CIFRI Awards
Dr. B.K,Director,CIFRi along with Prof. Debasis Bhattacharya, Principal, PSB,Visva Bharati distributed fisheries inputs to the members of fifteen Self Help groups(SHGs) with the objective to improve the livelihoods of the populace of marginalized community of one of the aspirational district of West Bengal.
The district Birbhum, situated in the state of West Bengal is predominantly a tribal populated also comes under the aspirational district category. Almost 44.21 per cent of the total land area in Birbhum has been declared as Scheduled area and 29.5% of the populations belong to the scheduled castes and 6.7% to the scheduled tribes. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in India has resulted in emergency lockdown in the country for more than two months caused sharp declines demand and supply which has severely affected the life and livelihoods of populace of marginalized community. Birbhum district is having plenty of rainfed water bodies. To provide alternative livelihood support and also to alleviate the sufferings of the people, under the leadership of Dr. B. K. Das, Director, ICAR-CIFRI a programme was organized in collaboration with Rathindra Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Visva Bharati to distribute necessary items like fish feed, seeds, lime etc to the people of SC and ST community of Birbhum district to promote inland fisheries as a alternate source of livelihoods. A total of 149 people of fifteen Self help Groups (72 were tribal and 77 were SC people) from three different blocks of Birbhum district would be benefitted by this initiative. The Director, ICAR-CIFRI had a long discussion with the fishers’ representatives for the improvement of fisheries in this area and as per the plan 8 tonnes fish feed, 700kg fish seeds and 6tonnes lime was distributed among the beneficiaries targeting 32 tonnes additional production in that area. Vegetable seeds were also distributed to the ST/SC beneficiaries and the improved variety seeds were provided by the ICAR-CRIJAF under STC and SCSP subplan.
The programme was coordinated by Dr. Aparna Roy, Scientist, Dr. P.K Parida, Dr. Lianthumluia, Scientist, Dr. Sanjay Bhowmick CTO. Effort was taken to document the activities by Sri Sujit Chowdhury, ACTO and Sri Manabendra Roy, TO. To assess the impact of the programme in future the baseline socio-economic information was collected by Shri. Abhishek Saha, Technical Assistant and Ms. Sangeeta Chakraborty, Technical Assistant of the institute.
