Born to eat fishes
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: May 27, 2013 -

How Manipuri people love to eat fish and they find it hard to swallow anything down their throat without it is no secret.

But spending Rs 400 crores annually on importing fishes from other States of the country to meet the demand of the people!!

This definitely sounds preponderous, specially for a State like Manipur whose annual plan outlay is just Rs 3650 crores.

The rounded figure of Rs 400 crores spent on importing fishes may be our own guesstimate, but only an underestimation. So, the amount spent could very well be higher than this.

In the latest report on the ‘progress and achievements’ of Fisheries Department, it has been noted that the Department aims at development of fisheries in the State to augment production of fish to meet the requirement of the State along with taking up 10 ongoing plan schemes and two new schemes including Inland Fisheries Development, Fishery Extension, Rashtriya Krishi Vikash Yojana (RKVY), Fish Farmers’ Development Agencies and other Centrally sponsored schemes.

It is said that the present level of fish production is to the tune of 25,000 MT against the requirement of 65,000 MT annually.

So, the deficit quantity of 40,000 MT has to be obviously imported from other parts of the country including Assam, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh like always.

Even though the actual market rate may be higher, assuming that one kilogram of fish cost just Rs 100; simple arithmetic shows that the State Government has to spend a minimum of Rs 400 crores on importing the deficit quantity of 40,000 MT of fishes annually.

Now the question is, instead of spending such huge amount of money on importing fish, why can’t the State Government and the Department concerned in particular, utilise the amount judiciously for achieving its aim of augmenting fish production in the State?

Related to this question is, how the Department has been actually implementing the ongoing 10 plan schemes and two other schemes and how far these schemes have benefited the fish farmers in the State?

It is very obvious that the fund provided under various centrally sponsored schemes for development of fish production in the State has not percolated down to the people for whom it was meant for.

The naïve observation of the fish farmers that the production level could be increased manifold if the Government comes up with certain financial aids to help them in buying readymade fish feeds, which can help in maturing the fishes at a faster rate, only goes to reaffirm this fact. By the way, even if the Department is short of fund, as the annual budget allocation has shown, how about utilizing the Rs 400 crores supposedly spent on importing fish from outside in helping the poor fish farmers back home.

That way, we could at least look forward to home grown fishes, which would be more fresh and safer to eat rather than depending on the frozen ones brought from outside takings days and weeks to reach here.