Financing and marketing management (1+1)

Unit 2- Cooperative movement in fisheries in India

2.6. Status and problems of fisheries co-operatives
The Fisheries Cooperatives in the country are organized under a 3-tier structure operating at the village, district and state levels. Some of the fisheries cooperatives still have organizational, managerial, and operational weaknesses making them unsuccessful, inactive or moribund in spite of Government support in terms of technical, financial, and infrastructural facilities. Most of the fisheries cooperatives have yet to reach their objectives. This can be attributed to the weak linkages with different organizations and also between the primary, district and state level cooperative societies, Federation, Apex bodies etc.
As a well known fact, the cooperatives are the only answer for creating a forum through which the technology for self sufficiency and income generation could be transferred to the fishers. But the saga of the fisheries cooperatives in the country is rather tragic The success stories are several though and they are the source of inspiration to us. The cooperatives movement must be made successful as there are no alternatives. Out of several constraints, which have been understood to be blocking the performance of the cooperative societies, certain critical ones have been identified as poor management, unorganized skill enhancement mechanism, discouraging production and productivity trends, lack of infrastructure facilities, problematic financing and finance management, poor linkages with relevant organizations and indiscriminate gender bias etc.
The country has vast fishery resources with great potential, however, fishery cooperatives represent one of the weaker sections of the society. There is a need to revitalize and strengthen fishery cooperatives in the country besides developing linkages among different tiers of fishery cooperatives. On the pattern of NAFED and TRIFED, procurement and marketing of fish is the need of hour to be undertaken on a large scale by the FISHCOPFED. To take up such activity for the benefit of fishers who are members of the cooperatives, there is a need to strengthen resource base of the Federation.