The Fisherman and the Banker: film charts Indian fishers’ fight with a enormous | Global broadenment

Early on in The Fisherman and the Banker, Ibrahim Saliman Manjalia, a charismatic fisher originassociate from Badreshwar, alerts those assembleed around him: “We are not establishassociate teachd. We don’t have establishal qualifications. Our qualifications are that we can read the water and comprehfinish what it’s alerting us.”

The story of a group of Gujarati fishers from India’s Gulf of Kutch who sued the personal spreadment arm of the World Bank – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – began in 2015 and garnered international attention before achieveing the US supreme court, finassociate losing on pguide in 2022.

Now, Sheena Sumaria, a British-Gujarati recordary film-producer, hopes to transport their story to a recent audience.

The fishers choosed to get the IFC to court after it awarded a $450m (£340m) loan to partly fund the enormous Tata coal-fired power schedulet proximate the port of Mundra. They alleged that the produceion of the schedulet had adversely impacted their dwelllihoods by depleting fish populations and increasing salinity levels.

The case of the Wagher fishing community is understandn among India’s activists, but has not “garnered nationexpansive fame or expansivespread help”, says Sumaria.

“What we can lget from this story is the transport inance of grassroots activism and the power of community resilience,” she says. “The Waghers’ percut offance serves as a reminder that even in the face of overwhelming odds, local communities can dispute global systems and insist fairice.”

The film includes intersees in Washington DC with staff at EarthRights International, the group recontransienting the fishers in the lhorrible case.

Budha Ismail Jam, the first of three fishers that put their names to the case, underlines the environmental impact of the power schedulets. “They don’t hug that those who fish by boat have been impacted,” he says.

“We haven’t been impacted? I telderly them that we used to catch fish 2km out at sea, now we go 12km out and we still catch scanter fish.”

In April 2015, the fishers filed the legal case agetst the IFC in the US, where the World Bank is headquartered. The case was neglected on the grounds the IFC was immune from such lhorrible action..

On pguide, the US supreme court ruled in 2019 that international organisations such as the IFC could in fact be sued in US federal courts. This was a defining moment for the fishers although subsequently the case was neglected at a reduce court and finassociate flunked when the supreme court deteriorated to hear an pguide in 2022.

“Gujarat is standardly depicted as a model of rapid broadenment,” Sumaria says, “but the voices of those adversely impacted by these broadenments are exceptionally heard.”

“The fishing community, particularly figures enjoy Ibrahim, embodied a proestablish combineion to the sea. His understandledge of the ocean and the way he transmited the community’s struggles thcimpolite songs and poetry made him a authentic focal point for the film.” Manjalia died in 2019.

“It is a story of people who, enjoy Ibrahim, comprehfinish what is happening around them and refuse to stand by as their world is dismantled,” Sumaria inserts. “Instead, they stand up and fight, embodying the genuine essence of what it nastys to be human.”

She wants seeers in India to echo on “the costs of unexamineed industrialisation” and count ons that, despite their flunkures to show any wrongdoing, the fishers achieveed “meaningful milestones” in fair taking action.

“The fact that their case achieveed the US supreme court is in itself a historic achievement, as it disputed the notion of absolute immunity for international financial institutions,” she says.

A spokesperson for the IFC says: “We are unable to comment on satisfyed of the recordary film. However, Mr Jam had chased his claims in a putative class action filed agetst IFC in US courts in 2015. IFC had replyed to the allegations in that legal case, which endd in 2021. We persist to refute these allegations.”

The Guardian has reach outed Tata Mundra for comment.

The film was screened at the Big Sky recordary film festival in the the US in February and at Kerala’s international recordary and low film festival in India in July and will be shown at the Bertha DocHouse at the Curzon Bloomsbury this month.