Tom Kocherry is the Coordinator of the National Fishworkers Forum and India's National Alliance of Peoples' Movements (NAPM).
He is also the Rector of the Periyavillai Redemptorist Community in Tamil Nadu. One of the organisers of the famous Kanyakumari march of 1989 that sought to protect India's coastal ecology, he is a crusader against coastal pollution who has spearheaded protests against the Koodankulam Nuclear Plant in Tamil Nadu and is also currently a member of the Coastal Zone Management Authority of India.
He wants people who live close to the earth to be protected from those who have detached themselves from the earth.
His/her personal story/struggle
"In 1971, soon after I became a priest, I worked with the refugees from Bangladesh in Raigunj. The stories of despair and destitution that I heard changed me forever. My decision to spend my life defending the oppressed was further consolidated when I began to work in a small fishing village called Poothura near Thiruvananthapuram.
Middlemen led by one politically well-connected family were using muscle-power to keep fisherfolk permanently on the edge of starvation even though they worked harder than any community I knew. I decided to arm them with knowledge by teaching them to read and write."
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