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Journalism of Courage
When Shantilata Samal from Koranda village in Odisha’s Kendrapara district retired four years ago, she decided to turn her energies into a community venture — undertaking pisciculture with her women’s self-help group (SHG) under Mission Shakti. Formerly an integrated child development services (ICDS) supervisor, Samal now spends a significant portion of her time on the local pisciculture enterprise at the panchayat tank.
Promoted by Suryawanshi Mayur Vikas, a 2018-batch Odisha-cadre IAS officer when he was the district collector and magistrate of the Kendrapara district, the ‘Input Assistance to WSHGs for Pisciculture in Gram Panchayat Tanks’ initiative envisions facilitating women SHG groups to collaborate with the state’s Directorate of Fisheries and undertake pisciculture in their local panchayat tanks.
On March 4, Suryawanshi, currently the collector and district magistrate of Balasore, was awarded The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Award under the Gender and Inclusion category for his initiative.
According to officials, women self-help groups are provided the necessary technical and input assistance by giving them access to bank loans. The initiative is a means to empower women by generating employment opportunities, one official said.
Currently, 2.6 lakh women from 1,199 women SHGs are engaged in sustainable pisciculture, which has been taken up over an area of 520 hectares.
“Considering that pisciculture is a highly profitable business, we have taken the panchayat tank on lease for a period of five years from 2022. The lease amount was Rs 12,200. The district administration helped us to get quality fingerlings of popular breeds and also helped us get subsidies. We have started earning profit from the panchayat pond,” Samal told The Indian Express.
Under the initiative, SHG members are in a supervisory role, overseeing the feeding of the fish, monitoring their growth and eventually selling them in the local market. But they also generate employment opportunities for others by engaging men from the local village for many of the tasks.
Around 4-5 metric tonnes of fish are produced in a tank of one hectare of land annually, which helps the SHGs to earn over Rs 3 lakh every year, one official from the fisheries department said.
The initiative also helps regenerate derelict panchayat tanks, one official said, adding that the fisheries department is now planning to expand the initiative to other districts.
According to Suryawanshi, the initiative not only helps meet rising demand for fish but also helps make families get a better income.
“Fisheries is one of the important sectors in Odisha. Women have always been a very important part of this economy… We thought this would help families generate income and steer them towards upliftment,” he said.
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