Surinder Sud: More bait for the fisheries sector

FARM VIEW

Sustaining a high growth in the sector has become a major challenge.

With growth of a whopping 800 per cent since the 1950s, the fisheries sector has contributed handsomely to the overall agricultural growth numbers.

The real transformation of this sector came in the early 1980s with the development of technology for composite fish culture that allowed rearing of several types of fish, notably carps like Rohu, Cutla and Mrigal, simultaneously in different layers of the same pond.

This helped the inland fisheries grow faster than the capture fisheries, including marine fisheries. By 2000, the output of inland aquaculture overtook that of marine fisheries.

However, all this metamorphosis has not improved the economic lot of the traditional fisherfolk to a large extent. About 32 per cent of the fisher households still live below the poverty line.

No doubt this figure is lower than 57.5 per cent of 1984, but it is still perceptibly higher than the national average of 26 per cent. The National Sample Survey data also indicate that most fishermen were undernourished, being highly deficit in both calories "" and protein "" intake.

This apart, there are other concerns about this sector, too. These include adverse environmental fallout, especially of coastal shrimp culture; global depression in the prices of fish and fish products; new challenges posed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), especially those concerning the intellectual property rights (IPRs); stringent new sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) norms; need for compliance with provisions of multilateral agreements; and so on.

Moreover, sustaining a high growth in this sector has become a major challenge now. Fresh water is becoming scarce and the menace of fish diseases and other risk factors are accentuating. Costs are also climbing up.

A thorough analysis of all these issues has recently been done in a research project entitled "Strategies and options for increasing and sustaining fisheries and aquaculture production to benefit poor households in Asia".

It was conducted jointly by the Delhi-based National Centre for Agriculture and Policy Research (NCAP), an organ of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and the Worldfish Centre, an autonomous international non-profit organisation.

The Indian segment of the study was carried out by a team of experts from various Indian research institutes and agricultural universities led by NCAP Director Mruthyunjaya.

The report, published by NCAP, shows that the annual growth in the fisheries output peaked at 8.5 per cent in the 1980s and but decelerated to 3.89 per cent in the 1990s.

This trend is similar to that of the overall agricultural growth. But what is surprising is that unlike agriculture, where the deceleration was due partly to decline in public investment, the fisheries sector downturn came about despite a rise in the public investment.

It rose (at 1993-94 prices) from Rs 1,704 million in the triennium ending 1982 to Rs 4,545 million in the triennium ending 2001.

Besides, though India theoretically enjoys export competitiveness in fisheries products because of lower labour costs and post-harvest expenses, the processing companies are finding it difficult to boost exports because of a plethora of formidable hurdles.

These include complicated exporting procedures, high shipping costs, severe competition among exporters, frequent revisions of quality standards by the importers, irregular power and raw material supply, hygiene issues and lack of arrangements for speedier transportation of this highly perishable produce.

The NCAP report has drawn several conclusions and made some useful recommendations that can guide the policy planners to steer this sector towards a high growth trajectory, benefiting both commercial fisheries and traditional fishers.

Significantly, it has concluded that the technology and trade interventions have generally been skill-based, capital intensive and fish-farm size non-neutral.

As such these have failed to uplift the socio-economic status of the poor fishers.

It is, therefore, imperative for policy planners to follow a people-centric, and not product-centred, approach to development of the fisheries.

If need be, Panchayati Raj bodies could be involved in promoting fisheries in such a manner that even the illiterate or less educated and resource-starved traditional fisherfolk could benefit from it.

This will require prioritisation of technologies for the poor at the national, regional and micro levels. Besides, the skills of the poor fishers will have to be improved.

At the macro level, the states could be grouped into three distinct categories "" traditional fishing states having relatively higher fisheries productivity (such as Orissa and West Bengal), non-traditional fisheries states that have shown good performance (such as Andhra Pradesh and Punjab), and the states that have a large untapped fisheries potential (such as Bihar, Karnataka, parts of the north-east states, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh).

Different strategies are needed for each of these groups to facilitate sustainable high growth of the fisheries.