By B K Mishra
We begin the New Year with great optimism as the new government from the Prime Minister shri Narendra Modi to shri Radha Mohan Singh has put lots of emphasis on blue revolution. Future belongs to us fishermen, the sound is coming loud and clear.
But being in the midst of issue we know that to achieve Blue Revolution in the country, challenges are manifold for the Fishery cooperatives. The thrust is not only on enhancement of production or productivity but also various securities such as livelihood issues of fisher community, nutritional issues, social issues and environmental concerns.
These challenges could be faced by the fishery cooperatives in a planned way as under:
– Strengthening the existing 18,000 fishery cooperatives
– Networking of fishery cooperatives in a tier structure, with FISHCOPFED as the nodal agency
– Linking all fishery cooperatives across India with NFDB and NCDC, for funding support
– Infrastructure development with focus on cold chain
– Delivery of fishery inputs and technology to fish farmers through fishery cooperatives at grassroots level
– ICT-based cooperative linkage for better dissemination of information
It is high time to empower all fishery cooperatives at the grassroots level while FISHCOPFED takes a lead role with Govt. support, to achieve blue revolution.
