Aquafarming in West Bengal's Sundarbans

Abstract

After the fall of the Gupta Empire, most of what is now West Bengal was controlled by Sultans who advocated agriculture as the founding ideology of the Empire. Under Khan Jahan, rice paddies began springing up at deltas and estuaries and became one of the first cultivars of the region. During the dry season however, many rice ponds and lakes began to shrivel and fill with rainwater from frequent thunderstorms. Farmers, knowing their rice crops would not make it to harvest, grew wild-caught shrimp larvae to keep a steady flow of income. Looking back into the history of agriculture and aquaculture, shrimp farms did in fact contribute to sustainable farming practices, but it was on a much smaller scale than we see today. The bloom of shrimp farming during the Sultan rule was due to a natural abundance of wild shrimp living in the coastal mangroves and did not contribute any considerable amount to the economy. As India slowly switched to an industrial style of harvesting, these extensive and sustainable practices will be altered solely for economic benefit; and, shrimping will be heavily politicized with the introduction of the East India Company in 1765. In the mid-1980s, the newly independent India accepted a $425 million loan (in US dollars) from the World Bank to start commercial shrimp farming along the coastline, to which the Indian government also added subsidies. This began a transcontinental drive towards industrial style farming in Southeast Asian countries.