Fish farming helps the young tribals of Malkangiri, Odisha ditch migrant work for a profitable livelihood at home, boosting fish production and fighting malnutrition to boot.
For years the sun’s golden rays fell on the almost-empty tribal hamlets of Malkangiri’s rolling hills every morning.
Sunrises were magical as ever, but strangely quiet and lonely.
A tidal wave of young folks from impoverished villages of this southernmost Odisha district had gone to cities in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to do crushing menial labour for little to no pay. People as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks dictated their hard-scrabble life as migrant workers.
Samananda Kuasi from Sindhiguga village of the Chitrakonda block knows it all too well.
But his bleak backstory – and that of many young tribal men leaving their villages to work hard as labourers in the city – ends here.
A new, beautiful story begins, thanks to the Odia love of fish, a time-honoured gastronomic tradition.
There’s fish for every occasion – the regular, curried machha tarkari cooked in homes, the mustardy machha besara gravy for weddings, the deep-fried machha bhaja served as a crispy snack in seaside shacks or the heady machha chhinchada knocked up with fish heads and veggies.
One could say fish has played its part in pulling people like Kuasi out of the cesspool of modern slavery.
Boosting fish production will revolutionise the fight against malnutrition and also reboot the rural economy.
He and his wife are now producing fish feed and selling it to farmers at a fair price.
The turnaround happened in 2020, the year of the pandemic lockdowns when the world hunkered down to ride out the COVID-19 storm.
Jobs dried out and Kuasi had to stay put in his village, more than 650km southwest of state capital Bhubaneswar.
Luckily the government stepped in. And Kuasi participated in a residential training programme held that year in Malkangiri.
It was organised by the district fishery department to open livelihood options for rural communities and check distress migration.
“It gave me hope,” Kuasi said. “I received Rs 138,300 to set up a fish feed production unit.”
He then set out to battle, armed with the money and supplies—raw material such as groundnut and mustard husk cakes, soy bean, rice bran, millets, maize, edible oil and a mineral mixture.
He also got a machine that could produce 35kg of feed an hour, along with tarpaulins, containers and bags.
The result, with hard work and perseverance, Kuasi and his wife Saibati earned around Rs 50,000 selling fish feed over the past six months.
As a migrant worker in Andhra Pradesh, he was unable to save anything from his meagre earnings and “often failed to meet household expenses.”
Those days were a distant nightmare now.
“I don’t need to travel to Andhra again,” he said.
To know Odisha’s love affair with fish, look back in time.
It is a coastal state and fishermen have been harvesting the sea since a time in the past no one can put a number to – setting out with the rising sun and returning with their fresh catch before sundown.
Plus, the abundance of rivers, streams and ponds ensured a steady supply of freshwater fish.
Landlocked and away from the sea, the village of Malkangiri may seem like a fish out of water. But actually it is not.
Several rivers cut through its hills and plains, and an array of ponds – big and small, natural and manmade – dot the landscape.
Malkangiri has huge potential in fish farming, says Narsingh Mund, district fishery officer.
But there’s a catch.
“Small-scale farmers cannot afford to buy expensive feed,” Patra said. Which in turn leads to low yield.
To tackle this challenge, the fishery department initiated the fish feed production programme.
“Field demonstrations on cost-effective fish feed formulation were organised,” said Mukesh Majhi, assistant fishery officer, Malkangiri.
Successful entrepreneurs were also encouraged to interact with fishery and technical experts to smoothly operate and manage different feed processing machineries.
“We promoted peer learning approach,” said Soumya Ranjan Majhi, engineer, Special Programme for Promotion of Integrated Farming, a flagship programme launched by the department of Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment.
NGOs joined forces, often handholding greenhorns. They are taught every step of the assembly line: production, packaging and marketing.
The Kuasi couple produced over 30 quintals of feed since setting up the unit in 2021. Initially, he priced his produce at Rs 35 a kilo.
“We sell a kg for Rs 40 now. People appreciate our quality,” said Saibati.
Fish farmers from adjoining panchayats are buying from Kuasi, rather than travelling afar to the Malkangiri district headquarters.
“We have placed an order for 20 quintals at Rs 4,000 a quintal,” said Sanjay Moharana, chief executive officer of Chasi Bhai farmer producer organisation of Korkunda.
High quality but low-priced feed is tied to a number of priorities: generate income through fish farming, stop migration of the local workforce, and check malnutrition.
“Production has gone up after we started feeding our fish adequately. We are earning more,” said Siba Dora, a fish farmer of Khairput block.
According to Kailash Chandra Patra, junior fishery technical assistant, the feed constitutes 60 percent of the operation cost. Supplementary feeding is crucial for quicker growth, which a pond’s limited natural nutrient yield can’t support.
Growing income from fish farms and allied businesses have reversed labour migration.
“The availability of adequate, affordable and quality fish feed has inspired youths to earn their livelihood through commercial pisciculture,” said Arjun Tatu, ward member, Parkandmala panchayat.
People are also encouraged to eat more fish.
A machha on the plate keeps undernourishment away. That seems to be the mantra in Malkangiri where around 44 percent of children under five are stunted, 41 percent are underweight and 19 percent wasted, according to the fifth National Family Health Survey, 2019-20. Similarly, 71 percent of women are anaemic.
Packed with high-quality protein, Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, calcium, phosphorus and a range of minerals, fish is a wonder food.
“Boosting fish production for household consumption and local markets will revolutionise the fight against malnutrition and also reboot the rural economy,” said district collector Vishal Singh.
The lead image shows a plate of fish dish, the love of which has stopped the migration of Odisha’s tribal youth (Photo courtesy Abhik Paul, Unsplash)
Abhijit Mohanty is a journalist based in Bhubaneswar.
