Preliminary study for upscaling fish economy in Kanyakumari by developing homestead based business models

Abstract

Fishing is a very important part of the Indian economy, contributing ₹1.3 Lakh Crore to Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2018. The total production of fish in India in 2017-18 is 12.6M metric tons with Tamil Nadu producing around 650K metric tons. Around 1.6 Crore people are involved actively in fishing and almost twice the number are employed in upstream and downstream occupations. In 2020, India has exported ₹47 Thousand Crore to countries like USA, China, Japan, Thailand, UAE, Spain, Italy, UK. India has thus become the second largest producer of fish in the world and also the second largest producer of aquaculture products. In Kanyakumari, fishing is one of the most important occupations with almost 1.5 Lakh people involved in fishing as an occupation. But due to abundance of middlemen and no incentives, there has been no value addition activities in a large scale. This means that the entire fish catch is sold to middlemen thereby resulting in very low incomes to fisherfolk. In order to increase incomes of fisherfolk and to open new avenues for employment, it is important to study what kind of value additions are possible in the Indian context, what machineries would be required, what government schemes can be leveraged and what are the different organisations that can help to implement these schemes in the grassroot level.