An Empirical Study on Socio-Economic Conditions of Fishermen of North-East Coastal Region of India

Fishing is recognised as a source of food since the Stone Age. A fisherman is the one who is involved in the process of capturing fish and other species from a water body for living and earning purposes, which started with an objective of survival and transformed into a source of business. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, fish output in India doubled between 1990 and 2010. India acquires 8129 kilometres of marine coastline involving over 1.5 million people who are directly or indirectly related to fishing industry. Being a natural consumable resource it contributes to food security of India, fish is considered as a consumable source and an income source simultaneously. Traditionally, there exist primarily two forms of fishing-Inland Fishing and Marine Fishing. While the former is preferable to the local customers in India due to variety of tastes, on the other hand the Marine Fishing is considered as one of the significant foreign exchange earners as well as suppliers of huge nutritional requirements for this vast population. Nearly 60 per cent of Indian fish productions are coming from coastal fishing. To step up deep-sea fishing activities, in 1977 the Government extended its territorial control over 200 nautical miles in the ocean. This zone was termed as ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’ (EEZ). About 6.3% of global fish production as well as 1.1% of Indian GDP and 5.15% of agricultural GDP is contributed by Indian fishing industry.