundapura,
despite the acceptance by the District Commissioner’s office to refuse
permits to fresh fish shops. Once again as a result of this protest, the then
Udupi-Chikmagalur Member of Parliament, Shobha Karandlaje, assured
them that she would discuss this with the Deputy Commissioner of
Udupi to provide instructions to the Gram Panchayaths.8 With these
frequent protests fisherwomen continue to apply pressure on the local
administration to ensure the protection of their occupations.
Apart from political and cultural networks, fisherwomen have been
able to ensure sustained struggles due to a strong cohesion between
fisherwomen and a sense of solidarity amongst them. While the formal
association was formed only in 2010, women’s collective management
and control of fish markets has played a role in building strong soli-
darities between women, especially those vending in the same market.
With the establishment of the formal association, that brings under its
fold 36 markets in Udupi, solidarities between women across markets in
the region have enabled their struggles. One of the prime factors that has
enabled solidarities amongst women is a shared caste identity. As Nancy
Fraser points out, collectives often consist of identity groups and thus
the distinct goals of redistribution and recognition which are mutually

8 http://www.udupitoday.com/udtoday/news_Udupi-Women-fish-sellers-urge-MP-Sho
bha-not-to-allow-fish-shops_4706.html consulted on 10.03.2016.
198 K. THARA

contradictory need to be addressed (Fraser 1995). Collectives such as

these form examples of the empirical coupling of these claims as fish-
erwomen in the region are traditionally caste based but are now also
including women from other castes (non-fishing castes—such as Sched-
uled Caste groups). Their claims from the state are thus for redistribution
as well as recognition. Caste and kinship relations between women in the
market and between markets have enabled solidarities that go beyond the
scope of the association. Solidarities forged between women serve various
purposes both in and outside the market. Within the market it allows
women to support each other in their everyday activities of managing
the fish market, regulating customers and ensuring equitable access to
resources. Outside the market solidarities between women enable support
between families during times of need and crisis. These ties of caste and
kinship enable informal access to credit as well as social capital in the form
of political and social ties and networks, that women often share with
other women in the market. The market is thus not spatially restricted
to the place of selling but is embedded within broader social structures
and relations that ensure women’s ability to attract and keep customers
and negotiate with political representatives and state institutions. Prob-
lems that arise within the market are thus easily resolved and peace is
maintained between sellers and cleaners, as well as between fisherwomen
and customers.
The constitution of the formal association has opened up a formal
space of deliberation during monthly meetings held in the association’s
office in Udupi. These meetings serve to diffuse tensions within markets
by addressing conflicts and differences of opinion between women sellers.
Women have a growing realization that any differences between them can
be used to the advantage of third parties, and the monthly association
meetings enable collective decision making to prevent conflicts that can
threaten peace and cohesion within markets. While these meetings are
often attended by men from the fishing community—who act as inter-
ested supporters—women dominate this space of discussion and deliber-
ation, actively engaging in decision making by voicing out their opinions.
These meetings have also served to heighten the political consciousness
amongst women of the threats they face from other players. While women
rely on representatives within the association to enable decision making,
caste and kinship relations and solidarities amongst women also help keep
in check the power of these representatives, ensuring they are answerable
to the collective. The most important outcome of women’s struggles to
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 199

protect their livelihoods is their self-constitution as political subjects. Even

if women have not been very successful in having their demands met by
the state, the existence of the association and the spaces of deliberation
it has opened up, allows women to see themselves as possessing certain
rights vis-a-vis the state.
A few fisherwomen themselves also engage in accumulative practices.
For instance, big sellers in the market who sell to restaurants in the area,
come to imbibe capitalist practices themselves, purchasing large boats with
the profits they make and consolidating their incomes to become big
entrepreneurs themselves. While big and small sellers seem to co-habit
in markets, through accepted norms that regulate their work and enable
inclusive markets, this does not imply the lack of conflicts between these
two groups. Small sellers are often desirous of the lifestyles of big sellers,
often aspiring themselves to be able to rein in higher profits. In this sense
capitalism that has benefitted the few in the market has aroused the desires
of the larger majority who are unable to compete with these few in terms
of access to economic, political and social capital. As small sellers revealed,
mere access to credit could do little to increase their sales, as the large
number of small sellers meant that customers were distributed amongst
larger numbers of women, thus capping demands and restricting sales.
Small sellers thus find themselves trapped as they simultaneously depend
on collective norms that limit their sales, and desire being able to sell
more to make higher profits. Tensions between big and small sellers are
often ironed out, as small sellers realize the benefits of being represented
by big sellers, and thus often make compromises in the larger interest of
collective benefit. However, it is true that while small sellers gain from
these solidarities, big sellers too can claim a space in the market through
the strength of numbers that small sellers provide, which bolsters their
position against the state. While the collective objective of ensuring the
protection of the market has kept these groups together, it is not clear if in
future such solidarities will continue in formal state owned and controlled
markets, where collective norms may collapse as they have in the case of
the Padubidri market.
The Association has also enabled women to access credit and other
welfare benefits provided by the state. Women access credit through a
range of institutions including the Meenu Maratagarara Vividoddesha
Souharda Sahakara Niyamita, Udupi (MMVSSN, meaning Fish Sellers
Varied Interests Assistance Society) with which the Association shares a
close partnership. The Association is also closely linked to the S.K. &
200 K. THARA

Udupi District Co-operative Fish Marketing Federation, a government

federation of fishermen and women, which provides financial and other
forms of support to both men and women undertaking fish sales, fishing
or related activities. The Federation channels credit through MMVSSN
herein referred to as the Society which was formed in 2011, a year after
the women’s Association was founded. This Society was meant to ensure
credit at low interest rates, to release fishermen and women who were
entangled in bonds of indebtedness with private money lenders extracting
very high rates of interest. Through membership in the Society they now
have access to credit at bank lending/preferential rates, as well as assis-
tance in marketing seafood, access to subsidized fuel and ice for storage
of fish, access to state welfare schemes including microcredit loans, state-
sponsored housing, and supply of safety equipment to fishermen at sea.9
What is interesting is that while the state enables access to low interest
credit, the loans provided are small. For instance, the MMVSSN provides
a maximum of INR Rs. 50 000 (around 565 euros) to fisherwomen.
Apart from credit facilities, the Directorate of Fisheries also provides
them access to certain subsidies to encourage entrepreneurship amongst
fisherwomen—for example Bhatta and Rao in their study of women’s
livelihoods in coastal Karnataka refer to subsidies for undertaking orna-
mental fish breeding and marketing and training programs to reinforce
and improve their abilities to prepare processed products such as dried
fish, fish pickles and wafers. They also refer to government funds provided
to encourage fisherwomen in fish processing activities, providing small
funds for women to buy fish, salt and ice for their activities. They also
point out the limited funding provided under these schemes that do not
allow fisherwomen to do more than marginally improve their access to
credit. Other welfare benefits provided to low-income groups are also
channelled to fisherwomen through the Association. For example, one
such scheme is the Mathsyashraya housing scheme, under which several
fisherwomen have been able to access free housing provided by the
state.10

9 http://www.fishmark.in/activities.html consulted on 10.03.2016 Interviews with

Prakash Suvarna, Secretary—, dated 25.01.2016, 26.01.2016, 18.02.2016 & 10.03.2016
and Baby Salian, Director of the Association, dated 18.01.2016.
10 Interview with Prakash Suvarna, Chief Executive Officer of MMVSSN, on 10 March
2016; also http://www.fishmark.in/activities.html, accessed 10 March 2016.
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 201

While the Association has been able to achieve limited success in

protecting livelihoods of fisherwomen, it has been relatively less successful
as compared to other coastal states, in negotiating the recognition of fish-
erwomen as workers in the region. Fisherwomen’s work as vendors is
constructed more as a business by the state that limits its welfare func-
tions to access to credit. Fishing communities in Tamil Nadu and Kerala
through long histories of political struggle (Dietrich, 1995; Dietrich &
Nayak, 2006) have been able to negotiate the status of worker with enti-
tlements to social security from the state. The Tamil Nadu Fisherman and
Labourers Engaged in Fishing and other Allied Activities (Social Security
and Welfare) Act 2007 is a comprehensive law providing for social security
to everyone employed in fishing and fishing-related activities irrespective
of gender, including: beach workers, cleaners, sellers, harbour workers,
etc. This law provides for: accident relief in case of death or injury; missing
fishermen; death while fishing; natural death; funeral expenses; education
of children; marriage expenses; delivery or miscarriage or termination of
pregnancy; and old-age pension. A similar law—The Kerala Fishermen’s
Welfare Fund Act 1985—has been adopted in Kerala which applies to
fish workers irrespective of gender and includes beach workers, vendors,
cleaners, peelers, head loaders, curers, etc. in fish work and allied activi-
ties. This law provides for: distress relief due to natural calamities; injury
or disablement; loans and grants for marriage, death of dependents and
unforeseen expenditure; loss of houses and fishing implements; old-age
pension; education and part-time employment of children; social educa-
tion centres including libraries and reading rooms; sports, games and
medical facilities; nutritious food for children; and employment oppor-
tunities for the handicapped. It however does not provide for maternity,
delivery and miscarriage, as provided under the Tamil Nadu law. Compre-
hensive laws such as the one adopted by Tamil Nadu which provide
for the needs of both women and men should be adopted to enable
fish workers to achieve the development goals ratified by the Govern-
ment of India. The non-recognition of fish workers, male and female,
as workers by the state of Karnataka, means that such welfare benefits
elude them. The lack of social security particularly for women means that
women remain dependent on men in their families, despite being prin-
cipally responsible for household budgets and reproduction of families.
This means that fisherwomen often have to work longer, especially if they
have ailing or injured fishermen in their families.
202 K. THARA

Tied to the Market---Friendships,

Independence and Autonomy
Selling fish is not an easy occupation, specifically for the majority of fish-
erwomen who are small sellers. Unlike large sellers who have regular
customers and dependable sales, with few peaks and lows, small sellers
selling to individual customers are more vulnerable during low catch
periods and non-fishing periods such as during monsoons when the state
bans fishing. During these periods, big sellers continue to make stable
even if lower sales, as restaurants continue to purchase smaller quantities
of frozen fish to meet demands of tourists, while individual customers
prefer to consume other meat products. As big sellers are higher in class,
they are able to insulate themselves well during periods of low catch or
monsoon bans, while small sellers with low incomes and low savings are
less insulated. Despite the many hardships of their work, fisherwomen
speak of selling as something they look forward to. The market is a space
that comes to mean many things for them. It is a space that is precarious,
a space in which one can lose money, make losses, but also a space in
which a decent livelihood can be made. As one fisherwomen explained,
when she takes a holiday, she keeps thinking of the others who have gone
to work, that they made some money, that she could have made some
money too. Their sense of achievement is closely tied to being able to sell
fish and eke out a decent living—independent of relations of power such
as those of an employer and employee.
While the capitalist market provides no protection from risk or losses,
the market still provides women with support from other women. Linked
to each other through kinship and communal ties, women selling in
Udupi’s market make close friendships and relationships that seem to
provide respite from the ravages of capital. Even if they compete with each
other to sell fish, often trying to empty their baskets before their friends,
there is a sense of security in the relationships they make here. Women
support each other in times of need, helping others in the market sell
their fish when they are absent. Sociality within the market is often config-
ured around conspicuous consumption such as the purchase of clothing,
kitchen gadgets, etc. Apart from consumption, women take immense
pride in the fact that selling in the market has enabled them to educate
their daughters, preventing their daughters from the drudgery of selling
fish.
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 203

The market also offers autonomy. Selling fish is still the most lucrative
occupation for all these women, all of whom choose to sell rather than
do any other sort of work. In all of the interviews, women spoke of being
‘free’ as sellers, ‘free’ to come to the market at the time they wished to
come, ‘free’ to leave at the time they wanted to, ‘free’ to take a day off,
without asking anyone for their approval. Even if they finally exercise with
great restraint their right to take a day off for leisure, the fact that they
have this option is valued enormously. Even if there are anxieties around
making profits and the fear of losses, women consider this work as ‘free’
labour, in which one is accountable only to oneself. As one of the women
asked me about my own job, if I had to apply for leave to take a day off,
and when I said yes, she responded:

In this work, I am my own master, I am happy that this is my own business,

I don’t have to work under anyone else.

This freedom is not only from the hierarchies or caste, but also from other
forms of power, control and dependency. While wage work often provides
similar or sometimes higher earnings, women prefer selling fish to other
types of work. On the one hand, one can view this work as autonomous
in terms of the absence of vertical relations of power, while on the other
hand their work is embedded in other relations of dependence. Women
sellers in the fish market depend on each other for the work they carry
out. Many of the older fisherwomen often serve to train younger women
in the market. The friendships that are fostered and strengthened in the
market thus form relations of interdependence.
Women value the financial independence that the market offers. The
ability to both earn and spend the money they earn the way they wish to
allows these women a sense of control over their own lives. They spend
the majority of what they earn on their families, often independently
managing their finances. In a sense this does not seem to provide them
autonomy, and yet the manner in which women spoke of their control
over finances indicated a perception of autonomy—of being able to allo-
cate money towards children’s and family needs, without being dependent
on their spouses. Women value the ability to spend money by themselves,
even if this is a small part of what they earn, without having to depend on
204 K. THARA

male incomes or authorization. Their status as earning members is rein-

forced through conspicuous acts of consumption, which they enjoy and
recognize as a privilege that homemakers do not enjoy.11
However, this sense of personal autonomy they experience in control-
ling their expenditure also comes with a price. Despite their role as
primary breadwinners within families, women are also responsible for
domestic work and other reproductive roles within the family. One of
the fisherwomen explained to me that it takes a lot of work to make
the small amounts of money she makes at the end of her day. She has
to wake up very early each morning at 4 and bathe, cook and clean her
home before she leaves to the harbour at 7 to buy her fish. Tiffin boxes
have to be packed for her children and herself, and everything has to be
ready for the evening meal when she returns after work. After the auctions
she arrives at the market early each morning and leaves everyday in the
evening before 5 if she is lucky and has managed to sell all her fish. If not,
she sits till late at night until it her basket is empty. Very rarely she will
pack fish with ice, to sell next morning. It’s a lot of hard, physical work.

Our lives, Mogaveera lives are very difficult, it is so difficult that if we

recount it, even God will feel sad. We have to work and make a life like
the others, bring up our children... what to do?

When asked how women managed with young children, they often spoke
of other women—neighbours, sisters, mothers, daughters, family rela-
tions, helping them care for their children while they sold fish. In one
case, a woman spoke of how she entrusted her children to her neigh-
bour who salted fish at home. Her older child a daughter also learned to
dry fish from this neighbour and went on to become a dry fish seller. To
compensate her neighbour for caring for her children, she often purchased

11 During post-Diwali (the festival of lights in India) sales, women often gathered
together to visit saree showrooms to buy themselves sarees and blouse pieces, often
spending large sums of money at one go. On accompanying these women on several of
these sprees, it became clear that their status as earning and spending members of the
community is recognized by shops that not only welcome them, despite the strong odour
of fish they carry with them, but also spending a lot of time displaying the wares and
making them feel comfortable, offering seating, hot drinks and displaying sarees for great
lengths of time. Their status as earning members, who thus also have money to spend on
their own needs is highly appreciated by these women. As one woman mentioned to me
during one such trip, it feels great not to ask a man for money to buy oneself sarees or
blouses.
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 205

her dried fish, helping her make a living too in the process. Without
exception all the children in this community were taken care of by women
and it is unheard of for fathers to take care of their children, even if they
are out of work and stay home. In some cases, their spouses were injured
and could no longer go fishing on boats and despite being able to handle
some of the domestic work at home, did little or nothing at home, some-
times helping children with their school work and often spending most of
the day in front of television sets. Men who could travel would contribute
by picking up children from school or colleges, and buying vegetables for
the home—two acceptable domestic chores that men can safely participate
in, without transgressing cultural norms in Udupi.
Given this situation women have to handle both productive and repro-
ductive activities and often suffer from sleep deprivation and lack of any
time for leisure. I followed 3 women on their daily routine, from early
in the morning (between 4 am and 5.30 am) when they woke, bathed,
prayed, cooked, packed tiffin boxes for themselves and their children and
left to the harbour to purchase fresh fish, to the market and then back
again in the evening, sometimes early at around 6 pm and in two cases
at 8 pm when they returned to heat up the food for dinner, prepared the
vegetables and soaked lentils for the next day, washed clothes and dried
them, before finally going to bed—at the earliest at 10 pm. In all these 3
cases, children were school going and in two cases the men were stay at
home dads. In all three cases, none of the men contributed to cooking,
and though all the 3 fisherwomen spoke of their husbands helping out
in the kitchen—this was often limited to heating up food and getting the
children to eat, if she came home too late in the night. This means that
fisherwomen pay the price for autonomy with fatigue and little time for
leisure. The only free time they spend is during the lull of the afternoon
in markets when customers become far and few, when women relax a
little, older fisherwomen lying down for a nap and younger fisherwomen,
gather together to do some afternoon shopping, visit temples or attend
weddings or other events.
Women also gain little from their work, shouldering responsibility
without consequential privileges within patrilineal families. Due to their
ability to earn, women are often financially exploited by their spouses,
often investing in the entrepreneurial activities of their spouses and
frequently incurring and paying for the losses. As women’s earnings disap-
pear in household budgets, male income is gainfully used to purchase
property, gold and other investments that are often made in men’s names.
206 K. THARA

This ties women to male members for the rest of their lives, making
them economically dependent on men, even when their contributions
to household budgets were crucial to make such investments possible.
In indirect ways women’s work and earnings enable male entrepreneuri-
alism, resulting in women’s livelihoods sustaining capitalist accumulation.
Within the patriarchal context, as property and the gains of business
income accrue in the name of male members, women and women’s work
enable accumulation without the right to a claim in such accumulation. As
male earnings are redirected back into the business, women’s breadwin-
ning activities in hidden ways sustain capitalist enterprise. As I mentioned
earlier a small minority of big selling fisherwomen also engage in accumu-
lative practices, investing in large motorized boats and increasing the size
of their vending activities in the process. The logics of capitalist accumu-
lation is thus not absent within informal markets controlled and managed
by women, and even if rules and norms collectively adopted enable inclu-
sive markets, this may change in the future specially when markets are
formalized and come under state control. Within the free market spaces
of formal markets, small sellers may eventually lose their bargaining power
which could eventually threaten the subsistence mode of vending they
currently engage in.

Conclusion
The concept of Social and Solidarity Economy practices has little purchase
in the Indian context. Most work such as the one detailed here is often
grouped under the large umbrella term ‘informal economy’ by Indian
scholars. The state recognizes the distinction between formal and informal
work, grouping all non-market transactions: that fall below the threshold
for direct taxation or licensing; and/or that involve mobile exchange and
production (Harriss-White, 2003). While all informal economic activities
may not be carried out for collective good, some may possess a collec-
tive logic and may be located in social norms or values that oppose the
rationale of modern capitalist markets. For example, certain cooperatives
that function on the basis of collective goods and collective ownership
in India. Informal economic activities not only lack the status of work,
but also lack any state support or protection and are thus autonomous or
independent from the state, similar to SSE initiatives that claim autonomy
from the state. The informal sector often accounts for the bulk of employ-
ment in several countries. Barbara Harriss-White notes that the ‘India
 9 ALTERNATIVE MARKET SYSTEMS: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE … 207

of the 88%’ is often termed as the ‘local economy’, the ‘real economy’
distinguishing productive activity from financial capital implying authen-
ticity and distinguishing it from the inauthentic top of the economy
(Harriss-White, 2003). As Kabeer points out, activities such as care and
non-market production that enable subsidies or savings in expenditure
come under this large umbrella of informal work (Kabeer 2008). The
specific overlapping of informal economy and SSE (however small this
may be) and the location of poor women often from marginalized groups
in this work, calls attention to the ways in which intersecting identities
locate women from certain groups in certain forms of precarious work.
This ethnography thus provides a critical analysis of solidarity economy
practices that are often celebrated in literature as emancipatory, suggesting
that a more nuanced detailing of such alternative practices may throw up
complexities in terms of their fragility and their concrete links with accu-
mulative practices. In the case of Udupi’s fisherwomen, the paradox of
such alternative practices emerges in the manner in which small sellers
are both dependent on collective norms that prioritize the collective
benefit of small sellers, while at the same time trapping them in small-
scale vending. This work teases out the tensions between wanting to
protect one’s livelihood and the desires for class mobility that accumula-
tive practices have offered big sellers in the market. As men enter the fish
market, they too adopt accumulative practices (such as in the Padubidri
market and the Kinnigoli market). The desires and frustrations of small
sellers outlined in this chapter, thus raise critical questions on whether
women choose to adopt SSE practices or are constrained to do so for
lack of alternatives. Secondly, it reveals the potential of SSEs to aid or
support capitalist forms of accumulation, rather than resist or subvert
it. It is not a coincidence that women sell fish in markets while their
spouses have moved on from being fishermen to owning fishing and fish
processing establishments. Women’s responsibilities as primary breadwin-
ners within families enable the accumulative practices of fishermen who
have moved on from being workers on boats to becoming boat owners
or entrepreneurs running fish and allied industries in the region. Women’s
management of household budgets allows men to reinvest their income,
increasing the size of their businesses and accumulating property that
reinforces patriarchal authority without households. While some women
have also managed to gain from capitalistic practices, the larger majority
work in the benefit of capitalism, while being excluded from its benefits.
208 K. THARA

In terms of identity and belongings, this case offers fertile ground for
reflection on the manner in which identity often enables collectivization,
as similar experiences and similar lives as well as cultural and symbolic
ideologies, enable women to come together. On the other hand, this case
also reveals the potential of such collectives to be inclusive of other groups
and their ability to ensure both recognition and redistribution through
secular associations. The definition of SSEs must thus be open to the
possibility of identity-based groups, drawing from empirical realities, as
long as these groups are open rather than closed exclusive systems. Here
an emphasis on empirical realities, is a methodological one in which prac-
tice must continue to inform our understanding of this concept which
must be nourished by diverse contexts and situations, as well as forms of
belongings, to include forms such as caste and communal identities. This
bottom-up empirical lens will thus help avoid the dangers of a top down,
decontextualized, depoliticized notion of SSEs, which may therefore be
very distant from ground realities.

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