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Four months after the Arabian Sea swallowed the Liberian-flagged container vessel MSC Elsa 3 on the morning of May 25, 2025, the submerged wreck’s shadow stretches across the south Kerala coastline.
For the communities of Pulluvila, Poonthura, Vizhinjam, and beyond, the sea that once sustained them has turned hostile. Nets that once came back heavy with catch now return fouled with plastic nurdles, those tiny white pellets that spilled from broken containers and scattered across the ocean like seeds of ruin. Engines corrode with chemical residues, fish catch dwindles, and families that drew their livelihood from the sea find themselves staring at polluted waters, their futures as uncertain as the wreck’s cargo manifest.
In the fishing hamlet of Pulluvila, south of Thiruvananthapuram, the toll of the disaster is measured not in statistics but in empty kitchens and pawned jewellery. Families speak of debts piling up, of boats that lie idle for weeks, of savings long exhausted.
A recent impact assessment carried out by local fishing organisations with support from Greenpeace India paints a grim picture. Almost every family in the survey reported a fall in income. Most of them had no savings left to tide over the crisis and were forced to borrow from local moneylenders or cooperative banks. The losses ran into lakhs for boat owners whose nets and engines were damaged, while daily wage crew members who depend on each trip for survival were left without even that meagre fallback.
Fishing has always been a precarious livelihood, subject to the moods of the sea and the pressures of modern markets. But the wreck of Elsa 3 has turned that precarity into desperation. The youth, once expected to inherit their fathers’ boats, are beginning to talk of abandoning the trade altogether. Families are caught in cycles of debt, their hopes pinned not on the next fishing season but on the distant possibility of compensation from courts and corporations.
“This is not just about lost wages,” says Jackson Pollayil, leader of the Kerala Swathantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation. “The wreck has stripped us of dignity. We are humiliated daily by the sight of our boats idle and our nets poisoned. And then they tell us we must fight in English courts with corporate lawyers to prove our suffering.”
The Kerala government recognised the gravity of the incident early, declaring it a “state-specific disaster.” It filed an ambitious claim in the High Court, demanding Rs 9,531 crore in compensation for ecological damage and the collapse of coastal livelihoods. The figure was unprecedented in Indian maritime history and briefly raised hopes among coastal communities that the state was ready to stand firmly by them.
But those hopes have dimmed as weeks have turned into months without substantial relief. Beyond rice packets and token cash doles, little has reached the families whose lives were turned upside down by the wreck. No independent social or environmental impact assessment was commissioned by the state to back its claim. No mechanism was created to systematically record losses at the household level. And no serious legal aid has been provided to help communities file claims or navigate the labyrinth of Admiralty proceedings.
The contrast between the state’s rhetoric in court and its lethargy on the ground has not gone unnoticed. “They file a huge number in their affidavit, but here in the villages we see nothing,” says Rethin Antony, a young panchayat member and activist from Poonthura. “It feels like exclusion by design. The state speaks in our name but does not include us in the process. We are reduced to spectators in our own struggle.”
While the state falters, the Mediterranean Shipping Company, the world’s second-largest container line, has moved with clinical precision. In August, MSC placed advertisements in two Malayalam dailies announcing that its liability for the Elsa 3 wreck would be capped at Rs132 crore. The notice, issued under the Merchant Shipping Act of 1958, instructed all affected parties to file claims in the High Court by mid-September, warning that no further claims would be entertained thereafter.
The figure, drawn from international conventions on limitation of liability, stands in jarring contrast to Kerala’s demand of Rs 9,531 crore. For the shipping giant, the disaster is a neat line item, a financial exposure to be capped and contained. For the families of Kerala’s coast, it is a mockery.
“This is not an offer of justice. It is a calculated insult,” says Pollayil. “They know that most of our people cannot even approach the High Court, let alone hire lawyers to contest a multinational. The advertisement was meant for the record, not for us.”
MSC’s legal defence leans heavily on a startling source: the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) itself. In its counter-affidavit, the company cites KSPCB’s monitoring reports, which recorded no significant change in seawater or air quality in the days after the wreck. The affidavit argues that the wreck occurred outside India’s territorial waters, stripping Kerala of jurisdiction. It claims that oil sheen was contained, that nurdle clean-up was ongoing, and that the hazardous cargo remained sealed in the sunken vessel. Compensation claims for lost livelihoods, it adds, are speculative, since the fishing ban was imposed by the state rather than the central government.
By turning the state’s own pollution board into a shield, MSC has exposed the fragility of India’s environmental regulatory system. The very agency tasked with protecting Kerala’s waters has become the evidence base for the polluter’s defence.
The Greenpeace white paper on the disaster makes for damning reading. It reveals that MSC Elsa 3 had failed multiple safety parameters during a port inspection in Mangaluru weeks before the accident, yet was allowed to sail. After the sinking, the company delayed releasing its cargo manifest despite repeated court orders, leaving regulators and communities in the dark about the full extent of hazardous materials on board.
The white paper also highlights the unique nature of nurdle pollution. Unlike oil, which can be skimmed or dispersed, nurdles persist for decades, infiltrating food chains, mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds. Scientists warn that the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO-listed site, is already showing signs of contamination. What appears as harmless white pellets on beaches is, in reality, an invisible poison that will outlast the immediate disaster by generations.
“This is slow violence,” says Greenpeace researcher Aakiz Farooq. “Communities are being made to live with an invisible, long-term poison. The shipping company knows this, but they exploit regulatory gaps and international conventions to deny liability. The state, instead of filling those gaps, has left its people to fend for themselves.”
Campaigners warn that Elsa 3 risks becoming a maritime replay of India’s worst industrial disaster, the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The same dynamics are visible: corporate power ranged against vulnerable communities, international conventions shielding multinational assets, and a state that lacks the will to confront commercial might. The spectre of a token settlement hangs heavy over Kerala’s coast.
In late August, a flotilla of twenty boats set out from Pulluvila, carrying a massive banner across the waters. It read, “MSC Shipwreck: Who Pays?” The protest, organised by fishworkers, students, and environmental groups, was both symbolic and desperate. Fisherfolk have also petitioned the Prime Minister and the National Disaster Management Authority to declare an occupational health emergency, citing rising cases of skin rashes, respiratory problems, and fatigue in coastal villages.
Yet, protests alone cannot carry the weight of survival. Families are slipping deeper into debt. Jewellery has been pawned, homes mortgaged, and boats sold at distress prices. Interim relief measures have been described as insulting, with families pointing out that their losses run into lakhs while they are handed token food kits.
“This is about more than money,” says Antony. “It is about whether our lives have value in the eyes of the state and the corporations that profit from our seas.”
The community-led report does not stop at documenting losses. It lays out a roadmap for recovery: immediate relief through transparent claim mechanisms, medium-term empowerment of local governance bodies and cooperatives, and a long-term vision of integrated coastal zone management that balances development with ecological protection.
But such roadmaps require political will. They require the state to invest in participatory processes, to empower communities rather than exclude them, and to resist the lure of corporate settlements that prioritise balance sheets over lives. Without this, Kerala risks not only losing the battle for Elsa 3 but setting a precedent that leaves all its coasts vulnerable to future disasters.
The wreck of MSC Elsa 3 is more than an isolated maritime accident. It is a test case for India’s maritime governance, for its environmental accountability, and for its willingness to defend vulnerable communities against global corporate power.
If MSC succeeds in capping liability at Rs 132 crore, the message will be stark: multinational shipping companies can devastate Indian coasts, pollute seas for generations, and walk away by paying a token sum. For Kerala’s fisherfolk, that would mean the erasure of their rights, dignity, and place in the nation’s imagination.