Why The Creation Of A Separate Fisheries Department By The NDA Government Is Significant

Last month, the United States (US) refused entry to 26 shrimp export consignments from India. This accounted for approximately 50 per cent of the rejections made by the US in 2018 alone, following traces of banned antibiotics were found in the consignments.

The rejections come close on the heels of the US imposing seafood import monitoring programme (SIMP). The US began implementing SIMP from 1 January 2018 but had exempted shrimp imports then.

This was because no one, including US officials, was clear how to go about imposing the rules that require recording details from seeding to harvesting in remote farms. However, from 1 January this year, SIMP has been imposed for shrimp imports through “informal compliance period”.

This meant that no shrimp shipment will be rejected for not having proper records until 1 March. The above shipments, however, have been rejected for presence of banned antibiotics.

The US accounts for 27 per cent of shrimps exported from India. Frozen shrimp made up over 41 per cent of total exports volume and nearly 68.5 per cent of shipments value during 2017-18 fiscal. In fact, exports of seafood from India will likely touch $8 billion this fiscal ending March against $7.08 billion last financial year, according to a CRISIL research paper.

It is in this regard that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address at a public meeting in Tirupur in Tamil Nadu on Sunday (10 February) is relevant. Pointing to the creation of a separate department by his government in the interim budget presentation by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, he said the government would take services to the door of the fishermen.

Until now, the fisheries sector has been a part of animal husbandry and dairying department under the Ministry of Agriculture. This had resulted in the fisheries sector, a sunrise industry facing many complex problems, lacking proper focus.

The US rejection of shrimp consignments on grounds of presence of banned antibiotics is one such problem. (These antibiotics are given to shrimps in the farms to treat the outbreak of diseases). Since the formation of the World Trade Organization, Indian seafood exports have been facing various hurdles in accessing foreign markets.

For instance, in 1996, the US banned shrimp imports from India, Pakistan and Thailand on the grounds that Indian fishermen were not using turtle excluder devices in their boats. US justified its ban claiming it was to preserve rare turtles in the region’s ocean. The ban was found to be “inconsistent” by a dispute panel of the WTO.

It was at that point in time that the need for a separate ministry for fisheries was felt. A proposal was then made to the Ministry of Agriculture then, but it was rejected.

Since then, the demand for a separate fisheries ministry has been raised time and again, but in vain. It has taken over two decades for this demand of the fisheries sector to be met, albeit partly by creation of a separate department that would now serve 1.5 crore fishermen.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was among the first to favour a separate ministry that could help small and traditional fishermen. The then BJP president Nitin Gadkari had pointed out that at least 60 per cent of the fishermen community was below poverty line and traditional fishermen had been victims of neglect by various governments.

Over 3 crore people depend on fishing as their main profession and fisheries contributes 0.7 per cent to India’s gross domestic product (GDP) annually. However, allocation for the sector that faces various issues has always been meagre.

However, as the BJP government at the Centre was caught up with the usual bureaucratic delays, Congress president Rahul Gandhi got going with his assurance that if voted to power, his party would created a separate ministry for fisheries. What Gandhi forgot or ignored was that the United Progressive Alliance headed by his party had failed to act on the proposal for a good 10 years.

Why is the creation of a separate department for fisheries significant?

One of the reasons is that under the Ministry of Agriculture, the fisheries was a part of the Animal Husbandry and Dairying (AHD) Department and poorly manned by staff who had no special knowledge about the sector. As part of the AHD Department, fisheries and fishermen were not getting adequate attention from policy-makers.

The fisheries sector is one that is in dire need of cold storage facilities, landing points and cold chain. Until now, these have received little focus from policy-makers.

Further, women play a crucial role in the fisheries sector especially in drying and preservation. These women are most vulnerable to various hazards, including weather and job uncertainty. The absence of focus on the sector has been a bane for them until now.

The creation of a separate department can help in ensuring coordination of measures such as conservation, regulation and protection of the fishermen’s interests.

The department can also focus on concerns like falling catch, marine pollution and potential market opportunities. Until now, various activities of the fishing community — from procuring raw materials to getting export incentives — had been delegated to various ministries but now they will be handled by one department.

The creation of the department can help bring in the much required funding for the sector. Fishermen, in particular, have been feeling the pinch of fund shortage when they seek loans to buy new boats. The separate department, some feel, can now help tackle this issue.

However, there is still a section of the community which feels that a separate ministry, as raised by the BJP itself, is the right panacea for the sector. Since this was an interim budget, the government’s hands could have been tied, and it could be a possible indicator of the shape of things to come after the Lok Sabha elections.