Early on in The Fisherman and the Banker, Ibrahim Saliman Manjalia, a charismatic fisher originally from Badreshwar, tells those gathered around him: “We are not formally educated. We don’t have formal qualifications. Our qualifications are that we can read the water and understand what it’s telling us.”
The story of a group of Gujarati fishers from India’s Gulf of Kutch who sued the private investment arm of the World Bank – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – began in 2015 and garnered international attention before reaching the US supreme court, finally losing on appeal in 2022.
Now, Sheena Sumaria, a British-Gujarati documentary film-maker, hopes to bring their story to a new audience.
The fishers decided to take the IFC to court after it awarded a $450m (£340m) loan to partly fund the giant Tata coal-fired power plant near the port of Mundra. They alleged that the construction of the plant had adversely affected their livelihoods by depleting fish populations and increasing salinity levels.
The case of the Wagher fishing community is known among India’s activists, but has not “garnered nationwide fame or widespread support”, says Sumaria.
“What we can learn from this story is the importance of grassroots activism and the power of community resilience,” she says. “The Waghers’ perseverance serves as a reminder that even in the face of overwhelming odds, local communities can challenge global systems and demand justice.”
The film includes interviews in Washington DC with staff at EarthRights International, the group representing the fishers in the legal case.
Budha Ismail Jam, the first of three fishers that put their names to the case, underlines the environmental impact of the power plants. “They don’t accept that those who fish by boat have been affected,” he says.
“We haven’t been affected? I told them that we used to catch fish 2km out at sea, now we go 12km out and we still catch fewer fish.”
In April 2015, the fishers filed the lawsuit against the IFC in the US, where the World Bank is headquartered. The case was dismissed on the grounds the IFC was immune from such legal action..
On appeal, 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 dismissed at a lower court and finally failed when the supreme court declined to hear an appeal in 2022.
“Gujarat is often depicted as a model of rapid development,” Sumaria says, “but the voices of those adversely affected by these developments are rarely heard.”
“The fishing community, particularly figures like Ibrahim, embodied a profound connection to the sea. His knowledge of the ocean and the way he expressed the community’s struggles through songs and poetry made him a natural focal point for the film.” Manjalia died in 2019.
“It is a story of people who, like Ibrahim, understand what is happening around them and refuse to stand by as their world is dismantled,” Sumaria adds. “Instead, they stand up and fight, embodying the true essence of what it means to be human.”
She wants viewers in India to reflect on “the costs of unchecked industrialisation” and believes that, despite their failures to prove any wrongdoing, the fishers reached “significant milestones” in just taking action.
“The fact that their case reached the US supreme court is in itself a historic achievement, as it challenged the notion of absolute immunity for international financial institutions,” she says.
A spokesperson for the IFC says: “We are unable to comment on content of the documentary film. However, Mr Jam had pursued his claims in a putative class action filed against IFC in US courts in 2015. IFC had responded to the allegations in that lawsuit, which concluded in 2021. We continue to deny these allegations.”
The Guardian has contacted Tata Mundra for comment.
The film was screened at the Big Sky documentary film festival in the the US in February and at Kerala’s international documentary and short film festival in India in July and will be shown at the Bertha DocHouse at the Curzon Bloomsbury this month.