That Sinking Feeling

Revealing the monoculture underbelly of the US-dominated export market, Trump's tariff hike makes hunger stalk fishing villages and the workers go hungry even as the ponds are full of export-quality shrimp

- By K. A. Shaji

At dawn in Amalapuram, in the heart of Andhra Pradesh's Godavari delta, the peeling sheds usually hum with a strange music—the clatter of steel trays, the rustle of ice being crushed, and the quick, rhythmic movements of women's hands as they strip shell after shell from heaps of shrimp. For years, this has been the soundscape of prosperity in a region that depended on paddy and coconuts before embracing aquaculture as its ticket to the global market.

Over the past few weeks, however, ice melts faster than the orders arrive and the sheds have fallen silent—a silence more menacing than the bustle to the rows of women who now sit idle, their gloves rolled up, waiting for consignments that never come. “Our women have nothing left to peel,” says Kovada Varalakshmi, president of the Andhra Pradesh Traditional Fishworkers Union. “This month, many will earn less than a quarter of their wages. Some of our children have already dropped tuition classes. The slowdown has cut our lives in half.” Weary and frustrated, her voice carries over to the courtyard where workers have gathered.

This Amalapuram scene repeats itself across the heart of Andhra's aquaculture belt, which also includes Kallakuru, Kallavapudi and Bhimavaram. Ponds brimming with Litopenaeus vannamei, the exotic white-leg shrimp that has turned India into a global seafood powerhouse, remain unharvested. Containers meant for supermarkets in New York and Texas stand sealed in the cold storage yards of Visakhapatnam, their contents frozen not just by ice but by trade politics thousands of kilometres away.