Widen the net

Deep sea fisheries policy must be liberalised

The perceived impressive showing of an overall annual growth rate of 10.88 per cent in the last five years can’t hide the fact that the country’s fisheries sector is not free from a few glaring anomalies holding it from growing to its full potential. The average per-fisherman productivity is low compared to the global standards, and there are wide intra-sector disparities that need to be addressed to ensure a uniform development of this most lucrative segment of the broad farm sector. Of the two broad branches of fisheries — marine and inland — the former, which historically contributed the major part of fish production, has lost the momentum since the early 1990s. The bulk of the increase in output now comes from inland fisheries. In this segment, too, most of the growth is accounted for by aquaculture (farm fisheries), with hardly any appreciable rise in the output of “capture fisheries” (catches from rivers and other natural water bodies).

This aside, the development of farm fisheries has also not been uniform, especially in terms of diversity of cultivated fish species. Freshwater aquaculture has remained centred mainly round three major carps — rohu, catla and mrigal. The other species like catfish, murrel, and freshwater prawns are relatively recent additions. The product range of brackish water aquaculture is even slimmer, restricted primarily to shrimps. The bulk of the output is of exotic Pacific white shrimp, technically called Littopenaeus vannamei. The state of ocean fisheries is no different. Fishing activity by the traditional fishers has remained concentrated in the coastal waters and, to some extent, the mid-seas. This has resulted in over-exploitation of this zone, leading, in turn, to poor per-trip harvest. On the other hand, the country’s vast exclusive economic zone remains largely under-explored. The existing fleet of technically equipped large, deep-sea fishing-vessels is too small to adequately tap the fisheries resources of the deep sea and offshore regions. The poaching of these resources by foreign vessels is known to be fairly common despite regular surveillance by the Coast Guard. In recent years, the Chinese deep-sea fishing-trawlers have also been sighted in the southern Indian Ocean.

The government recently launched the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana and a few other schemes to address some of these issues. However, their impact is yet to be seen. The yojana provides for extending financial assistance to the traditional fishermen and their cooperatives or producers’ organisations to acquire fishing-vessels for deep seas. But, given the scale of operations needed for this job, it is doubtful as to how many of these small and medium enterprises, mostly start-ups, would be able to avail of this offer. The need, clearly, is to liberalise the deep-sea fisheries policy to encourage bigger private companies and their joint ventures to take up this task. Foreign companies should also be incentivised to operate their vessels in the offshore areas under the Indian flag and employing largely local fishermen. In the case of inland aquaculture, the entrepreneurs should be nudged to introduce fish species, especially the local ones, to diversify their product basket. The issue of fish seed shortage, estimated officially at 30-35 per cent, also needs to be tackled. These measures would help increase the availability of fish for domestic consumption and exports, besides boosting fishermen’s earnings.