The Fisherman and the Banker: Film shows Indian fishermen's fight with a giant | Global development

EEarly on in The Fisherman and the Banker, Ibrahim Saliman Manjalia, a charismatic fisherman originally from Badreshwar, tells those around him: “We have no formal education. We have no formal qualifications. Our qualification is that we can read the water and understand what it is telling us.”

The story of a group of Gujarati fishermen from India's Gulf of Kutch suing the World Bank's private investment arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – began in 2015 and attracted international attention before reaching the US Supreme Court and finally lost on appeal in 2022.

Now Sheena Sumaria, a British-Gujarati documentary filmmaker, hopes to bring her story to a new audience.

The fishermen decided to take the IFC to court after it granted a $450m (£340m) loan to partially finance the giant Tata coal-fired power plant near Mundra port. They claimed that the construction of the facility has affected their livelihoods as fish populations have declined and salinity levels have increased.

The case of the Wagher fishing community is well known among India's activists but has “not gained national notoriety 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 is 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 from EarthRights International, the group representing the fishermen in the litigation.

Budha Ismail Jam, the first of three fishermen to join the case, highlights the environmental impact of the power plants. “They don’t accept that those who fish by boat are affected,” he says.

“We are not affected? I told them that we used to catch fish at a distance of 2 km in the sea, now we go to a distance of 12 km and still catch fewer fish.”

In April 2015, the fishermen filed the lawsuit against the IFC in the United States, where the World Bank is based. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the IFC was immune from such legal action.

On appeal, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that international organizations like the IFC could actually be sued in US federal courts. This was a pivotal moment for the fishermen, although the case was later dismissed by a lower court and ultimately collapsed when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in 2022.

“Gujarat is often presented as a model of rapid development,” says Sumaria, “but the voices of those negatively affected by these developments are rarely heard.”

“The fishing community, particularly figures like Ibrahim, embodied a deep connection to the sea. His knowledge of the ocean and the way he expressed the community's struggles through songs and poems made him a natural focus 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 watch their world being destroyed,” adds Sumaria. “Instead, they stand up and fight and embody the true essence of what it means to be human.”

She wants viewers in India to think about “the costs of unchecked industrialization” and believes that despite their failure to prove any wrongdoing, the fishermen have achieved “significant milestones” simply by taking action.

“The fact that their case reached the US Supreme Court is in itself a historic achievement, as it challenged the idea of ​​absolute immunity for international financial institutions,” she says.

An IFC spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on the content of the documentary. However, Mr Jam had pursued his claims in 2015 in a putative class action against IFC in US courts. IFC responded to the allegations in this lawsuit, which was concluded in 2021. We continue to deny these allegations.”

The Guardian has contacted Tata Mundra for comment.

The film screened at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in the US in February and the Kerala International Documentary and Short Film Festival in India in July, and is screening at the Bertha DocHouse at Curzon Bloomsbury this month.