APPENDIX G
India Case Study

Linkages between Fisheries, Poverty
and Growth
Case study of India
A report prepared for the
Department for International Development (DFID)
Project: ‘The Role of Fisheries in Poverty Alleviation
and Growth: Past, Present and Future’
DFID/PASS Contract: AG0213

STUDY TEAM
Venkatesh Salagrama
ICM (Integrated Coastal Management)
64-16-3A, Pratap Nagar, Kakinada 533 004
TELE: +91 884 236 4851
FAX: +91 884 235 4932
EMAIL: icm_kkd@satyam.net.in; rmy_sujata@sancharnet.in
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary........................................................................................................................ 4
1. BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................ 7
Population characteristics ....................................................................................................... 7
Economic structure ................................................................................................................. 8
Quality of life indicators ......................................................................................................... 9
Balance of payments ............................................................................................................. 10
2. POVERTY ........................................................................................................................ 10
Poverty Assessment Methodology in India .......................................................................... 10
Estimates of Poverty in the country...................................................................................... 11
Poverty as an outcome of poor entitlements ......................................................................... 12
Economic sectors/regions most affected by poverty ............................................................ 12
Studies on poverty................................................................................................................. 14
3. ECONOMIC GROWTH................................................................................................... 16
GDP Per Capita..................................................................................................................... 16
Economic growth and poverty.............................................................................................. 17
Main contributors to economic growth................................................................................. 17
Contribution of fisheries to national economy...................................................................... 17
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 22
4. FISHERIES DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT................................................. 23
Fish production ..................................................................................................................... 23
Fisheries exploitation or activity-related benefits................................................................. 25
Employment in different production-related activities ......................................................... 26
Average earnings in fisheries sector ..................................................................................... 26
Other activities undertaken in relation to fishing.................................................................. 29
Contribution of fish to food-and livelihood-security............................................................ 29
Fisheries Management in India............................................................................................. 30
Costs and Revenues of Fisheries Management..................................................................... 34
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 34
5. POLICY MAKING........................................................................................................... 35
Perceptions of poverty at the macroeconomic level ............................................................. 35
Organisations involved in poverty reduction in the country................................................. 36
Main instruments used in Poverty Alleviation Programmes (PAPs).................................... 38
Evaluations of Policies and Instruments ............................................................................... 38
Factors contributing to poor performance of poverty alleviation programmes .................... 39
Fisheries policymaking in India............................................................................................ 41
Linkages between fish resources, economic growth and poverty reduction ........................ 42
Role played by NGOs, fishers’ organisations and civil society in general........................... 44
Institutional factors affecting the participation of the poor ................................................. 45
Important areas for policy development in the future (Opportunities) ................................. 46
Factors likely to impact on the nature and rate of policy development (Threats) ................ 48
6. References......................................................................................................................... 49
7. Annexures ......................................................................................................................... 56
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ABBREVIATIONS
AAI Aquaculture Authority of India
AP Andhra Pradesh
BOBP Bay of Bengal Programme
CDS Centre for Development Studies (Trivandrum)
CESS Centre for Economic and Social Studies
CMFRI Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute
DAHD Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (GOI)
DFID Department for International Development (Government of United
Kingdom)
DOF Department of Fisheries
DRDA District Rural Development Agency
DWFN Distant Water Fishing Nation
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GOI Government of India
HCR Headcount Ratio
HDI Human Development Index
ICM Integrated Coastal Management
ICSF International Collective in Support of Fishworkers
IRDP Integrated Rural Development Programme
MFRA Marine Fishing Regulation Act
MPEDA Marine Products Export Development Authority
NABARD National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
NGO Non-governmental organisation
NIRD National Institute of Rural Development
NSS National Sample Survey
NSSO National Sample Survey Organisation
PAP Poverty Alleviation Programme
PCO Programme for Community Organisation (NGO based in Kerala)
PDS Public Distribution Scheme
SIFAR Support Unit for Fisheries and Aquatic Research
SIFFS South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies
SPS Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary
TCM Technical Cooperation Mission
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
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Executive Summary
This case study for India is prepared as part of the DFID/PASS Project ‘The Role of
Fisheries in Poverty Alleviation and Growth: Past, Present and Future’. The objective
of the study is to conceptualise the interface between poverty reduction and fisheries
development in India. The study was conducted during February-March 2005 and a
first draft of the report prepared in March has been revised in the light of suggestions
made by the project leaders in April 2005.
Since 1950s, the emphasis of fisheries development in India has focused on
increasing production through more efficient harvesting technologies and on
increasing foreign exchange earnings for the country and the support for livelihoods
was directed at addressing these two objectives. This growth centred development
has brought about radical changes in the way fish are harvested and traded, which
had implications (both positive and negative) for all stakeholders in the sector. An
evaluation of these changes indicates that economic growth has not been
accompanied by progressive distributional changes for equitable distribution of the
benefits or addressed the poverty and livelihood concerns adequately. Some
traditional occupations have been marginalized; although new livelihood
opportunities emerged, it is doubtful that those who lost in the first case are
adequately compensated by the second. The need for investing large sums in new
harvesting technologies forced the poorer stakeholders out of the mainstream, while
for those who could make the change, increased cost of operations meant
intensification of fishing effort, overcapacity, indebtedness and overall uncertainty.
The result has been that economic growth in fisheries is accompanied by growing
unemployment and by the livelihoods of the poor perpetually facing threats from
new players and factors beyond their control.
On the other hand, much evidence exists to show that, given a responsible
management regime and a more equal distribution of benefits, fisheries sector can
contribute significantly to the wellbeing of a large proportion of the poor in the
coastal areas. In spite of everything, a comparison of wages earned in different
sectors indicates that fishing is still among the better livelihood options, although its
long-term sustainability (as a means of livelihood for a generally poor population) is
uncertain because real incomes have been coming down consistently over the last
decade. The fact that the sector has a large number of stakeholder groups other than
fishers themselves is largely ignored in the debate on fisheries and livelihoods, with
the result that a major proportion of the benefits from the sector remain un-quantified
and hence, unsupported. The few studies that deal with fisheries are concerned only
with small-scale or ‘artisanal’ sector, and there exists a big gap in terms of
understanding poverty and livelihoods in the non-artisanal categories like
mechanised fishing and aquaculture, not to speak of ‘ancillary’ activities.
In the 1980s, the evidence of depletion of fish catches in the near-shore waters
(which are now widely agreed to be under severe stress) surfaced in a telling manner.
The government’s emphasis on increasing production and productivity from the
water-bodies (which were recognised as ‘open access’ in spite of the existence of
strong community-based ‘common property’ arrangements in many areas) did not
take adequate account of the implications of unhindered exploitation of the resources
on their continued wellbeing or to extract the surplus for streamlining the systems to
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effectively address the needs related to trade, sustainability or livelihoods of the
poorer stakeholders (as done in many traditional management systems). This meant
that resource management became more a response to a storm already brewing in the
sector rather than a precautionary measure, giving the policy-makers very limited
latitude for manoeuvre and forcing them to resort to knee-jerk responses. The fishers,
who enjoyed an unlimited access to the resources, not only resent complying with
any new regulations, but also are averse to paying the costs of management (if asked,
which has yet to happen).
The government did put some management measures in place to control the
exploitation of the resources, covering a range of instruments, but they have not been
very successful. That fisheries is a state subject and, even at the federal level, is
looked after by many ministries and departments (with poor inter-institutional
linkages and information flows) has meant that resource management continues to
remain nobody’s baby. That most policy-making organisations are torn between the
three objectives of livelihood support, macro-economic growth and resource
conservation gives rise to policies that are often contradictory or ad hoc. Thus, in
spite of widespread realisation that the resources are being overfished, there are no
restrictions on entry into fisheries and new policies actually encourage increasing
fishing effort in offshore waters in the name of ‘fisheries management’! The role of
NGOs, fishworker organisations and other civil society organisations in policy-
making remains low, despite the (largely symbolic) efforts to increase their
involvement.
Consequently, the few acts and policies that speak of the need for management do so
only as lip service and remain largely ineffectual. These have also tended to be
focused on technical/resource-oriented measures rather than on people or economic
rationale. The sector-specific nature of these policies, insufficient or inappropriate
instruments for implementing them, top-down approaches, lack of participation by
all stakeholders either in policy making or in implementation and, most significantly,
lack of political will to effect a really meaningful change come in the way of
implementing them effectively.
There is an urgent need for improving the current knowledge about the fishers and
their livelihoods and placing them more centrally in the overall context. There is also
a need to develop appropriate analytical frameworks to understand the links between
natural resource management, economic growth and livelihood support. An
overarching institutional framework for bridging the gaps between these three broad
areas at the macro- and micro-levels will also need to be developed.
In the context of the multi-species nature of fisheries in India, the best option for
management lies in effort-reducing measures, such as phasing out the excessive
fishing fleet, reducing subsidies for enhancing fishing intensity or efficiency and
supporting the fishers to move into alternative income-generating activities. There is
a need to explore and develop a range of instruments for effective fisheries
management because management needs to be location-specific and involve local
communities in the planning and implementation. Lack of political will,
marginalisation of fisheries in the national priorities, the advanced nature of some of
the problems ailing the sector and the context of legal pluralism that prevails in the
coastal areas are some of the issues that need consideration while formulating a new
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– and radically different – agenda for effective fisheries management as well as for
sustainable livelihood support.
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INVESTIGATING THE LINKAGES BETWEEN FISHERIES, POVERTY
AND GROWTH: A Case Study for India
1. BACKGROUND
With a land area of 3.3 million km², India is the seventh largest country in the world
and is referred to as a sub-continent in its own right. The Indian Union is federal in
structure and consists of 28 states and seven union territories. The constitution
distributes legislative power between Parliament at the national level and state
legislatures at the state level and vests the residual powers in Parliament. Sectors like
agriculture and fisheries are State Subjects, and the Union Government’s role in
these areas, though significant, is not often direct.
World Bank (2004a: 1) notes that, since the 1970s, India’s economic growth rate has
risen (averaging 6 percent in the last decade), poverty has nearly halved (from 55
percent in 1973-74 to 26 percent in 1999-2000), and social indicators have shown
signs of improvements (the Human Development Index – HDI – went up from 0.411
in 1975 to 0.595 in 2002; Annexure 1). The country has achieved self-sufficiency in
agricultural production and also stands tenth among the industrialised countries in the
world (GOI, 2005:1).
While these improvements illustrate achievements in a challenging environment, it is
acknowledged that India' social indicators remain weak by most measures of human
s
development, ranking it 127 in the world, in HDI terms (UNDP, 2004). The National
Human Development Report gives evidence of the government’s resolve to tackle
poverty in a holistic and integrated manner. The Millennium Development Goals for
India (Annexure 2) include: halving the proportion of people who suffer from
hunger; two-thirds reduction in infant mortality rates; universal primary schooling
and complete elimination of gender disparities in schooling opportunities by 2015.
The broad priorities for national policy as laid down in the Tenth 5-Year Plan (2002-
7) focus on poverty reduction and employment generation, universal access to basic
services (literacy, water and health), population control, and addressing gender and
environmental imbalances (GOI, 2002a: 6). Fisheries is considered one of the
important sectors contributing to economic growth, livelihood support and poverty
alleviation in the country.
Population characteristics
India has the (rather dubious) distinction of being the second most populous country
in the world after China with a total population of 1,028 million (16.7 percent of the
world population) according to the 2001 Census with a population density of 324 per
sq km (GOI, 2005: 6-7). The population has grown consistently since 1901, the
decadal growth rate climbing from 5.75 percent in the census of 1901 to nearly 25
percent in the census of 1971, 1981 and 1991, slowing down to 21.54 percent in
20011 (GOI, 2005:8). The sex ratio (number of females per one thousand males)
showed a consistently declining trend from 972 in 1901 to 927 in 1991, and
1
It is still impressive because, in real terms, it actually added the highest number ever of people to the
country’s population (180 million - only slightly less than the total population of Australia!).
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marginally improved to 933 in 2001 (GOI 2005: 11). In the Census of 2001, the men
numbered 532.1 million while the women totalled 496.4 million.
As infant mortalities declined and health infrastructure improved, India now has the
second largest number of elderly persons after China. In 1981, there were about 43
million elderly people in the country (comprising 6.5 per cent of the population),
growing to 57 million (or 6.7 per cent) by 1991. The number of widows among the
elderly is about three and a half times more than the number of widowers (GOI,
2002b: 92). The growth in population was accompanied by disintegration of social
networks such as joint family system and the 1990s saw a spurt in the problems faced
by the elderly people (ICM 2003).
Urban population
Some 742 million people or 72.25 percent of the population reside in rural areas
(NIRD 2003: 4). However, rapid urbanisation has been a characterising feature of
development in the country since 1950s and, between 1971 and 2001, urban
population grew over 2 ½ times from 110 million to 286 million, rising from 20
percent to 28 percent of the total population (GOI, 2005: 15-16). Mumbai, Kolkata,
New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad are the major cities in the country,
but there are at least 20 more cities with a population of over 1 million.
Coastal population
Nine states and 4 union territories in the country have coastal boundaries and some
360 million people (about a third of the population) live in coastal areas (Mathew,
2003). There is little evidence of an increased movement of people from inland to the
coast, except where urban centres are located in the coastal areas. Fishing has
traditionally been a caste-bound operation and carried the stigma of being a risky and
lowly (and low-paying) activity, discouraging entry of outsiders except into certain
sub-sectors like mechanised fishing and aquaculture (mainly as asset owners). The
period between 1985-95 saw some new opportunities emerging in the sector,
facilitating the entry of people of non-fishing orientation into it (mainly into
ancillary, shore-based, activities), but the opportunities quickly fizzled out. In fact,
since 1980s, in some coastal states like Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, there has been a
growing trend of inland migration by the coastal fishers in search of work in fishing
and other wage-paying employment on seasonal as well as long-term (or permanent)
basis (Salagrama, 2004c). Long distance migrations from the east coast to the west
coast have also become widely prevalent.
Economic structure
Indian economy followed a mixed economy model, which emphasised the idea,
propounded in the Second Five Year Plan, that “the basic criterion for determining
lines of advance must not be private profit, but social gain” (GOI, 1956). Apart from
a few cosmetic gestures, which created an illusion of advancing towards socialism,
the emphasis on socialism did not improve the socio-economic relations enough to
warrant a celebration of the development path pursued over the past fifty years
(Misra and Puri, 1999:73). Thus, India remains an underdeveloped (or ‘developing’)
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economy, characterised by low per capita income ($ 230 in 2003), which is one of
the lowest in the world (Datt and Sundharam, 2005:5). Like other under-developed
economies, India’s national economy also is based on primary production.
Agriculture accounts for a quarter of India’s GDP and 70 percent of the population is
dependent on it for a livelihood (GOI, 2005: 60). The service sector grew rapidly in
the last two decades and now accounts for more than half of India’s economy.
Industrial sector accounts for the remaining quarter of the GDP, and has remained
stable since 1982 (Hosch and Flewweling, 2003). The economy is characterised by
chronic unemployment and underemployment and low rate of capital formation.
There are sharp inequalities in the distribution of wealth and assets, with the top 10
percent owning nearly half the assets in rural areas while the top 14 percent own 66
percent of the assets in the urban areas (Datt and Sundharam, 2005:7). In rural areas,
51 percent of the households at the bottom owned just 10 percent of the total assets,
while in urban areas, over half the population owned barely 5.3 percent of the total
assets! There are indications that the inequalities of income, wealth and assets
between the wealthy and the poor are increasing (PBH, 2003).
Quality of life indicators
Public health expenditure as a percentage of GDP is 0.9 percent in 2001, but the
private health expenditure is more than four times as much at 4.2 percent (UNDP,
2004). Life expectancy at birth has gone up to 63.7 years from 50 years in 1970-75.
Infant mortality rate halved between 1970 and 2002 from 127 to 67. Public
expenditure on education as percentage of GDP is 4.1 in 1999-2000, slightly higher
than it was in 1990 (3.9 percent). The literacy rate in the country has shown
remarkable improvement over the years and, according to the Census of 2001, stood
at 65 percent, up from 44 in 1981 and a mere 18 percent in 1951. Female literacy,
which stood at an abysmal 9 percent in 1951, increased to 54 percent by 2001 (GOI,
2005:14).
Population with sustainable access to improved sanitation rose from 16 percent in
1990 to 28 percent in 2000 and that for sustainable access to improved water source
went from 68 to 84 percent during the same period. Wide variations exist in terms of
access to the basic services between different states as well as between urban and
rural areas.
Unemployment
As GOI (2002b: 36-37) notes, nearly 90 per cent of the employment in the country is
in the unorganised or informal sector and the data on the magnitude and composition
of employment are not entirely adequate or even reliable. Data gathered through
periodical surveys indicate that, during the period 1983 to 1999-2000, the percentage
of persons in the labour force declined from 66.5 per cent in 1983 to 61.8 percent in
1999-2000. The decline in the employment growth for females has been significantly
higher than that for males. As a result, the incidence of unemployment has increased
at the national level from 2 per cent in 1983 to 2.3 per cent in 1999-2000 (GOI,
2002b: 36-37). Planning Commission (GOI 2002a: 3) notes that the composite
incidence of unemployment and underemployment stands at 9 percent of the labour
force and at almost 13 percent for the youth. It suggests the steadily worsening land-
man ratio and the continued dependence of a high proportion of population on
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agriculture as the principal causes of growing unemployment and underemployment
problems in the rural areas and predicts that the problem is likely to worsen over the
years unless measures are taken to either increase the intensity of land use through
increased irrigation and watershed development or to shift a significant proportion of
the labour force out of agriculture to non-agricultural activities, or both.
Balance of payments
Following the liberalisation of the economy, the balance of payments situation
improved by 2002 and the current account deficit narrowed down to an average of
0.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign exchange reserves
increased from less than US$ 6 billion in 1990-91 to US$ 54 billion in 2002 (GOI,
2002a: 103), which is considered an indication of the inherent and current strength of
the economy, although scholars like Jayati Ghosh dispute this contention (PBH,
2002: 33-36).
2. POVERTY
Poverty Assessment Methodology in India
As Deaton and Kozel (2005) note, Indian policy making and politics are dominated
by discussions of poverty, and measures of poverty rightly attract a great deal of
attention and debate. The Planning Commission of the Government of India (GOI)
has been estimating the Head Count Ratio of the poor separately for rural and urban
areas for over three decades. It currently uses minimum consumption expenditure,
anchored in an average (food) energy adequacy norm of 2400 and 2100 kilo calories
per capita per day to define State specific poverty lines, separately for rural and
urban areas. These poverty lines are then applied on the National Sample Survey
Organisation’s (NSSO) household consumer expenditure distributions to estimate the
proportion and number of poor at State level. The NSS is a socio-economic enquiry
carried out in the form of successive rounds. The period of enquiry has been varying
across rounds and has varied from a few weeks to a few months. During these
rounds, the NSS collects information on various socio-economic aspects of
households, household consumption being one of the most important. The data are
collected on the basis of interviews of households, which are selected following
simple random sampling, which is stratified and has two stages. The first stage units
are villages in the rural sector and urban blocks in the urban sector. The households
constitute the second stage units in both the sectors. The poverty estimates published
by the Planning Commission count the number of people who are living in
households whose monthly per capita total expenditure is less than a poverty line that
is specific to the state and sector (urban or rural) in which they live (Deaton and
Kozel, 2005:2).
Conceptually consumer expenditure as a measure of standard of living has the
advantage that it is amenable to welfare interpretations. But when it comes to
empirical verifications, it bristles with problems. NIRD (1998) provides a
comprehensive critique on the NSS and the other poverty indicator databases applied
to assess poverty in the country. It notes that NSS data do not take into account other
dimensions of welfare like health, life expectancy, literacy, access to safe drinking
water, public goods or common property resources. This explains why factors other
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than hunger got low priority in policy formulations and plan achievements with
respect to primary education, primary health etc., have remained quite modest.
Recognising it was not sufficient to understand poverty only in terms of lack of
adequate income, but as a state of deprivation spanning the social, economic and
political context of the people that prevents their effective participation as equals in
the development process (GOI, 2002b:3), many attempts have been made to develop
alternative indicators of poverty. In the 1980s, the Working Group set up by the
Government of India to evolve an acceptable methodology for identifying the poor
through criteria alternative to per capita income/calorie requirement, concluded that
there is no feasible alternative to the identification of the poor except by annual
income and expenditure, while accepting that the estimates of per capita
consumption itself have so many limitations. Similarly, NIRD (1998:110-115)
attempted to evolve a set of non-monetary indicators, which are simple and easily
verifiable for identification of the poor, in the final analysis, could not replace the
income criterion successfully, since the percentage of misclassification is as high as
40. As Shanthi suggests (in NIRD 1998:83), different definitions identify different
people with very different characteristics as being poor.
In preparing the Human Development Report for the country, the Planning
Commission (GOI, 2002b: 34) made an attempt to put together indicators on
economic attainments that reflect an individual’s personal means as well as outcome
measures on the availability and access to basic amenities that capture the public
development effort at improving the economic well-being of people. The
deprivational aspect of economic attainments was presented through Head-Count
estimates of incidence of poverty anchored in a basic food adequacy norm. It is not
certain how the results compared with the traditional HCR-based poverty measures.
Estimates of Poverty in the country
Datt & Sundharam (2005:362-370) provide an overview of poverty estimates in the
country since 1960s. The Planning Commission (2002a & 2002b), Sundaram and
Tendulkar (2003), Parikh and Radhakrishnan (2002), NIRD (1999a & b); the World
Bank (2004) and several others have reviewed the recent poverty situation in the
country and concluded that there has indeed been a steady decline in the proportion
of the people below the poverty line. The depth and severity of poverty has reduced
faster than the incidence, and over time there has been a trend towards a greater
degree of clustering of the poor around the poverty line leading to a situation where
economic growth is likely to have a considerably larger impact on poverty reduction.
Official estimates (based on Head Count Ratio) show a decline in the poverty rate
from 55 percent in 1973-74 to 262 in 1999-2000, which, in numbers, still means over
260 million people being poor in the country, down by only 60 million from the
1973-74 estimate (NIRD 2003: 92) thanks to a parallel – and more rapid – increase in
population. The decline has not also been uniform either across States or across rural
and urban areas. The proportion of poor in the rural areas declined from 45.65
percent in 1983 to 27.09 percent in 1999-2000, while that in urban areas declined
2 Patnaik (in PBH 2002:3) indicates that this figure was erroneous and was based on ‘contaminated’
data and states that the Planning Commission itself accepts it as such. According to more reliable
figures that he cites, the rural poverty is determined to be 36.35 percent for 1999-2000 while the urban
poverty stood at 28.76 percent.
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from 40.79 percent to 23.62 percent during this period, which – in real terms –
actually means an increase in the total number of urban poor by 7 million!
The Human Development Index (HDI) has improved significantly between 1980 and
2001. Significantly, inequalities across states on the HDI are less than the income
inequality as reflected in the per capita State Domestic Product (GOI, 2002b: 3-4).
Poverty as an outcome of poor entitlements
Whatever the status of poverty in percentage terms, every study agrees that the
number of poor in real terms is still alarming and is largely related to entitlements.
Incidence of hunger in rural areas in 1999-2000 is as follows:
Households (percentage) getting two square meals a day (Source: NIRD 2003: 104)
Throughout the Only some months of the Not even some Not reported
year year months
All India 96.2 2.60 0.70 0.50
Thus, over twenty-six million people in the rural areas have access to two square
meals a day only during some months of the year, while another seven million do not
have assured access to two square meals even in some months. Per capita
expenditure on food amounts to nearly 60 percent of the consumption expenditure in
the rural areas (NIRD, 2003: 88). Over half of the children under age of five years in
India continue to remain moderately or severely malnourished, 30 per cent of
newborn children are significantly underweight and nearly 60 per cent of women are
anaemic (GOI, 2002b: 73). The food security at the national level has not percolated
to poor households. That this is the case in spite of the country having attained self-
sufficiency in food production for well over a decade3 leads unambiguously to the
conclusion that it is a question of lack of ‘entitlements’.
Economic sectors/regions most affected by poverty
Within the country, wide variations exist between states in terms of their human
development achievements, ranging from 0.674 for Chandigarh to 0.308 for Bihar
(see also Sundaram and Tendulkar, 2003, who analyse change in poverty across 15
major states in India in the 1990s). Such differences between states make it difficult
to generalise the conclusions any study across the country. Among the coastal states,
Kerala stands first with HDI of 0.591 and Orissa stands among the last with a HDI of
0.345. While many of the coastal states (with the exception of Orissa) fare better than
the others in terms of relative well being, they are frequently prone to natural
disasters (like the cyclones of 1996 and 1999 that affected, respectively, Andhra
Pradesh and Orissa; the Earthquake of 2001 affecting Gujarat; the Tsunami of 2004
affecting Tamil Nadu and Kerala) which upset a state’s economy and the capacity of
the poorer stakeholders to pursue their livelihoods, often irretrievably. High
incidence of disasters makes many coastal livelihoods uncertain and, in the long run,
unsustainable (especially for the poor) (IMM 2001: 7).
The large population of the country and the vast diversity of occupations (most of
which are in the primary sector) are instrumental in the skewed nature of income
3 To such an extent that mounting food stocks are now the major crisis facing the managers of the
national economy (Pariksh and Radhakrishnan, 2002: 8-9)!
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distribution and high incidence of poverty. Deprivation also stems from, and/or is
exacerbated by, social inequality arising from systemic processes like caste, age,
religion, gender and geographic origin, which determine the access to, and
availability of, resources to a household and vary from place to place and from time
to time (Salagrama, 2003a).
The livelihoods of the poor are characterised by their dependence upon common
property or open access resources. While this is obviously true in case of fishing
communities, there is much evidence to show that other categories of people like
agricultural labourers too depend on CPRs, but the dependence is often masked
because of its frequently non-monetised nature. Any changes in terms of access to
these resources – either curtailing the poor’s entry or enabling that of the more
affluent sections – can have serious consequences for the livelihoods of the poor as
the development of fisheries sector in India demonstrates (Salagrama, 2003a).
The planners assumed that economic growth, supplemented by policies of
progressive taxation and public expenditure would lead to a rise in the level of living
of the poor. Production-oriented approach without altering the mode of production
could not but result in the appropriation of the gains of development by the owners of
instruments of production. Using the NSS data, Minhas, Bardhan, Dandekar and
Rath and a few others have attempted to identify particular groups of poor across the
country (Misra & Puri, 1999: 237) and decided that, in all cases, it was the ownership
of land (in the case of agricultural sector) that determined the wealth status of a
household. In the fishing sector, which depends on open access (or common
property) arrangements to the natural resources, it is not so much the availability of
the resource in the open, as the means of access to the resource and the ability to
extract it efficiently that is important, which are both increasingly dependent upon
the fishers’ capacity to invest in efficient fishing systems. Thus, poverty in fishing
communities is determined by the ownership of production tools (boat, nets etc.)
(ICM 2003a). Obviously, those who cannot afford to invest in productive assets and
hence work on others’ boats find themselves having little say in fishing operations or
sharing patterns. Datt and Sundharam (2005) conclude that the philosophy of
automatic transmission of the benefits arising from an increase in production to the
bulk of the small farmers, landless labourers or factory workers without transferring
property or tenurial rights either to the State or the peasantry was destined to failure.
However, developments in the 1990s indicate that owning land or production tools is
not a sufficient condition for a sustainable livelihood. It becomes one only when the
availability of, and the demand for, the resource – fish, in the case of fishing
communities – remain stable and consistent. In other words, the health of the natural
resources and the vibrancy of markets became the prerequisites for sustainable
livelihoods. The 1990s saw agriculture, the prime motor of the national economy and
the most important source of livelihoods in the country, slow down. A recent study
by NIRD (2004) notes that, from the middle of 1990s, there has been an all round
crises in agriculture owing to increasing cost of production, falling output prices,
inadequate markets and, on top of all these, the liberal policies of importing
agricultural products in India. Agricultural income grew at a slower pace in the
1990s than that in the 1980s and output decelerated even more (Parikh and
Radhakrishnan, 2003:8). Fisheries too had a similar experience through the 1990s, as
production reached a plateau and fish trade fluctuated wildly. These trends have put
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the producers under severe stress and have a negative impact on employment
potential and wages in the primary sector, both of which are stagnating.
Consequently, large-scale influx of rural migrants – including agricultural labourers
as well as small landholders – into cities in search of work gathered momentum in
the 1990s (see Deshingkar & Start, 2003). A more serious consequence of the failure
of agriculture as a sustainable means of livelihood for the people has been the drastic
increase in the number of suicides in the farming community (NIRD, 2004). But,
while suicides have managed to attract some attention, the issues of general
deprivation and poverty as well as increasing vulnerability and marginalisation of the
poor in agriculture and allied sectors like fisheries (Salagrama, 2004c) have
generated less interest and the policy responses to the crises have remained patchy at
best.
As both production and trade fluctuated in agriculture and fisheries in the 1990s, the
ownership of land or production tools no longer allows the producers to take their
livelihood for granted and even becomes a constraint in the way of diversifying or
migrating out of the sector. As many participatory wealth-ranking exercises in the
eastern coastal states of India show, the owners of small landholdings and boats are
routinely ranked as being more vulnerable than the asset-less wage labourers and less
capable of making the shift to another activity, and the asset-less workers are thus
considered better off than the owners!
Studies on poverty
There are too many studies on poverty in India (see Deaton and Kozel, 2005 for a
detailed review). A search on the WWW yields a mass of information from a wide
range of sources (government, private sector and NGOs, international aid agencies),
presenting different perspectives (national, regional and sub-regional and
community-level; general and specific project oriented etc.) and, not infrequently,
different agendas. It is impossible to give even a flavour of the information available
on the subject, which is not surprising considering the size of the Indian sub-
continent and the severity of the problem (not to speak of the fact that the compiler
of this study is not trained in economics). Sources of information provided at the end
of this report give some useful links on Indian poverty.
Apart from government sources like the Planning Commission and the National
Institute of Rural Development, several NGOs, like the Centre for Economic and
Social Studies (CESS), carry out studies to assess the performance of poverty
alleviation programmes. The World Bank, UNDP and DFID and the many
programmes and projects that they support, bring out many publications – policy
briefs, working papers, and reports – detailing changes in poverty generally as well
as from the perspective of specific projects undertaken with their assistance.
In terms of studies on poverty, the fisheries sector has attracted relatively less
attention than its counterparts like agriculture and forestry. It is generally assumed
that the fishing communities are poor as a rule and few attempts have been made to
distinguish the poor from (and within) the artisanal fishers. Most ‘socio-economic’
studies are largely confined to assessing the viability of specific technologies or
projects from a technical, economic and (less frequently) social perspective, than to
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understand or explore poverty in the fishing communities. Many NGOs may have a
better understanding on the subject, but this is confined to a few villages and is
seldom compiled or analysed for various reasons. There are also the practical
difficulties of gathering and disseminating information widely in a country the size
of India and the condition persists even after the arrival of the Worldwide Web on
the scene.
There are some exceptions to the general trend. The FAO’s Bay of Bengal
Programme (BOBP) documented a wealth of information on the small-scale fishers
in 1980s and 1990s. International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF)
regularly brings out a number of publications focusing on small-scale fishworkers, an
important strand of its work being to explore the gender dimension in fisheries. On
the west coast, the Programme for Community Organisation (PCO), the South Indian
Federation of Fishermen Societies (SIFFS) and the Centre for Development Studies
(CDS) documented the life and livelihoods of the small-scale fishing communities in
Kerala. Many research projects commissioned by the DFID from mid-1990s focused
on poverty in the fishing communities and filled some important gaps, although
much work still needs to be done. FAO-SIFAR supported a study on poverty, food
insecurity and vulnerability in the coastal fishing communities of Orissa state in 2003
(ICM, 2003a), but it has remained unpublished.
A point to note is that most of these studies deal only with the small-scale or
‘artisanal’ sector, and there exists a big gap in terms of understanding poverty and
livelihoods in the non-artisanal categories like mechanised fishing and aquaculture,
not to speak of ‘ancillary’ activities. As a result, as one study (Vivekanandan et al,
1996) noted in the context of Andhra Pradesh, policy making in India probably has
little basis in a real understanding of the actual issues of concern to the fishers
themselves.
While there is no denying the clear need to include all livelihood groups in fisheries
(artisanal and non-artisanal; capture and culture; marine and inland; men and
women) in the poverty and development debate in India, recent experiences force
one to conclude that the probability of this need taking a concrete form remains
bleak. As evidence, one can show the massive post-tsunami rehabilitation
programmes undertaken by government and NGOs in Tamil Nadu, where a vast
majority of the ‘livelihood programmes’ are more or less confined to providing boats
and nets alone, ignoring concerns and warnings about the possible impacts of such
indiscriminate proliferation of fishing capacity on the resources on the one hand and
on the social equity and equilibrium aspects on the other. The widely accepted fact
that several fishing related livelihoods had been facing serious sustainability
problems prior to the tsunami have been conveniently overlooked in the
programmes4. This line of thinking takes ‘fisheries livelihoods’ as being synonymous
with fishing operations5 to the exclusion of other activities and players, and this
4
Another casualty in the rehabilitation programme appears to be the Coastal Regulation Zone Act, a
contentious piece of legislation at the best of times, but now a veritable headache for many
rehabilitation efforts.
5
The emphasis is mainly on providing boats to the ‘artisanal’ sector in the (mistaken) belief that the
boats in the artisanal sector cannot contribute to resource over-exploitation and also that providing a
boat to every fisherman is akin to providing a piece of land to every agricultural worker, i.e., a means
of improving equity. Such social engineering experiments in a sector that is not at all well understood
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lopsided understanding leads to major imbalances in the rehabilitation process. Apart
from a token commitment to promoting ‘alternative/supplementary livelihoods’,
most agencies have avoided exploring options for alternate livelihoods in a
meaningful manner. More alarmingly, almost everyone – government, NGOs,
church-based groups, national and international aid agencies – is unanimous in
supporting production-enhancing technologies as the means of livelihood support,
either through ignorance or because of a hurry to spend aid (and to be seen to have
done so) and there is really no effort to seek or suggest alternative paradigms of
development (which one would have expected to come from the NGOs). One can
agree with the oft-quoted statement that one hears in Chennai these days: that the real
disaster began after the tsunami of December 2004.
The conclusion one can draw from this is perhaps that the links between poverty,
environment and trade as well as the impact of the major trends in the fisheries sector
– declining access to, or availability of fish; technologisation, over-capacitisation and
the consequent indebtedness/credit-market linkages; and changing trade context – on
the life and livelihoods of many categories of fishers (not to speak of the various
non-fishing stakeholders) continue to be overlooked at all decision-making levels. To
the question whether the benefits from exports (or the other forms of wealth created
in the sector) can be used for improving livelihood sustainability of the poor (if such
questions ever get asked at the policy-making level), the answer could be ‘yes’ in a
theoretical sense (and one could even suggest a number of ways to do it), but, in
practice, it is very doubtful that such options would make it into policy.
3. ECONOMIC GROWTH
Since its Independence in 1947, India experimented with a Mixed Economy model,
which was felt to be apt for a poor, developing country of this magnitude, but turned
out to be an opportunity for bureaucracies and controls to proliferate leading to a
stagnation in economic growth. The weaknesses in the Indian economy came to the
fore in 1991, when India faced a serious balance of payment crisis. In order to
overcome the crisis, the country embarked upon a massive programme of
liberalisation and the reforms involved opening up the economy, reducing the public
sector’s role, and liberalising and strengthening the financial sector (World Bank,
2000:2). Licensing for domestic manufacture was abolished for all but a few
industries. The private sector was permitted to enter into areas hitherto reserved for
the public sector. Import tariffs were drastically reduced and the rupee was devalued
significantly. The government made a clear commitment for further liberalisation and
reforms (Parikh & Radhakrishnan, 2002) and with Mr Manmohan Singh, the original
architect of the reforms process in the country, at the helm of affairs now, it can be
expected that the reforms will continue with renewed vigour.
GDP Per Capita
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country in 2002 in US$ was 510.2 billions and
in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, it was US$ 2,800 (HDR, 2004). The Per Capita
GDP for India has been showing a consistent increase since 1975, as the following
and implemented post-haste in many cases could, it is feared (Muralidharan, pers.comm..), potentially
lead to serious imbalances. It is widely believed that the number of boats being provided will easily
exceed those actually lost/damaged in the tsunami.
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table shows. It is interesting to note that the GDP does not show any fluctuations in
the post-Liberalisation period.
Year 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2002
GDP per capita (PPP-dollar) 430 630 960 1 380 1 830 2 420 2 670
Source: Globalis (2004)
Economic growth and poverty
As Deaton and Kozel (2005) note, what happened to poverty in India in the 1990s
has been fiercely debated, both politically and statistically. The effects of
liberalisation on poverty remain controversial (see also Datt & Sundharam,
2005:375-8), and the official numbers published by the GOI, showing an acceleration
in the rate of poverty reduction have been challenged both for showing too little and
too much poverty reduction. After a thorough review of various estimates, Deaton
and Kozel conclude that although there is no consensus on what happened to Indian
poverty in the 1990s, there is good evidence both that poverty is falling and that the
official estimates of poverty reduction are too optimistic, particularly for rural India.
One might say that it might be still too early to establish the relation between
economic growth and poverty in the country.
Similarly, while determining the HDI for different states, the Planning Commission
(GOI, 2002b: 4) finds that the relation between the HDI and the level of economic
growth does not show any correspondence among the middle-income states in the
country. The Planning Commission concludes that human attainments appear to be
better and more sustained in those parts of the country where there is social
mobilisation for human development, and where female literacy and empowerment
encourages women to have a say in the decision making process at the household
level.
Main contributors to economic growth
Over the last twenty years, agriculture has become less important to the national
economy. Agricultural output growth declined by about 1 percentage point to 2.7 per
annum during 1992-99 as against a growth rate of 3.6 percent in the 1980s (Parikh
and Radhakrishnan, 2002: 33) and its contribution to GDP fell from 44 percent in
1973-74 (GOI, 2002a: 28) to only one quarter in 2002. As if to underline the
declining importance of agriculture, investment in agriculture as a percentage of
GDP has come down from 1.6 percent in 1993-94 to 1.3 percent in 2001-2 (The New
Indian Express, 15 November 2004: 10). The service sector grew from 37.2 percent
in 1982, to 49.2 percent in 2002 – representing now virtually half of India’s
economy. The contribution of the industrial sector has remained stable at 26 percent
throughout this period.
Contribution of fisheries to national economy
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i. Brief overview of the growth of fishing economy in the country6
It is important to note that while the rest of the economy was opened to the markets
only in the 1990s, fisheries development in the country since 1950s has always been
based upon the open economy model. As Johnson (2001) puts it, “The development
path advocated by modernisation relies on a variable mix of market incentives and
state intervention, the latter specifically to stimulate growth in capacity through
investment until such a time as the country or region builds sufficient momentum to
maintain growth on its own”, in other words, by liberalising fish trade. Agriculture
was not given an export orientation because it was felt that it should primarily meet
the domestic demand and fisheries was primed for exports (Anjani Kumar et al,
2003:9).
At the policy level, fisheries development became synonymous with addressing the
foreign exchange needs of the country from the Second Five Year Plan onwards, and
shrimp emerged from relative obscurity to become the Prima Donna of Indian
fisheries by late 1960s. The emphasis on increasing exports led to an active focus on
developing new harvesting technologies like mechanised trawling through influential
initiatives like the Indo-Norwegian Project (INP) in Kerala and FAO-supported
programmes elsewhere in the country (Kurien, 1985; Vivekanandan, 2002;
Srivastava et al, 1990:33; DOF-Karnataka 1978: 8; DOF-Andhra Pradesh, 1978 4).
Exploration by INP and CMFRI on the west coast (Kurien, 1985) and by the GOI
survey vessels on the northeast coast of India (Somvanshi, 2001:2) in late 1960s and
mid-1970s opened up the Indian seas for shrimp fishing. The GOI set up a chain of
ice-cum-cold storage plants (procured under TCM fisheries programme) at important
coastal centres (GOI, 1961), which were instrumental in encouraging some private
entrepreneurs to export shrimp to the US in late-1950s, with spectacular results
(Kurien 1985). The growing demand from the US and Japan for Indian shrimp
received a boost with the devaluation of Indian rupee in 1966 and the markets for
Indian seafood shifted from traditional buyers like Sri Lanka to more affluent
economies like the USA, Europe, Australia and Japan (MPEDA, 2001).
Significantly, in all this, the coastal waters were treated as an open access regime
(GOI, 2001a; Hosche & Flewweling, 2003), which encouraged people to move into
the sector and exploit a common resource freely.
From the 1970s, the government recognised brackishwater aquaculture as one of the
potential sectors for growth and took measures to support it. The Ministry of
Commerce took the initiative to promote shrimp farming ‘in line with the objective
of maximization of foreign exchange earnings’ (Srivastava et al, 1990: 70) and,
under its Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), evolved a
number of schemes to support aquaculture. In coastal states like Andhra Pradesh, a
major chunk of mangroves in the estuarine systems were de-reserved for shrimp
6
For many reasons (conceptual/methodological; practical/logistical), this study focuses mainly on the
marine/brackishwater sector and less on the inland sector but this should not be construed to mean that
the latter are any less important in terms of providing livelihoods, particularly in central and north-
eastern parts of India where riverine capture and freshwater culture provide sizeable livelihood
opportunities for the poor (who, unlike in marine sector, belong to a wide range of castes, which
makes inland fisheries more ‘inclusive’ than the others). One can assume, however, that the broad
contours of development of the inland sector are not much different from those of the marine and
brackishwater areas.
G-18

farming (AAI, 2001: 57). Individual entrepreneurs were encouraged to take up
shrimp farming with financial and technical support (AAI, 2001: 17) with generous
assistance from banks and other financial institutions. Until the hatcheries began to
supply seed for culture, fishermen and women were trained in wild-seed collection
and were also provided assistance for acquiring the tools for seed collection (BOBP,
1986: 11) (MPEDA, 1984:50). After the liberalisation of Indian economy in 1991,
aquaculture really grew big as it became possible to import efficient farming
technologies, feed and other essential ingredients7. The 1990s also saw many farms
moving from extensive farming to semi-intensive and intensive farming systems
(ADB/NACA, 1998:100).
Motorisation of artisanal craft, which began in the 1980s, was an important event in
the small-scale fisheries on the east coast of India. Together with revolutionary new
gears like the trammel net and the long-lines, motorisation paved the way for the
artisanal fishers to enter shrimp export market chains and to supply distant domestic
market trade. The numbers of motorised boats grew from scratch to nearly 45 000 by
1999 (Sathiadhas, 1998:466; GOI, 2000: 128).
ii. Contribution of fisheries to national economy
By 2000, the gross investment on fishing component is estimated as Rs 8 000 crores
(Vivekanandan, 2002), much of it being in the private sector. Fisheries contribute Rs.
19 555 crore to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which works out to 1.3 percent
of the total GDP or 4.6 percent of the GDP from agriculture sector, and the figures
are impressive when compared to those in 1970-71, when fisheries contribution to
the GDP stood at 0.62 percent of the total GDP and 1.46 percent of the GDP from
Agriculture (GOI, 2000: 130).
iii. Contribution of fishing sector to exports
Indian seafood exports have grown by over twenty times in the four decades from
1961-62 to 1999-2000. The export of seafood from the country increased from 15
732 metric tonnes (MT) in 1961-62 to 343 041 MT in 1999-2000. In terms of value,
the exports have gone up from a mere Rs. 4 crore to Rs. 5 117 crore or US $ 1 189
million during the period, and the unit value realisation increased from Rs. 2/kg to
Rs. 149/kg (MPEDA 2001). In terms of overall exports from the country, seafood
stands at tenth place, accounting for 2.7 percent of total export earnings in 2001.
Among seafood exporting countries, Indian exports stood 17th in terms of quantity
and 12th in terms of value (Mathew, 2003). The contribution of exports to the GDP
from fisheries in 1998-99 is about 24 percent, and to the national GDP is 0.3 percent
(calculated from GOI, 2000: 1 & MPEDA 2001:27). In terms of volume, exports
constituted 5.75 percent of the total production and 11.2 percent of the marine
production in 1998-99.
One must keep in mind that the earnings from the exports are gross earnings, and
when the cost of production (including the cost of subsidies and the success-to-
failure ratio in aquaculture) is deducted from these, the net earnings may come down
7
In 1990-91, brackishwater cultivation in India covered 65 100 ha, and the total production was 35
500 MT, with an average productivity of 550 kg per ha (GFC, 1994:59), but by 1999-2000, the extent
of area under brackishwater culture grew to over 150 000 ha (MPEDA 2001).
G-19

significantly. The opportunity costs of diversifying fishing effort to cater to domestic
markets and the cost-benefit of focusing the development outlays on other
programmes might provide a more realistic picture of the earnings from the shrimp
exports.
As for the distribution of income generated from the exports, as ever, there are no
studies to provide a good understanding. It must be borne in mind that the fisheries
export earnings at the national level might look impressive, but they constitute only
2.5 percent of the total export earnings and a quarter of the earnings from the
fisheries sector. And when spread over a vast area and among a wide range of
stakeholders, the earnings would become pretty thin (and get even thinner when the
seasonality issues are brought into the picture).
A large share of the processing and export markets is held by a relatively few
companies in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. SIFFS 2002 notes that 87 percent of the
seafood processed in Kochi belt in Kerala during 1999-2000 was done by eight
processors out of a total 69 processing plants in the area. Nearly 70-80 percent of the
seafood in Andhra Pradesh is reportedly processed by four or five large companies.
Some of the large processors also own factory vessels to have a better control over
the quality of the catches and the operations. One can speculate and say that a small
minority of people – mainly in the processor-exporter category (rather than in the
producer category; the current rates of return in many fishing systems appear to be
too poor or uncertain or, if they are better than is generally assumed, no reliable
information is available on this issue) – might be garnering a sizeable proportion of
the export earnings in the sector, but this will need to be validated through further
research.
Salagrama (2004a) provides a broad characterisation of the different stakeholders
involved in the export sector in Indian fisheries. The fishworkers in the export sector
(mainly the producers and processors – peelers, sorters, packers, transporters) are not
organised (nor are encouraged to organise) and, as such, have no scope to negotiate
wages (or the conditions of their work) based upon a realistic estimate of the returns.
This might work against the owners when the markets fluctuate, but the availability
of large unemployed workforce in the unorganised sector still gives them freedom to
get away with it.
Joint-venture operations are prevailing in brackishwater aquaculture sector (mainly
on the east coast of India), which involve setting up buy-back arrangements with
farmers in return for meeting their credit and other needs. It is not known what the
share of the joint venture and multinational corporations is in the overall export
earnings.
iv. Contribution of fisheries sector in terms of poverty alleviation, livelihood support
and environmental sustainability
The economic benefits from shrimp trade to the fishing communities have been
considerable. The growth of the sector opened new employment opportunities and
being largely informal, helped many poor people to find work. As fish production
increased, there has been a corresponding prosperity in the fishing communities
(although its benefits were uneven and skewed within and between villages). Many
G-20

fishers used the surplus to invest in fishing (more boats), ancillary activities (ice
plants, transport systems, boat building yards) and non-fishing activities
(agriculture). Quality of housing, access to villages and fishing infrastructure
improved. The improved access to fishing villages and the frequent trips by the
traders allowed the normally isolated and inaccessible fishing villages to make
contact with the larger world and to improve their access to basic services. The
interactions of the fishing communities with the external world improved and this
has certainly raised their social consciousness.
Impacts on poverty: On the other hand, the economic growth of fisheries has not
been translated into an effective antidote to poverty. Although modernisation
generated new opportunities, it is doubtful that these were equal to those lost, or that
the people who lost out were also the gainers from the new opportunities. As Mathew
(2003:2) notes, while there is apparent prosperity in several fishing communities
because of increasing fish production and market value, there is, on the other hand,
poverty among fishers who have smaller or no capital base. Entry into the new
market chains involved high capital investment and recurring expenses, and
automatically excluded many poor people from owning new technologies or
managing them successfully. To quote Mathew again, “A fraction of the fishing
communities now owns and operates sophisticated fishing units, while the majority
toil away, either earning their livelihood as workers, or leading a hand-to-mouth
existence operating rudimentary fishing units, with very small marketable surplus”.
A review by the Government of Kerala in late-1970s concludes that, “The benefits
accruing to the traditional fishermen [i.e., the poorest sections in the sector] on
account of the government’s mechanisation programmes were negligible” (GOK,
1978: 7-8). In fact, the arrival of more efficient systems into the near-shore waters
often gave rise to conflicts with traditional users of the resources. Such conflicts have
been reported from Goa (Nalini Nayak 2002), Tamil Nadu (Bavinck, 2001), Andhra
Pradesh (Vivekanandan et al 1997), Orissa (Salagrama, 2002), and Kerala (Kurien
and Achari, 1994).
This also led to the growth of ‘subsidy culture’, i.e., the expectation that the State has
the responsibility to contribute to the wellbeing of the sector (see Tharakan, 1998),
which meant spending valuable resources on shoring up the sector at the expense of
the poor depending on it. This high degree of externalisation of costs also had
implications on livelihoods, environment and trade.
An important change brought about by the modernisation process is the
marginalisation of women from the productive sphere. Similarly, although domestic
food security was one of the important objectives of the modernisation programme, it
could not be reconciled with the capital-intensive, export-market oriented strategies
adopted. While the export of shrimp might not have directly affected food security, it
certainly did so when the fishing boats began targeting shrimp to the exclusion of the
other species. The result has been that there is less fish available for domestic
consumption by the fishworkers themselves (Salagrama, 2003a).
Impacts upon livelihoods: The classic ‘Tragedy of Commons’ scenario in marine
capture fisheries unfolded in Kerala as early as 1970s (Kurien, 1985), and in other
states by 1980s. By 2000, there has been a drastic decline in the catches and catch
G-21

per effort in the mechanised sector on the east and west coasts (FFPI, 2001; Bhatta,
2001). Fishing Chimes (March 2004) reported that many mechanised boat owners in
Vizag were resorting to distress sale of their boats because of falling shrimp catches,
un-remunerative prices and rising operational costs. Many others were reportedly
anxious to sell their boats but were unable to find buyers.
Beginning in 1995, shrimp culture has been consistently affected by serious
outbreaks of viral diseases, which practically wiped out hundreds of farms and
farmers. Price fluctuations in the international markets, local resistance and
antagonism in the early stages, adverse judicial decisions (the Supreme Court
judgement of 1996 banning non-traditional shrimp farming in the coastal zone), and
raising costs of production have made the activity risky. Poor recoveries and high
risk forced banks and insurance companies to withdraw from the sector.
With the motorisation of small-scale sector, the concept of risk entered into
operations, as the investment costs in fishing went up by 60 percent (Vivekanandan,
et al 1997: 19). In Kerala, motorisation was found to increase the level of investment
five to ten-fold (SIFFS, 2001:46). In the normally cash-starved artisanal fishing
economies, increased investments could only come from outside, which involved
getting into complicated trade arrangements. Because subsidies were not available,
or accessible, to all, a widening gap developed between the motorised and non-
motorised boat owners and this led to productivity disparities and unequal access to
the common resources of the coastal waters (SIFFS, 1991).
Environmental impacts: More seriously, the growth in fisheries may have been
achieved at the cost of the sustainability of the natural resources, which is an
outcome of promoting the coastal waters as an open access resource and, later, the
failure to control rapid expansion of fishing fleets and to put a viable fisheries
management structure in place. Both trawling and aquaculture have been reported to
contribute to the degradation of natural resources and environment (Vivekanandan,
2002; Sujatha 1996; Puthra Pravin et. al 1998; Prathibha Rohit et.al 1993;
Vivekanandan et al 1997 etc.).
The focus on promoting a particular technology or a species (shrimp) has clear
environmental implications. The technologies were introduced without assessing
their relevance and likely impacts upon the complex interrelationships between man
and environment, and in many cases, the ecological consequences have been severe.
In order to maximise earnings, the mesh size of the nets is decreasing and more
destructive gears like ring-seines are making entry in many fishing villages, with the
result that the size of many commercial species being landed are of a smaller size and
the catches frequently consist of juveniles (see Sujatha 1996; Luther & Sastry, 1993).
The State’s inability to control expansion of the technologies it had itself promoted,
or to implement effective management measures, came in the way of reducing effort.
Conclusion
This chapter attempted to examine the nature and patterns of economic growth in
India, with emphasis on the contribution of the fisheries sector, which indicates that
economic growth has not been accompanied by (i) establishment of a rational and
sustainable natural resource management system and (ii) progressive distributional
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changes for equitable distribution of the benefits in order to address the poverty and
livelihood concerns. The government’s emphasis on increasing foreign exchange
earnings is not accompanied by putting checks on over-exploitation of the resources,
or to extract the surplus for streamlining the systems to effectively address the needs
related to trade, sustainability or livelihoods of the poorer stakeholders. The failure to
address the growth, environmental and social concerns in a meaningful manner will
ultimately affect the sustainability of the sector as a whole as well as the stakeholders
who depend on it. The fact that different aspects of fisheries are covered by different
ministries or departments has meant that each agency has its own priorities and
viewed the sector from its own perspectives along the lines of the story about the
elephant and the five blind men. As has been long argued, there is a need to bring
fisheries under a single ministry at the central level and its activities are synergised
with those of the various state governments.
4. FISHERIES DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT
Fish production
India has a coastline of 8 041 kilometres with an exclusive economic zone (EEZ)
stretching over 2.02 million km2, and the continental shelf covers 0.5 million km2.
Annexure 3 provides basic information on distribution of marine resources in India.
The potential resources available from the Indian waters are 3.9 million tonnes, (2.2
million t in the inshore and the rest in the offshore waters) (GOI, 1996). India also
has inland water sources covering over 190 000 km and open water bodies with a
water-spread area of over 66 lakh hectares (GOI 2000: 122). Brackish water area
available for aquaculture is 1.2 million ha, of which 165 000 ha has been developed
(MPEDA, 2001).
Between 1951 and 2001, India’s fish production increased eight-fold from 0.75
million MT to 5.6 million MT8 (Annexure 4). India is currently the fourth largest fish
producer in the world after China, Peru and Japan (Mathew, 2003). India’s
contribution to world fish production increased marginally from 3.7 percent in 1950
to 4.18 in 1997, but the share of marine sector declined from 2.97 to 2.86 percent
during the period.
The west coast contributes 70 percent to the total marine landings, while the east
coast accounts for more than half the freshwater fish production and nearly 95
percent of the cultivated shrimp production (MPEDA, 2002). In 2000-1, the marine
fish production came from about 44 species groups, of which 10 accounted for half
the production (Mathew, 2003). FAO’s country profile for India (FAO 2000a) notes
8
A note of caution about the statistics used in this report: there is much debate about the validity of
Indian fisheries statistics available with different departments of fisheries. See Vivekanandan et al
1997 for a critical review; Salagrama 2003a shows how different sources have different – and totally
unrelated – fish landing statistics for the same area, i.e., Orissa. In Tamil Nadu, it is not uncommon in
the post-tsunami period to find the same official agency providing more than two sets of data for the
same parameter (Ahana Lakshmi, pers.com.). All one can say is that one needs to be cautious while
making judgements based on the statistics on production. The statistics on exports (quantity-wise or
earning-wise) are far more reliable because they are monitored carefully. In all other instances,
lacking alternatives, the general practice is to use catch statistics as indicative of broad trends (which
are obtained through more rigorous micro-level studies etc.) rather than the other way round.
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that Indian oil sardine (Sardinella longiceps), Indian mackerel (Rastrelliger
kanagurta) and Sciaenidae dominate the catches, while Bombay duck, anchovies,
cephalopods, perches and Carangidae are also important. The three largest fisheries
on the west coast of India are Indian Oil sardine, Bombay duck and shrimp fisheries.
The main stocks exploited on the east coast include: lesser sardines, silverbellies,
penaeid shrimps, sciaenids, Hilsa spp., catfishes and perches (Hosch & Flewweling,
2003).
The principal inland fish resources are: major carps (catla, rohu, mrigal and calbasu),
minor carps, exotic carps (common, silver and grass carps), murrels and catfishes
(wallgo, pangasius etc) (GOI, 2000: 48-49), and over 70 percent of the freshwater
production of 2.84 million tonnes in 2000-1 came from carp species.
In 1999-2000, there were a total of 181 284 artisanal (i.e., non-motorised) (65
percent of the total), 44 578 motorised (16 percent) and 53 684 mechanised fishing
crafts (19 percent) in the marine sector (GOI, 2000: 128). Most of the fishing vessels
are below 20 m length overall (OAL) and consequently qualify as ‘small-scale’
irrespective of the methods of fishing used or harvesting power, which has a bearing
on current management efforts.
Shrimp in Indian fishing economy
Shrimp undoubtedly is the most important species in the fisheries economy and is the
backbone on which most activities (mechanised fishing, aquaculture and many
artisanal operations too) survive. In 1995 (for which figures are available), penaeid
shrimp accounted for nearly 38 percent of the total value of landed catches although
constituting only 8 percent of the total landings (Sathiadhas, 1998:409). Significant
increase in shrimp production from aquaculture has been an important development
since 1990s. Marine capture fisheries accounted for the entire quantity of shrimp
exported until 1987-88. However, between 1987-88 and 1999-2000, the contribution
of capture shrimp has come down to 22 percent of the quantity and 24 percent of the
value of the total shrimp exports from the country, and in terms of quantity, it has
dwindled from a peak production of 55 736 MT to 24 275 MT (MPEDA, 2001: 37).
In 1988-89, shrimp from culture sources contributed nearly half the total exports of
shrimp, and further increased to 78 percent by 1999-2000 and now cultured shrimp
account for a quarter of the total seafood exports from the country. Mathew (2003)
notes that in 2001, aquaculture contributed 60 percent of the total export value, thus
emerging as the most important seafood export from India.
Trends in fish production
The growth rate in fish production has been on the decline since 1981 and during
1991-2000, it was only 1.9 percent (CMFRI, 2003: 3). The contribution of marine
fish to overall landings declined from 71 percent to 50 percent, the decline being due
to increased production in inland and culture sectors as well as falling growth rate in
production. Within the marine sector, the annual average landings by the trawlers
increased from 300 thousand t in 1980-1981 to 1.3 million t in 1999-2000, increasing
their share in marine production from 30 percent to nearly 50 percent
(Vivekanandan, 2002). The annual per capita production of active fishermen in the
artisanal sector declined from 2 590 kg in 1980 to 420 kg in 1996-97, while it
G-24

increased from 5 260 to 8 130 kg in the mechanised sector (Sathiadhas, 1998:
466).
The production from pelagic resources increased three-fold since 1961, reaching 1.36
million tonnes in 2000, but its relative contribution to the total landings declined
from 71 percent in 1965 to 50 percent in 2000. From 1989 to 2000, the landings of
small pelagics remained static at around 1.2 million tonnes annually. The landings of
demersal fish have increased from 0.23 million tonnes in 1961 to 1.33 million tonnes
(or half the total landings) in 2000. However, the trend in the aggregated landings of
the demersal fish levelled off since 1994. Overall, the catches from inshore waters
are reported to have reached their full potential and may have begun to be
overexploited (GOI, 2001b;Vivekanandan, 2002).
Similarly, the increase in the percentage contribution of brackishwater production to
exports is related more to the poor performance of the capture sector and raising unit
value (from Rs. 244 to Rs. 330) than to increased production. After reaching a peak
82 850 MT in 1994-95, the aquaculture production dipped and it was only in 1999-
2000 that it went up beyond its previous peak to reach 86 000 MT. But then, between
1994-95 and 1999-2000, the total brackishwater area under culture grew by 56%,
while the shrimp production grew only 4 percent, that too only in the final year
(MPEDA, 2001:39)!
Landed values of fish
The nature of fisheries (multi-species, dominated by 44 species), sale of fish in open
auctions (largely based on visual observation) at many landing centres, long market
chains involving many intermediaries, and seasonal and regional variations in terms
of production and disposal of different species make it extremely difficult to
determine the landed values of different fish across the country. It is possible to
obtain a better idea about the values of export species like shrimp because the
transactions in this category are more formal and necessitate that the quantities and
values of exports be recorded, but for a major proportion of fish catches, which are
consumed in the country, no such information exists other than when collected for
specific purposes (as, for e.g., Sathiadhas, 1998), which tend to be mainly one-off
exercises and frequently resort to fixing a uniform unit price for a species across the
country, making the figures indicative at best. The gross income generated at landing
centre level from the marine fish catch of 2.7 million tonnes in 1999-2000 is about
Rs. 10 486 crore (CMFRI, 2003:247).
Fisheries exploitation or activity-related benefits
There are 3651 fishing villages in the country and some 6.7 million people depend on
fisheries for a livelihood (GOI 2001). This includes about 1.5 million people engaged
in fishing operations (with full-time and part-time fishers accounting in equal
measure to the number) and over one million people engaged in pre- and post-harvest
operations. Nearly half the full-time fishermen are on the east coast of India and the
west coast accounts for 35 percent while the remaining are spread over other states
and union territories (Mathew, 2003).
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Demographic and socio-economic data on several key stakeholder groups in the
sector are not available. As CMFRI (2003:248) notes, “Lack of socio-economic
information has been one of the most serious impediments to effective policymaking
and planning, especially in the case of small-scale fisheries.” The published data on
fisheries, such as the annual handbooks on fisheries statistics, give information on
fish catches and numbers of harvesting tools (boats and nets, areas of fish ponds), but
make only cursory mention of the people involved in the sector and that too, in a way
that raises more questions than answers any. Consequently, as Mathew (2003) notes,
“Since there are no studies on income distribution in Indian fisheries and
aquaculture, it is difficult to discuss how much of the benefits of increasing fish
production and value of fish output actually translate into human development of
fishing communities.” Obviously, this is one important area that needs further
research in the near future.
The information in the following sections is drawn from secondary data where
available, but also from interviews conducted with stakeholder groups in the sector in
the east coast states of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. These figures will vary from area
to area (fishers in Kerala have a much higher per capita earnings while those in some
parts of Orissa might have much less) and from season to season, but will serve to
indicate broad trends.
Employment in different production-related activities
Sathiadhas (1998: 467) provides a thumb rule that, on average, every 5 kg of marine
fish produced provides employment to 2 persons, one in harvest and another in post-
harvest sectors. The current estimates of employment in different categories are not
available, but Sathiadhas (1998: 466) provides some estimates using 1997 figures:
Non-mechanised Motorised Mechanised
Fishing fleet 160 000 32 000 47 000
Active fishermen 650 000 170 000 200 000
Ownership by active fishermen 25 19 24
Of the 200 000 employed in mechanised sector, some 10 000 reportedly worked for
the deepsea vessels (Sathiadhas, 1998: 467). The fishers operating the non-motorised
vessels are regarded as the poorest among the Indian fishing communities, their
operations being subsistence-oriented9.
Shrimp aquaculture provides livelihood to one million people, about a third of them
employed directly in culture operations and the rest in ancillary activities (Mathew
2003).
Average earnings in fisheries sector
The producers can be broadly classed into boat owners and crewmembers. Sharing
systems are widely prevalent in many fisheries, and the general norm is that the
owner takes fifty percent of the gross income while the crew (including the owner
9
‘Subsistence’ here is used in the sense of generating just enough income to help the household meet
its subsistence needs (leaving little surplus).
G-26

himself when he happens to fish as well) share the rest equally. While its utility is
beyond dispute, sharing system makes it difficult to assign a value to the earnings of
the fishermen, particularly when different kinds of arrangements govern the system
in different areas and fishing systems. In some mechanised fisheries, monthly
salaries are paid, but the crew might still get a small share in the catch returns.
Indicative earnings by different producer groups, collected using participatory
methodologies in the fishing villages in Andhra Pradesh10:
Average income per fishing trip (In Average annual income (in
rupees) rupees)
Boat owners (non-motorised boat) 200-250 60 000
Fishing crew (non-motorised boat) 80-90 18 000
Boat owners (non-motorised catamaran) 100-110 25000
Fishing crew (non-motorised catamaran) 50-60 13000
Boat owners (motorised boat) 350-400 70 000
Fishing crew (motorised boat) 150-175 25 000
Boat owners (motorised catamaran) 200-225 40 000
Fishing crew (motorised catamaran) 100-120 15 000
Boat owners (mechanised) 7500 (one week) 231 000
Fishing crew (mechanised) 800 30 000
Aquaculture (small-scale) 27 000 (per crop/1 ha.)
The relatively small difference in earnings between motorised and non-motorised
fishing can be explained by two factors: (i) the raising cost of operations in the
motorised category has reduced incomes, some times even beneath those earned by
the non-motorised boats; (ii) the number of fishing days in the motorised sector is
only half that of non-motorised boats, which can undertake regular fishing because of
low investments needed. There has been an increase in the numbers of non-motorised
boats in several villages in recent times (ICM, 2003c).
Income variability over time
The fishers of Andhra Pradesh identify four stages to determine income variability
over time. The first phase begins in the historical past and ends in mid-1970s. This
was a period of general all round poverty in the artisanal sector (the mechanised
sector had only begun to take root, hence the incomes fluctuated widely). Catches
were moderate (although available in good quantities, the harvesting capacity was
low) but marketability was low, hence incomes were low and the difference in
earning between the owners and the crew was not really significant because the
production systems were not very advanced and needed relatively insignificant
investments to manage and maintain. In the second phase, which began in late-
1970s and continued up to late-1980s, growth and incomes went hand in hand and
the fishers could earn very well – more than double their earnings from the previous
period, and about 50-60 percent higher than they are today. In the mechanised sector,
the incomes were still higher – almost four times as much as in the previous period
and up to 40 percent higher than current incomes. In the third phase, which began in
late-1980s and continued up to late-1990s, was a period of levelling off – when fish
10
To the extent possible, these were validated in interactions with a wider number of stakeholder
groups, by observations at the landing centres and interactions at the household level. ICM (2003)
discusses the methodology in more detail.
G-27

catches dwindled, but the demand kept the prices up, so the incomes of the fishermen
remained level. An important change during the period had been the intensification
of fishing effort (in order to maximise catches), which showed up as a drop in annual
income. As a result, the fishers calculate that their daily earnings remained more or
less stable, but annual income came down by about a third. The final phase, which
began in late-1990s and continues to the present day, is characterised by (i) further
decline in catches (ii) fluctuations in the market demand and (iii) rising cost of
operations. This has meant that the markets have been unable anymore to underwrite
the production losses, so there was a real decline in incomes. Rising cost of
operations added to the reduced fishing days and the incomes fell sharply, while
unemployment increased overall.
A summary of the comparative incomes earned during the four phases is as follows:
Period Up to late- Up to late- Up to late- Up to the present
1970s 1980s 1990s
Characteristics Moderate Large supply- Poor supply- Poor supply-poor
supply-poor large demand large demand (fluctuating)
demand demand
Income per trip 50 125-150 125-150 100
Annual income 80-100 150 125 100
Comparison of wages between fisheries and other sectors
An attempt has been made to compare the earnings in fishing with those in other
sectors in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The daily wages of many categories of daily wage
earners (rickshaw pullers, petty vendors, transport labourers, fruit and vegetable
vendors, textile weavers) were obtained and compared with those in fishing. Wage
labour in agriculture is the most widespread livelihood option in the country and
many fishers seasonally take up agricultural work. In agriculture, the going wage rate
for men is Rs. 70-80 per day (going up to Rs. 100 seasonally), while for the women it
is in the range of Rs. 40-50 per day (going up to Rs. 60 during seasonally). The
number of days of work in agriculture is much less than in the fisheries sector (a
maximum of 120 days for men and less for women), which is coming down further
as a result of increased competition and technology. Another large sector with which
the wages in fisheries can be compared is construction where a mason earns Rs. 120
a day on average; skilled workers earn Rs. 80 and unskilled workers Rs. 50-60 a day.
Women are treated as unskilled labourers here. The number of days of work for
construction labourers is about the same as in the fishing sector, i.e., up to 200 days
in a year.
Thus, a comparison of wages earned in different sectors indicates that fishing is still
among the better livelihood options. This has to be qualified by two factors: one,
there are many other stakeholders in the fisheries sector who do not take part in
fishing themselves and whose incomes are comparable to those in other sectors.
Secondly, going by historical trends, the long-term sustainability of fishing (as a
means of livelihood for a generally poor population) is uncertain because real
incomes have been coming down consistently over the last decade11.
11
As a fisherman noted, “It is not that fishing is better off than the other sectors; it is that the other
sectors are worse off than fishing!”
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Other activities undertaken in relation to fishing
Tietze (1985:80) distinguishes five functions in the traditional fishing economy: (i)
production; (ii) processing of fish; (iii) marketing of fish; (iv) finance and credit; and
(v) ancillary activities, e.g., boat building, engine repairs, net making etc. Obviously,
in some cases, the functions are interwoven and performed by the same category of
people; and in others, they are separate and performed by different groups,
depending on the stage of development of the communities. ICM (2003a) provides a
description of the stakeholders in fisheries sector in Orissa.
In the post-harvest sector, domestic marketing accounts for a million people while
export marketing employs another 0.2 million. These include auctioneers at landing
and wholesale centres, those involved in transportation, loading, unloading, packing,
distribution of ice, commission agents, wholesalers, retailers etc.
An important feature of the fisheries is the gender-based division of labour and the
active role played by the women in the sector. Sharma (2002) discusses the
contribution of women to the fisheries sector and raises a number of pertinent issues
concerning the current understanding of their role. Some half-a-million women
reportedly work in the pre-and post-harvest operations (CMFRI, 2003:247),
constituting some 25 percent of the labour force in the pre-harvest activities, 60
percent of that in export processing and 40 percent of the labour force in internal
marketing (Sathiadhas, 1998: 467). Since the women have a specific role in the post-
harvest systems, their incomes are not specifically determined by their gender. But,
in organised sectors like shrimp processing activities, there is evidence that women
are paid less than men.
Contribution of fish to food-and livelihood-security
Over 70 percent of total fish production of India is sold fresh in domestic markets,
about 11 percent is dried or salted, and about 6 percent is converted to fishmeal
(GOI, 2000). FAO gives a per capita supply of 4.8 kg of fish in the country.
Total food Per caput
Production Imports Exports
supply supply
’000 t live weight kg/year
Fish for direct human consumption 5 378 NIL 385 4 670 4.8
Non-food uses 780 – – –
Source: FAO (2000a)
Although consumption of fish is not uniform across the country, fish is an important
source of animal protein, especially among the poor income groups (Salagrama,
2004a). Kumar et al (2003) indicate that fish consumption in the country has
increased since 1980s (by about 75 percent). A study conducted by IIM, Ahmedabad
(cited by FAO, 2000) found that 56 percent of the population are fish eaters and the
per capita consumption is estimated to be 9.5 kg/year. Not surprisingly, fish
consumption among the fishing communities has traditionally been high, but there
are indications (ICM, 2003a) that this is declining as a result of cost of fish growing
faster than the other commodities, forcing the fishers to sell all of their catch and
G-29

consume non-fish alternatives. Wholesale price indices for different commodities
support this:
Year Fish Meat Food Articles All commodities
Base 1970-71 = 100
1971 103.1 106.6 101.0 105.0
1981 246.6 330.4 230.3 378.4
Base 1981-82 = 100
1982 118.7 112.8 110.0 104.3
1990 193.5 188.9 191.6 177.2
1998 582.4 567.6 431.8 348.2
Source: GOI (2000:131)
Availability of fish to the traditional consumers (who are mainly poor) decreases
when fish increasingly reach the export and distant urban markets and also because
the fishing operations are adapted to cater to the demands of the more lucrative
markets by targeting a few high-value species and ignoring the cheaper varieties on
which the poor depend. This is another area where statistics are difficult to come by,
but there are many indications to show (i) that demand for fish is growing in the
country (FAO, 2000; Kumar et al 2003) and (ii) that there is a decrease in availability
of fish to the poorer consumers (coastal fishing and non-fishing people as well as
inland tribal populations and agricultural workers).
Fisheries Management in India12
Status of fisheries in the Constitution
Article 246, Fisheries, of the Constitution of India makes it a subject for State List.
This means that all laws and regulations related to fishing, fish marketing, fishers’
welfare etc have to be framed by the state legislatures. As FAO (2000) notes, the
involvement of the Union Government on issues related to fisheries management is
high. Also, fish production from the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), major fishing
harbours, fishing vessel industry, seafood export trade, and marine and inland
research and training are on the Union List, of the Seventh Schedule of the
Constitution (Mathew, 2003). Other areas related to fisheries, i.e., the protection of
wild animals and forests, including endangered species of wild fauna and flora,
protection of coastal zone and marine biodiversity and prevention of land-based
sources of pollution are on the Concurrent List, which is the responsibility of both
the Union and the state governments.
Agencies dealing with fisheries sector
Mathew (2003) provides a description of the various government departments and
Ministries dealing with various aspects of fisheries.
Ministry/Department Responsibilities
12
As many of the questions asked in the template are not really applicable to the Indian context, this
study makes a departure from the format, but makes sure to include any information that addresses the
issues in the original format.
G-30

At the Union Level:
Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries in the EEZ, survey and assessment of fisheries resources,
research, training and extension;
Ministry of Shipping Fishing vessel industry and fishing harbours (Union List); minor
fishing ports (Concurrent List).
Coast Guard (under the Ministry of Defence) Regulation of fishing by foreign vessels, prevention of marine
pollution from ships and protection of endangered marine species
Ministry of Food Processing Fish processing
Marine Products Export Development Seafood exports
Authority, MPEDA (Ministry of Commerce
and Industry)
Ministry of Environment and Forests Protection of wild animals and forests and marine biodiversity
(Concurrent List); Coastal habitat protection issues
Ministry of External Affairs Law of the Sea matters
Department of Ocean Development, Ministry Implementation of 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
of Ocean Development
Ministry of Water Resources Erosion-related issues
Ministry of Tourism Tourism (activities that have an impact on fisheries)
At the State-Level:
Department of Fisheries All fisheries and mariculture activities in the state
Department of Forests Protection of wild animals and forests and marine biodiversity
(Concurrent List)
Department of Ports Minor fishing harbours (Concurrent List)
Source: Mathew (2003)
At the state level, there are many other agencies, like the Department of Rural
Development, which undertake several programmes affecting the fisheries sector in
many ways. Also, as a recent review (Hosch and Flewweling, 2003) notes, India is
one of the world leaders in terms of establishing associations and societies formed by
fishing communities, workers, and other interests related to the sector. These
organizations develop and defend positions, publish findings, and influence
authorities on policy formulation and management options.
The fact that the responsibility for fisheries and marine habitat is spread over several
agencies and Ministries at the state and union government levels, and is further
influenced by a number of organisations, is a cause of confusion – and concern – in
developing and implementing a rational management regime. As Hosch and
Flewweling (2003) conclude, “No single Ministry is solely responsible for managing
the fisheries sector. The lack of an overarching and coherent policy addressing
coastal and deep-sea capture fisheries contributes to the lack of a coherent
organisation of the sector as a whole.”
Fisheries Legislation in India
In general, as Anjani Kumar et al (2003:15) have noted, the national policies in India
have been export oriented, supporting relatively large-scale fisheries for shrimp,
while for many states the primary concern was the welfare of local small-scale
fishermen. Fisheries management has taken the backseat in achieving these
objectives. Consequently, as Bavinck (2002) has noted, fisheries management in the
country has been one of reacting and responding to crises as they erupted rather than
based upon clear-cut strategies based upon scientific/economic rationale.
Mathew (2003) summarises the various Acts and legislations that considered
fisheries management and conservation and how they fared. According to him, the
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only Indian legislation that talks about “undertaking measures for the conservation
and management of offshore and deep-sea fisheries”, is the Marine Products Export
Development Authority Act, 1972, which has a provision to meet the costs of
conservation and management of waters beyond the territorial sea from the Marine
Products Export Development Fund. The Act gave rise to the MPEDA (under the
Ministry of Commerce) and MPEDA has never invoked this legal provision.
Mathew also mentions other acts like the Territorial Waters, Continental Shelf, EEZ
and other Maritime Zones Act, 1976, which recognises the sovereign rights to
conservation and management of living resources in the Indian EEZ and gives power
to the Union Government to make rules, inter alia, for conservation and management
of the living resources of the EEZ and the protection of the marine environment. The
basic fisheries legislations that followed this Act do not make any mention of
conservation and management!
Fisheries Management Measures in India
Coastal fishing policy is defined by open access regime, which has given rise to a
sector with many entrants exploiting coastal marine resources to their full potential.
The current legal framework (Marine Fishing Regulation Acts) provides for conflict
minimisation between traditional and industrial sub-sectors, with little emphasis on
sustainable management of the resources (Hosch & Flewweling, 2003). The fisheries
conservation and management measures, when undertaken, are mainly confined to
technical measures like minimum mesh size, closed area/seasons, and prohibitions on
catching certain species and listing species that cannot be exported below a minimum
size and most of these measures are not effectively implemented (Mathew, 2003).
More seriously, Mathew (2003) notes that, in spite of resources being overfished,
there is no entry restriction into marine fisheries, nor are there any programmes to
retire fishing fleet, or to take effective and deterrent legal action against fishing
vessels that violate fishing regulations. There are also no legal mechanisms to
address inter-state movement of fishing vessels or problems arising from such
movement.
Marine Fishing Regulation Acts
The fisheries within the territorial limits are managed under the Marine Fishing
Regulation Act (MFRA) of the maritime states of India, based on a model piece of
legislation prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture, GOI, in 1979. These acts
demarcate fishing zones in the territorial waters for fishing by non-mechanised
vessels and mechanised fishing vessels and were mainly used for the purpose of
maintaining law and order at sea. In addition to the regulation of fishing areas, there
are regulations on the cod end mesh size of trawls. However, in the absence of
effective surveillance system, these regulations could not be implemented strictly
(Vivekanandan, 2002). Encroachment by the mechanised vessels in the areas
demarcated for the artisanal craft and usage of very small mesh size in the cod end
(<15 mm) continue even after the promulgation of the acts. The state governments
also implement seasonal closure of fishing operations every year and also implement
other activities such as ban on destructive nets in the backwaters. As every such new
activity gets added to the MFRA, the Act itself becomes unwieldy and, ultimately,
unworkable, a fact accepted by the government (GOI, 2001). There are also
G-32

questions regarding the effectiveness of implementing a fishing ban uniformly across
all coastal states to enable fish to breed, when the multi-species fisheries of India do
not permit any single period in a year to be demarcated as the ‘breeding period’ for
all – or even some – of the commercially important species, a problem that is
compounded by lack of studies of a practical nature dealing with the biology of many
species.
Working Group on Fisheries for the Tenth Five Year Plan
The influential 2001 Report of the Working Group on Fisheries for the Tenth Five
Year Plan of India’s Planning Commission recognises the problems of overfishing in
Indian waters in the territorial sea and emphasises the need to introduce “principles
of scientific fisheries management”. It attributes “depletion, economic waste and
conflicts among user groups” in coastal waters to the open access nature of Indian
fisheries and over-capacity and advocates an immediate adoption of a community-
based and participatory approach to complement scientific fisheries management.
And, after all this, it makes no proposal for financial provision for fisheries
management under the Tenth Plan! The Working Group also suggests some
measures to address the problem, including the introduction of ‘new generation
resource-specific vessels’ to tap sources in the offshore waters, ‘development,
demonstration and popularisation’ of fuel saving designs of fishing craft and gear,
pelagic and mid-water trawling and testing new hull materials (GOI 2001b: 75-78),
which fall into what has been called ‘effort-enhancing’ interventions and could
potentially turn out to be a cure worse than the disease!
Marine Fishing Policy, 2004
The ‘Comprehensive Marine Fishing Policy’ (GOI, 2004), which is the first of its
kind in the sector, gives considerable attention to ‘Resource Management’ and
advocates a stringent fishery management system to be put in place. It suggests:
• A review of the MFRA and prescribing a fresh model bill on costal fisheries
development and management with a re-orientation on limited access in
coastal marine sector “through policy initiative, sound legislation and
awareness creation”;
• Putting a check to the proliferation of new boats;
• Implementing a uniform closed season;
• Imposing a strict ban on all types of destructive methods of fishing,
regulating mesh sizes and prohibits catching juveniles, non-target species or
discarding bycatch after it has been caught;
• Posting observers on commercial fishing vessels for enforcing monitoring
control and surveillance system (MCS);
• Establishing a resource enhancement programme through sea ranching,
establishing marine sanctuaries, regulating capture of brood stocks, and
promoting fish aggregating devices as a community based activity
Most of these are technical/resource-oriented measures, with people or economic
rationale hardly entering the picture. This means that fisheries management will
continue to remain the government’s own problem while the other stakeholders
remain ‘recipients’ or mere spectators. It also remains to be seen how the Policy will
be implemented in practice, particularly some of the thorny issues like gear bans etc.
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Traditional (Community-Based) Management Systems
The identification of the government as the sole custodian of management of natural
resources was actively fostered by the government itself for at least a century (Gadgil
& Guha, 1997) and now becomes a big stumbling block in making any management
system work efficiently. The tragedy is that this happens in spite of the existence of
vibrant and more sustainable modes of resource management and use patterns in
many fishing communities in India. Many authors – Thomson (1989), Bavinck
(2001), Mathew (1991), Schombucher (1986), Johnson (2002), Kurien (2003) etc –
have shown the existence of strong and viable traditional systems of management in
various parts of the country.
A study conducted by Salagrama (2003b) for IDDRA/SIFAR on successes fisheries
management on the customary systems of fisheries management concludes that the
success of these systems to be a result of: (i) their ability to understand and build
upon the specific conditions of natural and social environment in an area; (ii) the
need for ensuring secure, sustainable and equitable access to resources; (iii) the
integrated and holistic nature of the systems of governance concerning resource
allocation; and (iv) their participatory nature, where people had the right and the
opportunity to discuss and debate all measures of management.
Costs and Revenues of Fisheries Management
License fees are levied in the mechanised sector, but fees are low as are the penalties
applied for violating regulations. These sources of revenue do not represent a serious
contribution to the overall cost of management of the resource. Also, many
categories of fishers hardly pay any income tax due to exemptions provided by the
government as well as to weak institutional mechanisms to make them pay. Although
some categories like seafood exporters are now included in the tax bracket, there is
still a long way to go before this can be applied right across the sector. Exports are
charged a cess of 0.3 percent of the FOB value of seafood exports, and the collected
tax is used for financing the Marine Products Export Development Authority and
currently stands at about $ 4 million per annum (Hosch and Flewweling, 2003).
In summary, the cost of management continues to be borne by the government from
other sources, and considering the financial crunch as well as the political
implications the government chooses to keep off the issue as much as it can get away
with! Hosch and Flewweling (2003) note that the overall national budget for fisheries
management has decreased over the last ten years although costs related to MCS and
conflict management are said to have increased. Lacking sound research studies, it is
almost impossible to say where the fishery wealth is going, but wherever it is going,
it certainly is not going towards putting more responsible fisheries management
regimes in place, or even to support the integrated development of the sector.
Conclusion
One tends to agree with the Hosch & Flewweling’s conclusion that “Fisheries
policies in India have been developed with few linkages between sectors, based on
dated legislation, and focused on increased production with little emphasis on
conservation, sustainability or responsible fisheries management.” Whatever
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conservation and management has been done is more as a reaction to a crisis that has
already erupted, rather than as a precautionary measure. These have also tended to
be focused on technical/resource-oriented measures rather than on people or
economic rationale. Low awareness among the stakeholders, poor funding and
manpower, and political implications have reduced whatever effectiveness these
programme might have had.
5. POLICY MAKING
Perceptions of poverty at the macroeconomic level
Reduction in poverty and inequality, through overall economic and social
development by ensuring equitable access in resources and skills, as well as by
widening the opportunities for gainful employment to the deprived sections of the
society have been among the central objectives of Indian planning during the past
half century (CESS, 2002:3). Successive Five Year Plans consistently espoused the
cause of the poor and emphasised the need for poverty alleviation in the country,
although – as Datt and Sundharam (2005:372) note – the number of the poor
continued to swell in the country notwithstanding the pious sentiments for the
weaker sections in the Plans.
In the immediate post-Independence period, characterised by stagnant economy, low
per capita incomes and unequal distribution of wealth, the prime need was to build
the necessary infrastructure to generate sufficient income. The first two Five Year
Plans (1951-56, 1956-61) concentrated mainly on this theme, but they were also
aware that economic growth alone was not sufficient to reduce poverty and there was
a need for direct state intervention for poverty eradication. Thus, the Plans attached
importance to labour-intensive techniques of production and production of wage
goods so that the benefits of growth could reach a larger section of population (Datta
and Sharma, 2002). In subsequent plans, poverty has been seen increasingly as the
central problem calling for special action in relation to people who have remained
weak and deprived (GOI, 1982: 11).
NIRD (1999a:3) notes three distinct phases in policies aimed at supporting
agriculture for rural development. In the first phase, summed up by the slogan, ‘Land
to the Tiller’, agricultural lands (which were hitherto concentrated in the hands of
feudal and other vested interests) were sought to be redistributed among the landless
farmers. However, for various reasons, the land redistribution acts achieved little
either in terms of growth or social justice and the land-ownership pattern has
continued to be skewed; in 1991, nine percent of the households owned half the
farmland in the country (worked from NIRD, 1999a: 35).
In the second phase, driven by the ‘technology school’, envisaged increasing food
production through introduction of high yielding variety seeds and chemical
fertilizers – what has been termed as ‘Green Revolution’. This approach, adopted in
mid-sixties, did not have much to say on equity, in the hope that the benefits of
increased production would trickle down to the poor in due course. The assumptions
in the green revolution were the class neutrality of the markets in the access to
modern inputs and distribution of gains on the one hand, and space/regional
neutrality in the diffusion process on the other. In an economy where agrarian
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reforms were far from complete, these were to act as major impediments to the
success of the green revolution. Other shortcomings of the approach too became
apparent by mid-1970s.
The third phase of rural development, ushered in the mid-seventies, involved setting
up a number of ‘area’ and ‘target group’ specific programmes, aimed at providing
income-earning assets to households living below the poverty line. The Public
Distribution System (PDS), aimed at providing subsidised food to the poor was
introduced during this period and a range of public works programmes for creating
wage employment opportunities for the poor have been introduced from time to time.
Still, as the Planning Commission recognises, poverty is remains a major problem
and the numbers have actually been raising over the years.
For the weaker sections of the society, positive discrimination policies have been
enacted and reservations made at various levels. Some packages of insurance – for
old people, widows and for seasonal workers to overcome lean seasons – have been
put in place. National drinking water missions, public healthcare, rural sanitation,
universal literacy campaigns, housing and public distribution system are some of the
public services relevant to the fishing communities of India (NIRD, 1999a; ICM
2003a). Although much criticism is (often rightly) levelled against the focus, content,
scope and implementation of these programmes, they do address some basic needs of
the poor and removing them is likely to increase their vulnerability significantly in
many parts of the country.
Since the 1990s, poverty alleviation has assumed more significance due to the
apprehension that the short-run impact of the ongoing reforms process may not be
favourable for the eradication of poverty and the Tenth Five-Year Plan as well as the
National Human Development Report give strong testimony of the fact. The GOI
stands in the forefront of developing countries arguing for a more equitable and
lenient trade regime under the WTO, because of the high percentage of poor
population in the country who depend on agriculture for a living and whose ability to
purchase agricultural products at the international market price would be extremely
low. India also argues that it would need enough flexibility under the Agreement on
Agriculture to take care of its food security, rural employment and livelihood
concerns (GOI, 2002a: 123). It also fears that, when international markets get
transmitted into the domestic economy, they could seriously affect the prices of food
grains and food entitlements of the poor.
Organisations involved in poverty reduction in the country
Government organisations
At the Central Government level, it is the Planning Commission, which sets the goals
for poverty alleviation and assigns budgetary provisions for the various programmes
under different Ministries (Finance, Rural Development, Agriculture, Commerce,
Industries). The programmes implemented fall into two broad categories: (i) those
aimed at poverty alleviation in a wider sense; (ii) those aimed at the development of
particular sectors as well as the people working in them (for e.g., fishing) including
(sector-specific) welfare measures. An example of the second category is the Union
Ministry of Agriculture, which – through the state Departments of Fisheries –
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provides assistance for basic infrastructure, supplying engines, housing, fuel
subsidies, life insurance, lean season assistance and a host of other services (GOI,
1996:191-217). Here, poverty alleviation is an important – but more implicit than
explicit – objective, particularly in the sector-level programmes (for e.g., subsidies
for processing industries to upgrade their systems).
Seeing that a welter of agencies working in the rural development sector was a cause
of confusion, it was proposed in the Sixth Five Year Plan (1980-85) that, ‘such
multiplicity of programmes for the rural poor operated through a multiplicity of
agencies should be ended and replaced by one single integrated programme operative
throughout the country’. The result has been the introduction of the largest anti-
poverty programme ever implemented in the country, the Integrated Rural
Development Programme (IRDP) first introduced in 1976. It covered the whole
country by 1980 with the objective of transferring productive assets to broaden the
resource base of the poorest rural families (GOI, 1982:13). The IRDP was
implemented through a central coordinating agency in each district, called District
Rural Development Agency (DRDA), with its staff drawn from different departments
like Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Irrigation, Forestry, Fisheries, Industry etc,
which gives it an opportunity to aim for holistic attempt at poverty alleviation and
also to streamline the different sectoral programmes to aim at a particular objective.
Under the IRDP, assistance was provided to the poor families for the purchase and
ownership of productive assets in the form of subsidy and assistance in obtaining
loan from institutional credit agencies. In 1999, the IRDP was restructured as the
Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY), which aimed (along with other
centrally funded- and executed programmes like Jawahar Rozgar Yojana – JRY) at
self-employment of the rural poor.
Banks and other financial institutions
Since independence, a multi-agency approach consisting of cooperatives,
commercial banks and regional rural banks has been adopted to provide cheaper and
adequate credit to farmers. The National Bank of Agriculture and Rural
Development (NABARD) was set up in 1982 by an Act of Parliament to refinance
for all kinds of production and investment credit to agriculture, small-scale
industries, handicrafts etc. with a view to promote integrated rural development
(Datta & Sundharam, 2005:602-3). Its Rural Infrastructure Development Fund
(RIDF) was created to extend loans to State Governments to enable them to take up
infrastructure projects in different rural sectors. Progressive institutionalisation of
agricultural credit under the Five Year Plans has made it possible that 60 percent of
the required short-term and medium-term production credit is now provided by
cooperatives, commercial banks and RRBs in many states.
Non-governmental and civil society organisations (adapted from David Brown et al,
Undated)
In the post-Independence period, the government recognised the role that voluntary
organisations could play in providing services to disadvantaged populations and set
up the Central Social Welfare Board to provide support to NGOs. The 1980s saw a
sudden spurt in the government support to NGOs, and an increase in their
participation in the development programmes. In the Seventh Five Year Plan, the
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resources earmarked for NGOs increased dramatically and brought into existence a
new agency called the Council for Advancement of People' Action and Rural
s
Technology (CAPART) to strengthen the capacities of NGOs. Over the decades,
NGOs have been important actors in a variety of development activities, such as
providing relief in disaster areas, services such as education and health in remote and
impoverished areas, community organizing for local problem-solving and self-
reliance, coalition-building and advocacy to press grassroots claims on government
services, or support activities such as research, training, and technical assistance to
grassroots populations. Alongside the conventional development activities, Indian
NGOs have also demonstrated alternative models of education, health care,
community development, housing and several other areas of grassroots development.
During the past decade the work of NGOs has been central to raising and bringing
into the mainstream of Indian development planning and programming such issues as
women, environment, and wasteland development.
Main instruments used in Poverty Alleviation Programmes (PAPs)
In the Government sector, most poverty alleviation programmes are designed by the
centre and implemented by the State on fund sharing basis for financing the
programmes. The annual outlay for centrally sponsored anti-poverty programmes
constitutes between 5 and 8 percent of the total Government of India (GOI)
expenditure, and about 1 percent of the GDP (NIRD, 1999a: 102). CESS (2002:3)
groups the Poverty Alleviation Programmes (PAPs) into five categories, which are as
follows:
Income enhancement programmes:
• Self Employment Programmes which include IRDP, DWCRA and TRYSEM and
• Wage employment programmes which include JRY and EAS;
• Programmes which focus on providing food and nutritional security viz., PDS and ICDS;
• Programmes which provide basic minimum services – housing, sanitation, health, education;
• Income maintenance programmes viz., pension schemes, maternity benefit scheme and
survival benefit scheme; and
• Natural resource management and livelihoods.
The instruments used by the NGOs vary greatly across programmes, based on their
focus and approach, area of expertise/operation, funding sources and conditions.
Evaluations of Policies and Instruments
As DFID’s India Country Strategy Paper (1999: 1) notes: “Policies and programmes
designed to help the poor have suffered from ineffective implementation and there is
widespread public concern about the impact of corruption on governance. The large
sums invested in public anti-poverty programmes tend to focus on poorly targeted
subsidies and safety nets rather than longer term investments in education and
health.” Various evaluations about the IRDP reveal that the actual percolation effect
of the programme has been much less in terms of poverty alleviation as compared
with the impressive figures doled out by Government reports in terms of subsidies,
bank credit and poverty line crossers (Datta and Sundharam, 2005:410).
In terms of institutional credit, as Datta and Sundharam (2005: 584) note, the new
institutions created by the government and the vastly extended facilities of rural
finance provided by these institutions have been appropriated by the top 30 percent
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of the middle and affluent farmers in the country, with the result that 30 years in the
field of rural credit appears to have failed to make a dent on poverty and provide
adequate credit to improve the economic condition for the bottom 70 percent of the
rural population. The weakest of the rural population consisting of bonded labourers,
landless agricultural labourers, tribals, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, who
form 25-30 percent of the total rural population, fail to receive assistance from the
institutional credit programmes. A study conducted in mid-1990s by DFID’s Post-
Harvest Fisheries Project (PHFP, undated) showed that, in 1994-95, fisheries
received only 2.5 percent of the total funds earmarked for the priority sector (which
includes agriculture, irrigation, land development and non-farm sector) and that the
formal credit sources, including banks, development institutions and cooperatives
contributed less than 10 per cent of credit usage of the fishers.
In respect to the development programmes taken up by agencies like the Department
of Fisheries on their own, lack of vertical and horizontal linkages with other
development initiatives have meant duplication of effort on the one hand and
promotion of conflicting objectives on the other (Vivekanandan et al, 1996). There is
generally no congruence or synergy between sectoral programmes implemented by
different Ministries/Departments and there are also problems related to their reach,
implementation and effectiveness in tackling poverty effectively. The shortcomings
in NGOs’ focus, approaches and activities are evaluated by Kamat (2002), Aditi
Tandon (The Tribune, July 26, 2003) and several others.
Factors contributing to poor performance of poverty alleviation programmes
Datt & Sundharam (2005:379) point to a fundamental problem in the PAPs, which is
that a strong political will is lacking to bring about institutional changes leading to
redistribution of income-yielding assets either through land reform. As a result, most
PAPs remain ornamental in terms of impact. NIRD (1999a: 102) notes that while
spending on PAPs figures significantly in GOI’s total spending, the sums are not
large when compared to the magnitude of poverty in India. Even if all of the
spending under the PAPs reaches the poor (which the Planning Commission itself
recognises as highly problematic), the total transfer to the poor is on an average only
5-7 percent of the expenditure required to cross the poverty line. The NIRD report
goes on to assess a number of other PAPs and concludes that, scarcity of resources,
the elaborate top-down patronage system in all the rural development schemes, lack
of local infrastructure and acute shortage of basic human skills have prevented the
poor from improving their socio-economic status (NIRD, 1999a: 117).
Datt and Sundharam (2005:380) also note that most schemes get distorted during
implementation, a conclusion accepted by the Planning Commission, which notes
that, rather than the availability of resources, it is the institutional capacity to
formulate viable need-based projects with efficient delivery systems to utilise
optimally the available resources that determined the success of PAPs. Citing the
case of ongoing rural development programmes, it notes that (2002a: 179), excessive
compartmentalisation of the executive into Ministries/Departments has encouraged a
narrow sectoral approach to conceiving, formulating and implementing schemes, and
prevented mutual synergies to benefit the plan initiatives, while duplication of efforts
curtailed the flow of assistance to the beneficiaries. In the absence of acceptable
levels of governance, the Plan advises, it would be preferable to eschew targeted
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PAPs in favour of more generally applicable schemes. The Commission also notes
lack of continuity and harmony between policy-making bodies and executive
divisions, corruption, excessive bureaucratisation, and dilemmas facing the State in
the context of liberalisation as having a bearing on the governance in the country.
The Tenth Five-Year Plan and Objectives for Poverty Alleviation
The Tenth Five Year Plan (2002:6) (which may be considered as the Indian
equivalent of a PRSP, although far wider in scope) recognises that economic growth
cannot be the only objective of national planning and defines development objectives
not just in terms of increases in GDP or per capita income, but more broadly in terms
of enhancement of human well being. It identifies the following monitorable targets
for a few key indicators of human development:
Monitorable targets for the Tenth Five Year Plan and Beyond (GOI, 2002a: 6):
• Reduction in poverty ratio by 5 percentage points by 2007 and by 15 percentage points by
2012
• Providing (opportunities for) gainful and high-quality employment
• All children in school by 2003; increase in literacy rates to 75 percent by 2007
• Reduction in gender gaps in literacy and wage rates by at least 50 percent by 2007
• Reduction in the decadal rate of population growth between 2001-2011 to 16.2 percent
• Reduction in infant mortality rate to 45 per 1000 by 2007 and to 28 by 2012
• Reduction in maternal mortality rate to 2 per 1000 by 2007 and to 1 by 2012
• Increase in forest and tree cover to 25 percent by 2007 and 33 percent by 2012
• Sustained access to potable drinking water to all villages by 2007
• Cleaning all major polluted rivers by 2007 and other polluted stretches by 2012.
Noting that good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in ensuring
the objectives of the Tenth Plan are met, the Planning Commission suggests some
aspects of governance that need to be taken up on a priority (GOI, 2002b: 182-88),
which include:
• People’s participation at all stages of planning, implementation and monitoring
• Decentralisation and creation of institutional structures for realising goals of self-governance
• Right to information
• Reforms of the Revenue System, which is perceived to be “one of the most oppressive and
corrupt systems of government”;
• Mobilisation of other resources for development and other purposes, which are presently
unfounded and represent a claim on the general revenues.
• Increasing the role of civil society in the development activities
• Reforms to civil services, procedures, programme/project formulation, delivery systems,
monitoring, budgeting and judiciary etc.
• Encouraging information technology to develop electronic governance (e-governance)
It is not possible to assess how many of these targets are being met during the current
Plan period. Datt & Sundharam (2005:322-4) remark about some of its objectives as
being ‘ambitious’ and ‘unrealistic’ and raise doubts about its ability to achieve some
of the targets.
To summarise, the foregoing discussion suggests that poverty alleviation continues to
take a central role in the Indian planning process at the macro-economic level
although the efforts over the successive 5-Year Plans have remained only partially
successful in weeding out poverty.
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Fisheries policymaking in India
At the policymaking level, fisheries is considered as an important growth sector,
generating income and employment for a large section of economically backward
population of the country, contributing to food security to the population and earning
foreign exchange through exports. Consequently, at least four differing views can be
perceived in the approach to fisheries at the level of Union Ministries. According to
the Ministry of Agriculture (Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying),
which oversees fisheries, the sector
occupies a very important place in the socio-economic development of the
country. It has been recognized as a powerful income and employment
generator as it stimulates growth of a number of subsidiary industries and is a
source of cheap and nutritious food besides being a foreign exchange earner.
Most importantly, it is the source of livelihood for a large section of
economically backward population of the country (http://dahd.nic.in/fish.htm;
emphasis added).
Within this broad viewpoint, policymaking takes conflicting directions (such as
promoting more harvesting technologies on the one hand and undertaking resource
conservation on the other).
On the other hand, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which is the nodal
agency for the planning, promotion, co-ordination and overseeing the
implementation of environmental and forestry conservation and management
programmes (http://envfor.nic.in/), considers fisheries and the fishers as a
contributing factor for degradation of natural resources and environment and
introduces in situ wildlife protection and fisheries management measures that have
implications for the life and livelihood of fishworkers. In 2001, some species of
shark and ray, molluscs, sea horses, giant grouper, coral and sea cucumbers and
sponges have been brought under the ambit of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act of
1972 and it took considerable effort on the part of not only the fishworker
organisations, but also the Ministry of Agriculure and the Ministry of Commerce to
get the MOEF to relax some of the provisions in order to avoid a slump in economic
growth and export earnings from the sector. Similarly, in the state of Orissa, two-
thirds of the 450-km coastline has come under a ban to protect the Olive Ridley
turtles, causing considerable hardship to the thousands of marine and estuarine
fishers in the state (OTFWU, 2004) and the Department of Fisheries is facing a
serious problem of finding alternative sources of livelihoods for the fishers affected
by the ban (Satyabrata Sahu, pers.comm.). Another example of a similar nature
comes from Tamil Nadu, where the proposal to set up a marine bio-reserve in the
Gulf of Mannar region has led to protests from the fishers’ organisations and the
Commissioner of Fisheries of the state (MP Nirmala, pers.comm.).
The Ministry of Commerce provides a third strand in the differing perceptions. If
the Ministry of Agriculture focuses on production and the Ministry of Environment
and Forests on conservation, the Ministry of Commerce’s emphasis is on foreign
exchange earnings and it pursues this objective with a single-minded zeal and, often,
at the expense of the resource and livelihood concerns. The Marine Products Export
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Development Authority (MPEDA) was constituted in 1972 under the Marine
Products Export Development Authority Act 1972 (No.13 of 1972) and functions
under the Ministry of Commerce. The role envisaged for the MPEDA under the
statute is comprehensive - covering fisheries of all kinds, increasing exports,
specifying standards, processing, marketing, extension and training in various
aspects of the industry (http://www.mpeda.com/). As already noted, its all-
encompassing role also includes conservation and management, although it has never
implemented any programmes in this respect. The programmes of MPEDA aim at
export production in capture and culture fisheries, induction of new technology and
modernisation of processing facilities and market promotion.
A fourth perception of the fisheries sector comes from the Ministry of Defence,
whose Coast Guard considers fishing in the coastal and offshore waters as a nuisance
in performing their border control functions and in responding to smuggling and
poaching by foreign vessels. In addition, they also contribute to marine pollution
control http://www.globalsecurity.org/ military/world/india/cg.htm). In border
states like Gujarat which have a sizeable fishing fleet, the Coast Guard insists on the
fishers carrying their identification papers with them at all times and harassing
people when they are caught without them at high seas. The largely illiterate and
migrant work force onboard these boats finds it frequently difficult to obtain or carry
the papers with them and suffer badly as a result. An even more serious consequence
befalls the fishermen of the neighbouring Pakistan who stray into the Indian waters
for fishing purposes and caught and jailed for indefinite periods of time without a
proper trial (Gupta and Sharma, 2004; Salagrama, 2004c). The same fate awaits
Indian fishermen who stray into the Pakistani waters.
Linkages between fish resources, economic growth and poverty reduction, as
articulated in the policies
The importance of the fisheries sector to the national economy is underlined by the
constitution of a separate Working Group on Fisheries for the Tenth Five Year Plan
(2002b). The Plan proposes a fish production target of 8.19 MT envisaging a growth
rate of 5.44 percent per annum (marine 2.5 percent and inland 8.0 percent),
emphasizing the need for increasing public/private investment for strengthening
infrastructure for diversifying fisheries and aquaculture activities in order to enhance
‘fish production and productivity’. The major thrust during the Plan is proposed to be
on integrated development of inland fisheries, management of coastal fisheries,
developing deep-sea fisheries with equity participation, vertical and horizontal
development of aquaculture productivity, infrastructure development, improved post-
harvest management, and policy interventions including monitoring, control and
surveillance.
An important conclusion that can be drawn from the Tenth Plan document (as well as
from the Working Group report that contributes to the Plan) is that ‘growth’ (in terms
of increasing production) continues to be the driving force of fisheries policy-making
in the country. Poverty alleviation and livelihood issues or environmental and
resource conservation do not figure prominently on the agenda and when they do, it
is apparent that their real purpose is ornamental. As noted, for all the pious
sentiments about the need to better manage the fisheries resources in the Working
Group report, no provision was made for the purpose. Similarly, while suggesting the
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programmes for increasing ‘production and productivity’ (a phrase that crops up
repeatedly in the Plan document), it seems to ignore the ground reality vis-à-vis
changing production (depletion of natural resources) and market (international trade)
conditions. Consequently, the emphasis on introduction of new extraction
technologies (which are necessarily beyond the capacity of the poorer fishers to
invest in, so the poverty angle remains more or less closed) might lead to an all-too-
predictable result. An example of this ‘producing more at any cost’ paradigm is the
new Deep Sea Fishing Policy.
The Deep Sea Fishing Policy, 2002
In November 2002, the Government issued a Deep Sea Fishing Policy aimed at
increasing fishing effort to exploit India’s untapped marine fisheries resources. The
government’s contention is that, considering the inability of the existing fleet to fish
in the offshore waters, a vast resource remains untapped, which is an economic
waste. Moreover, the argument goes, if India fails to make use of its EEZ
productively, this may spur landlocked countries like Nepal and Bhutan in the region
to lay claim to those waters and lease them to distant foreign nations anyway (GOI,
2001b: 578).
After a thorough review of the new guidelines, Mathew (2003) concludes that the
potential benefits to the Indian fishing economy from the new Policy appear to be
less than even the most exploitative fisheries agreement between coastal states and
distant water fishing nations! Under the new regime, there are no vessel quotas or
license fees commensurate with the value of the catch, and no requirement to employ
Indian workers or to land in Indian ports, the whole system is loaded in favour of
foreign deep-sea fishing vessel operators registered as Indian companies. Mathew
also cautions that the new policy would act as an invitation to DWFNs to dump their
excessive harvesting capacity in the Indian waters, which is certainly not a step
towards enhancing the health of the marine environment. Thus, the new Deep Sea
Fishing Policy might help in increasing production by the utilisation of some under-
exploited resources, but the potential impacts upon the natural resources themselves
and on the poverty and livelihoods of the poor remain a matter of concern.
Similarly, the changing international trade context and the emergence of non-tariff
barriers like Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) measures (Salagrama, 2004b) do not
receive attention at the macro-policy level and the measures suggested in terms of
India’s possible stand at the negotiations or to improve the existing conditions up to
the required standards are non-existent or barely adequate, particularly in the context
of widespread poverty in the sector.
Socio-economic studies undertaken in the fisheries sector and implementation of
results in policy terms
As indicated in the chapter on Poverty, a few socio-economic studies exist on the
fisheries sector, but their impact on policy-making has been minimal. A review of the
programmes undertaken over successive 5 Year Plans since 1950s shows a
remarkable consistency in policymaking, indicating that the focus has remained fixed
on certain (resource- and technology-centred and production-oriented) objectives
which may have evolved over the years but remain the same at the core. That the
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lack of even basic data on different actors in the sector has not been felt to affect
policy-making is an indication of how remarkably independent of socio-economic
considerations the policy-process has so far been. True, a number of public sector
fisheries research institutes exist in the country, but a review of their work makes one
to conclude that: (i) fisheries research has mainly focused on the fish (biology,
harvest and post-harvest technologies) and to a much less extent on the people or
their socio-economic conditions and (ii) the contribution of research to policymaking
has been extremely poor. The institutional and policy frameworks to ensure the flow
of research results into policy-making processes are weak to the point of being non-
existent and the result has been negative on both.
Role played by NGOs, fishers’ organisations and civil society in general
The growth of NGOs and grassroots organisations in the fisheries sector was rather
sluggish until 1970s, but when they did in states like Kerala as a result of continuous
efforts by committed bands of intellectuals from within and outside the fishing
communities, they quickly became an integral part of the system. It was due to years
of hard work put in by fishworkers’ organisations with support from some NGOs in
Kerala that led to a seasonal ban on mechanised fishing and its subsequent extension
across all the coastal states (Kurien, 1988). NGOs like the Programme for
Community Organisation (PCO), the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies
(SIFFS) and the National Fishworkers’ Forum have organised the fishworkers along
independent lines, vocalised their needs in a meaningful manner and attempted to
address these needs through innovative community-based strategies that would pave
the way for the government to implement some of them in its own programmes
(Vivekanandan, 2003). In other west coast states like Maharashtra and Gujarat, the
cooperative movement has been very strong in the fishing sector. These cooperatives
– mainly economically oriented – quickly took on a wider range of responsibilities
and developed into viable systems of governance and support.
Barring a few areas in southern Tamil Nadu, the NGO and fishworkers’ movement
on the east coast has been rather weak. The NGO interventions here have been
largely general in nature and involved applying a general package of assistance –
consisting of health and literacy programmes and setting up self-help groups –
overlooking the specificities of poverty in fishing communities. Disaster
preparedness can be said to have been one area where many NGOs tackled the needs
of the fishers more than adequately, but in most other areas, their interventions have
not made much of a mark. On a positive note, a vibrant, grassroots-based fishworkers
movement is taking root in Orissa (Salagrama, 2002), which has the potential to
spread across to other states in due course.
The relations between the government and the NGOs remain rather ambiguous and
are, often, characterised by mutual suspicion. Over time, there has been more
openness and moves towards involvement of people from Private and NGO sectors
in the planning and implementation of the government programmes, but these
‘outsiders’ are frequently involved only to satisfy the diktats of ‘participation’ that
most aid-agencies insist upon. Similarly, the government having become the most
important aid-giver to the NGOs, the latter too frequently run the risk of being no
more than an extension of the government system.
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Institutional factors affecting the participation of the poor in economic
activities, policymaking and implementation13
The foregoing sections have shown that economic growth in India in general and in
fisheries in particular has been significant over the last half century and yet, the
benefits of economic growth have not reached the poor as a result of (i) the pattern of
growth being biased towards certain programmes and groups and (ii) poor targeting
and implementation of pro-poor policies. More seriously, there is also the fact that
the concept of wealth has not yet entered the consciousness of the policymakers, who
consequently consider the benefits in terms of increasing production from the natural
resources. This approach not only does not help the poor (or anyone else), but also
makes them poorer as has been happening in many states already (Salagrama, 2003a,
2004b).
This state of affairs also stems from or leads to:
a. Lack of policy coherence. The relationship between three main strands of
fisheries development debate, i.e., economic growth, natural resource
management and poverty alleviation remains obscure in fisheries policymaking.
This leads to conflicting objectives in the policies and, together with the legal
pluralism that pertains in the sector, ends up being a bundle of contradictions.
b. Top-down approaches to policymaking and implementation, focusing on
increasing production, enhancing technological efficiency and improving foreign
exchange earnings, ignoring the potential costs for the poor and the natural
resources
c. Poor implementation. Lack of vertical (central to state to grassroots level; within
particular departments like DOF etc.) and horizontal (between different sectoral
departments; between government, NGOs and private sector).
d. Absence of monitoring, impact assessment and evaluations. Studies about the
socio-economic impacts of the various policies concerning the fisheries sector (or
the projects they have spawned) are either not conducted or are not available
generally. The systems for generating such information using a set of indicators
valid across a large country like India are non-existent.
e. Changes – mainly in terms of being more inclusive – do happen in some
programmes (e.g., FAO-supported GOI Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation
Programme for Andhra Pradesh – see FAO, 2000), but these are confined to one-
off exercises and seldom lead to a permanent change in the institutional
frameworks for policymaking or implementation.
All this translates to the poor in the fisheries sector facing serious problems in
pursuing their economic activities and also in taking part in the policymaking and
implementation aspects.
Data/research gaps relevant to improved policy-making that need addressing
Need for better information and ‘locating’ fisheries in the national context: There is
a need to shift the focus of development and management from commodities to
people and the objectives from introducing new technologies to addressing their real
13
The information contained in this and the following sections is mainly derived from interactions
with institutional stakeholders in fisheries – fisheries officers, scientists, NGOs, industry groups and
community organisations, using some of the themes discussed in the Concept Paper.
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needs. Collection and compilation of basic data on the different stakeholders in the
sector, their number and socio-economic conditions is an important first step because
the lack of such data leads to unfocused – or mis-focused – development objectives.
Efforts to integrate fisheries in the broader context of the national economy, by
undertaking comparative studies with other economic sectors, by focusing on the
multi-sectoral orientation of the fishers’ livelihoods (which never entirely depend on
fisheries alone) and by understanding the inter-sectoral movements will also be
necessary to determine the need for, and the direction of, policy support that is
required. Developing indicators of poverty specific to the sector – as well as those
that are relevant across a wider spectrum – is an important area that needs to more
work urgently. Approaches to better channel the benefits of economic growth to
alleviate poverty (legal and institutional frameworks) and the avenues for the poor
fishers to move into in order to reduce pressure on the natural resources and to find a
sustainable livelihood for themselves are yet to be explored in any detail and need
urgent consideration in order to arrive at a ‘win-win’ solution for efficient fisheries
management.
Analytical frameworks to enhance the links between natural resources, economic
growth and poverty alleviation: Predictive models to assess the impact of changes in
different parameters in the natural resources as well as the macro-economic scenario
(for instance, changes in the international trade regimes) and the possible options
(spanning multiple sectors and disciplines and not just confined to biological or
technical solutions) to overcome the adverse impacts and maximise the good ones
are necessary in order to avoid knee-jerk responses to ‘sudden’ crises. An audit of the
natural resources (i.e., fish) in a way that the policymakers can make use of it is a
necessity both to ascertain their survival and sustainability and to ensure their
continued availability to the people through rational fisheries management strategies.
Institutional frameworks: The institutional frameworks for planning and
implementing efficient development and management systems, which are holistically
linked to the socio-economic context in which the fishers live and provide for the
participation of the poorer stakeholders, need to be explored in conjunction with the
primary stakeholders and developed into a cohesive system of organisation.
Improved fisheries development and management regimes, which take cognisance of
the traditional (community-based) systems and their holistic approach to
management, will not only enhance the health of the resources by making the people
to have a stake in the health of the resources, but also provide use rights to the poor
that they can use in a number of different ways. However, as Kurien (2003:39) notes,
restoring community rights does not necessarily lead to proper management for
several reasons and the role of NGOs as well as the state must play a significant role
to make this happen.
Important areas for policy development in the future with reference to the
linkage between fisheries, economic growth and poverty reduction
(Opportunities)
In the context of the multi-species nature of fisheries in India, it is doubtful if quota
systems would be effective as a management measure. Obviously, the best option
lies in effort-reducing measures, such as phasing out the excessive fishing fleet,
reducing subsidies for enhancing fishing intensity or efficiency and supporting the
fishers to move into alternative income-generating activities. By developing a good
G-46

understanding of the sustainable levels of exploitation for different species and then
working out the maximum number of vessels in different categories that can be
allowed to operate, it is possible to put a cap on the expansion of fishing fleet – while
the political and economic repercussions of reducing the current size of the fleet
might be too high, it is however possible to stop further increases or replacement of
existing boats until the size of the fleet comes down to acceptable levels. Once that
stage has been reached, the emphasis can then be on allowing only replacement of
old or damaged boats, so that the exploitation levels remain within limits. A start can
be made by developing reliable databases on the numbers of fishing boats in different
categories and their economics of operation. Reducing subsidies for adding new
boats to the fleet or upgrading existing capacity for harvest is an immediate
necessity. Where applicable and necessary, bans on active fishing gears can be
explored, with the emphasis being on how to implement them effectively and in such
a way that the poor are not ultimately the losers.
An important lesson that one can draw from the experience so far is that fisheries
management cannot be boiled down to one – or even a few – specific instruments or
that the measures cannot be uniform along the entire coast of India. It is not clear
how measures like uniform fishing ban across the coastal states would help the fish
during the breeding period. There is a need to explore and develop a range of
instruments and implementing such of them as are applicable to a particular area
based upon the local context – in other words, management measures need to be
location-specific and can even vary from place to place, provided they are
implemented effectively, which is possible only by involving the local communities
in the planning and implementation.
Helping the fishers to move out or to diversify is another area that requires attention.
While coastal aquaculture remains an area of uncertainty, there are several
indications that diversification of culture operations to growing alternative species
such as sea bass show promise as a viable alternative for the fishers, both in terms of
reducing production hazards and costs as well as in providing them with a readymade
market both domestic and international.
A few other areas for policy-making will involve:
a. Raising the profile of natural resource management and poverty alleviation in the
fisheries policymaking, making them as important as (if not more important than)
economic growth;
b. Developing strategies for more efficient benefit flows to the poor from the
improved utilisation of the natural resources;
c. Decentralisation of the policymaking process, to better reflect the needs of the
people (particularly poor) in the development programmes and to improve the
performance of the management regimes;
d. Establishing and nurturing co-management programmes, ensuring the poor and
the vulnerable sections (for e.g., women) a better say in the matters;
e. Addressing the issue of legal pluralism in a practical manner and, to the extent
possible, making the functions of different agencies clear and straightforward;
f. Enforcing fiscal reforms in the sector, but in a way that the poorer producers do
not get marginalized as a result;
g. Weeding out ‘effort-enhancing’ and environmentally harmful harvesting
techniques through removal of subsidies, banning destructive fishing gears and
G-47

practices; phasing out and promotion of ‘ecologically sophisticated’ technologies
(Kurien, 2003:40).
h. Ensuring access to alternatives to people wherever their current livelihoods are
threatened or marginalized as a result of management measures;
i. Improving infrastructure and transport systems to reduce losses and enhance
access to markets
j. Improving social security networks and insurance for the weaker and vulnerable
sections
k.
Factors likely to impact on the nature and rate of policy development (Threats)
Naturally, the lack of political will is an important constraint to improve fisheries
development/management policies in the sector. The influence of, and lobbying by,
vested interests at various levels (including influential groups seeking benefits to
themselves or to avoid the fallout of any potentially adverse legislations), which have
been entrenched to take advantage of a particular system of development and
management can be a serious constraint in attempting a serious/radical restructuring
of the policy-objectives.
As the sector suffers from both supply and demand related constraints, its importance
to the national economy might decline, or its demands on the national economy
might mount (for instance, to cope with the international pressure on quality control),
forcing it into the sidelines of the national agenda and even making it ‘expendable’ in
pursuit of more rewarding activities like tourism. When this gets reflected in reduced
outlays, the influence of the government to determine major shifts in the way things
work can be seriously jeopardized.
Thirdly, the fact that the declines in fisheries sector as well as the processes
contributing to them have advanced so far that there is a fear that it might be
extremely difficult to set the clock back will mean that a responsible management
system will take considerable time to take root. The way the government has allowed
people to view it – as the sole owner of the resources, as being responsible for all
development in the sector etc. – means that they will continue to look to it both for
support (in the form of subsidies etc.) as well as to take care of management on its
own (disclaiming their own responsibility). A progressive change in attitudes brought
about by a range of methods – legislations, awareness raising, incentives – will
necessarily take time.
The legal pluralist context in which the fishers operate – i.e., their life and
livelihoods are influenced by various agencies (government, NGOs, private sector,
community-based etc.) – means that a change in one Ministry or Department is
unlikely to yield any benefits, and might even be the cause of concern for the other
interest groups. Bringing them all to share a common vision is not exactly an easy
task.
G-48

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7. ANNEXURES
Annexure 1: Selected Human Development Indicators for India
Source: http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/cty/cty_f_IND.html
HDI Rank: 127
Human development index
Life expectancy at birth (years) (HDI), 2002 63.7
Adult literacy rate (% ages 15 and above) (HDI), 2002 61.3
Combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools (%), 2001/02 55
GDP per capita (PPP US$) (HDI), 2002 2,670
Life expectancy index 0.64
Education index 0.59
GDP index 0.55
Human development index (HDI) value, 2002 0.595
GDP per capita (PPP US$) rank minus HDI rank - 10
Human development index trends
Human development index, 1975 0.411
Human development index, 1980 0.437
Human development index, 1985 0.476
Human development index, 1990 0.514
Human development index, 1995 0.548
Human development index, 2000 0.579
Human development index, 2002 0.595
Human and income poverty: Developing countries
Human poverty index (HPI-1) Rank 48
Human Poverty Index (HPI-1) Value (%) 31.4
Probability at birth of not surviving to age 40 (% of cohort), 2000-05 15.3
Adult illiteracy rate (% ages 15 and above), 2002 38.7
Population without sustainable access to an improved water source (%), 2000 16
Children underweight for age (% under age 5) (HPI-1), 1995-2002 47
Population living below $1 a day (%), 1990-2002 34.7
Population living below $2 a day (%), 1990-2002 79.9
Population living below the national poverty line (%), 1990-2001 28.6
HPI-1 rank minus income poverty rank - 12
Demographic trends
Total population (millions), 1975 620.7
Total population (millions), 2002 1,049.5
Total population (millions), 2015 1,246.4
Annual population growth rate (%), 1975-2002 1.9
Annual population growth rate (%), 2002-2015 1.3
Urban population (% of total), 1975 21.3
Urban population (% of total), 2002 28.1
Urban population (% of total), 2015 32.2
Population under age 15 (% of total), 2002 33.3
Population under age 15 (% of total), 2015 27.7
Population age 65 and above (% of total), 2002 5.1
Population age 65 and above (% of total), 2015 6.3
Total fertility rate (births per woman), 1970-75 5.4
Total fertility rate (births per woman), 2000-05 3.0
Commitment to health: resources, access and services
Public health expenditure (% of GDP), 2001 0.9
Private health expenditure (% of GDP), 2001 4.2
Health expenditure per capita (PPP US$), 2001 80
One-year-olds fully immunized against tuberculosis (%), 2002 81
One-year-olds fully immunized against measles (%), 2002 67
Oral rehydration therapy use rate (%), 1994-2002 ..
Contraceptive prevalence rate (%), 1995-2002 48 5
Births attended by skilled health personnel (%), 1995-2002 43
Physicians (per 100,000 people), 1990-2003 51
Population with sustainable access to affordable essential drugs (%), 1999 0-49
Water, sanitation and nutritional status
Population with sustainable access to improved sanitation (%), 1990 16
Population with sustainable access to improved sanitation (%), 2000 28
Population with sustainable access to an improved water source (%), 1990 68
Population with sustainable access to an improved water source (%), 2000 84
G-56

Undernourished people (% of total population), 1990/92 25
Undernourished people (% of total population), 1999/2001 21
Children underweight for age (% under age 5), 1995-2002 47
Children under height for age (% under age 5), 1995-2002 46
Infants with low birthweight (%), 1998-2002 30
Leading global health crises and risks
HIV prevalence (% ages 15-49), 2003 [0.4 - 1.3]
Malaria cases (per 100,000 people), 2000 7
Tuberculosis cases (per 100,000 people), 2002 344
Prevalence of smoking (% of adults), women, 2000 3
Prevalence of smoking (% of adults), men, 2000 29
Survival: progress and setbacks
Life expectancy at birth (years), 1970-75 50.3
Life expectancy at birth (years), 2000-05 63.9
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), 1970 127
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), 2002 67
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), 1970 202
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), 2002 93
Probability at birth of surviving to age 65, female (% of cohort), 2000-05 67.5
Probability at birth of surviving to age 65, male (% of cohort), 2000-05 61.9
Maternal mortality ratio reported (per 100,000 live births), 1985-2002 540
Maternal mortality ratio adjusted (per 100,000 live births), 2000 540
Commitment to education: public spending
Public expenditure on education (as % of GDP), 1990 3.9
Public expenditure on education (as % of GDP), 1999-2001 4.1
Public expenditure on education (as % of total government expenditure), 1990 12.2
Public expenditure on education (as % of total government expenditure), 1999-2001 12.7
Public expenditure on education, pre-primary and primary (as % of all levels), 1990 38.9
Public expenditure on education, pre-primary and primary (as % of all levels), 1999-2001 38.4
Public expenditure on education, secondary (% of all levels), 1990 27.0
Public expenditure on education, secondary (% of all levels), 1999-2001 40.1
Public expenditure on education, tertiary (% of all levels), 1990 14.9
Public expenditure on education, tertiary (% of all levels), 1999-2001 20.3
Literacy and enrolment
Adult literacy rate (% ages 15 and above), 1990 49.3
Adult literacy rate (% ages 15 and above), 2002 61.3
Youth literacy rate (% ages 15-24), 1990 64.3
Net primary enrolment ratio (%), 2001/02 83
Children reaching grade 5 (%), 2000/01 59
Tertiary students in science, math and engineering (% of all tertiary students), 1994-97 25
Economic performance
GDP (US$ billions), 2002 510.2
GDP (PPP US$ billions), 2002 2,799.6
GDP per capita (US$), 2002 487
GDP per capita (PPP US$), 2002 2,670
GDP per capita annual growth rate (%), 1975-2002 3.3
GDP per capita annual growth rate (%), 1990-2002 4.0
GDP per capita, highest value (PPP US$), 1975-2002 2,670
GDP per capita, year of highest value 2002
Average annual change in consumer price index (%), 1990-2002 8.3
Average annual change in consumer price index (%), 2001-02 4.4
Inequality in income or consumption
Survey Year 1999/2000
Share of income or consumption (%) - Poorest 10% 3.9
Share of income or consumption (%) - Poorest 20% 8.9
Share of income or consumption (%) - Richest 20% 41.6
Share of income or consumption (%) - Richest 10% 27.4
Inequality measures - Ratio of richest 10% to poorest 10% 7.0
Inequality measures - Ratio of richest 20% to poorest 20% 4.7
Inequality measures - Gini index 32.5
Priorities in public spending
Public expenditure on education (% of GDP), 1990 3.9
Public expenditure on education (% of GDP), 1999-2001 4.1
Public expenditure on health (% of GDP), 1990 0.9
Public expenditure on health (% of GDP), 2001 0.9
Military expenditure (% of GDP), 1990 2.7
Military expenditure (% of GDP), 2002 2.3
G-57

Total debt service (% of GDP), 1990 2.6
Total debt service (% of GDP), 2002 2.6
Energy and the environment
Traditional fuel consumption (% of total energy requirements), 2001 24.3
Electricity consumption per capita (kilowatt-hours), 1980 173
Electricity consumption per capita (kilowatt-hours), 2001 561
GDP per unit of energy use (1995 PPP US$ per kg of oil equivalent), 1980 3.1
GDP per unit of energy use (1995 PPP US$ per kg of oil equivalent), 2001 4.4
Carbon dioxide emissions - Per capita (metric tons), 1980 0.5
Carbon dioxide emissions - Per capita (metric tons), 2000 1.1
Carbon dioxide emissions - Share of world total (%), 2000 4.4
Gender-related development index
Gender-related development index (GDI) rank, 2002 103
Gender-related development index (GDI) value, 2002 0.572
Life expectancy at birth, female (years), 2002 64.4
Life expectancy at birth, male (years), 2002 63.1
Adult literacy rate, female (% ages 15 and above), 2002 46.4
Adult literacy rate, male (% ages 15 and above), 2002 69.0
Combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary level schools, female (%) ,
2001/02 48
Combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary level schools, male (%) ,
2001/02 62
Estimated earned income, female (PPP US$), 2002 1,442
Estimated earned income, male (PPP US$), 2002 3,820
HDI rank minus GDI rank, 2002 -1
Gender inequality in education
Female primary net enrolment ratio (%), 2000/01 76
Primary net enrolment ratio (female as % of male), 2000/01 0.83
Female tertiary gross enrolment ratio (%), 2000/01 9
Tertiary gross enrolment ratio (female rate as % of male rate), 2000/01 0.68
Gender inequality in economic activity
Female economic activity rate (% ages 15 and above), 2002 42.4
Female economic activity rate (index, 1990=100, ages 15 and above), 2002 105
Female economic activity rate (% of male rate, ages 15 and above), 2002 50
G-58

Annexure 2: Millennium Development Goals for India
Source:
http://devdata.worldbank.org/idg/IDGProfile.asp?CCODE=IND&CNAME=India&SelectedCountry=I
ND
2015 target = halve 1990 $1 a day poverty and malnutrition rates
Population below $1 a day (%)
Poverty gap at $1 a day (%)
Percentage share of income or consumption held by poorest 20%
Prevalence of child malnutrition (% of children under 5)
Population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption (%)
G-59

2015 target = net enrollment to 100
Net primary enrollment ratio (% of relevant age group)
Percentage of cohort reaching grade 5 (%)
Youth literacy rate (% ages 15-24)
2005 target = education ratio to 100
Ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education (%)
Ratio of young literate females to males (% ages 15-24)
G-60

Share of women employed in the nonagricultural sector (%)
Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament (%)
2015 target = reduce 1990 under 5 mortality by two-thirds
Under 5 mortality rate (per 1,000)
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births)
Immunization, measles (% of children under 12 months)
G-61

!
2015 target = reduce 1990 maternal mortality by three-fourths
Maternal mortality ratio (modeled estimate, per 100,000 live births)
Births attended by skilled health staff (% of total)
"# $ %! ' ! *
& ()
2015 target = halt, and begin to reverse, AIDS, etc.
Prevalence of HIV, female (% ages 15-24)
Contraceptive prevalence rate (% of women ages 15-49)
Number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS
G-62

Incidence of tuberculosis (per 100,000 people)
Tuberculosis cases detected under DOTS (%)
+ $
2015 target = various (see notes)
Forest area (% of total land area)
Nationally protected areas (% of total land area)
GDP per unit of energy use (PPP $ per kg oil equivalent)
CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita)
G-63

Access to an improved water source (% of population)
Access to improved sanitation (% of population)
Access to secure tenure (% of population)
,( - $ . (
2015 target = various (see notes)
Youth unemployment rate (% of total labor force ages 15-24)
Fixed line and mobile telephones (per 1,000 people)
G-64

Personal computers (per 1,000 people)
-
Population
Gross national income ($)
GNI per capita ($)
Adult literacy rate (% of people ages 15 and over)
G-65

Total fertility rate (births per woman)
Life expectancy at birth (years)
Aid (% of GNI)
External debt (% of GNI)
Investment (% of GDP)
Trade (% of GDP)
G-66

) /
0 / some cases the data are for earlier or later years than those stated.
In
- /Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day. Halve,
between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
- /Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of
primary schooling.
- / Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and to all levels of
education no later than 2015.
- /Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.
- /Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.
- " /Have halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS. Have halted by 2015, and begun to
reverse, the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
- + / Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the
loss of environmental resources. Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
- , /Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system. Address
the Special Needs of the Least Developed Countries. Address the Special Needs of landlocked countries and small island
developing states. Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international
measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term. In cooperation with developing countries, develop and
implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth. In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide
access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries. In cooperation with the private sector, make available the
benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications.
G-67

Annexure 3: Distribution of marine fishery resources in India
State/Union Approx length Continental No of No of fishing
Territory of coastline shelf (‘000 km) landing villages
(km) centres
Andhra Pradesh 974 33 508 508
Goa 104 10 88 72
Gujarat 1600 184 286 851
Karnataka 300 27 29 221
Kerala (P) 590 40 226 222
Maharashtra 720 112 184 395
Orissa 480 26 63 329
Tamil Nadu 1076 41 362 556
West Bengal 158 17 47 652
A & N Islands 1912 35 57 45
Daman and Diu 27 - 7 31
(P)
Lakshadweep (P) 132 4 11 10
Pondicherry 45 1 28 45
Total 8118 530 1896 3937
P – Provisional Source: GOI (2000: 121).
Annexure 4: Fish production in India 1950-51 to 1999-2000 (from GOI 2000)
Fish production in India 1950-51 to 1999-2000 (in '000 MT) (GOI, 2000:5)
35
Hundreds
30
25
20
Marine
15 Inland
10
5
0
19 1
19 1
19 1
19 9
19 1
19 3
19 5
19 7
19 9
19 1
19 3
19 5
19 7
9
-5
-6
-7
-7
-8
-8
-8
-8
-8
-9
-9
-9
-9
-9
50
60
70
78
80
82
84
86
88
90
92
94
96
98
19
G-68