The Fisheries Department in Jammu may have received huge amounts of money but there are very few fish in the water to show for it. In Jammu, you can get any variety of fish from Mumbai, West Bengal and Punjab but none of the local varieties — trouts, Labeo, small carps, and schizothorax — that Jammu at one time used to boast of.Instead of concentrating on development of fisheries, the department is busy shelling out money for construction of one building after another. The worst example is the Rs 1 crore cold storage project at Narwal in the outskirts of Jammu. Even after a couple of years, all one can see is a big ugly cement structure without any refrigerator. And of course, without any fish.‘‘What do they need cold storage facilities for when there is hardly have any fish to store,’’ asks Kuldeep Krishan, a researcher who studies the early life cycle of a fish.An underground aquarium and habitat centre at Bagh-e-Bahu in Jammu is the other ‘‘dream’’ project on which Rs 6 crore has so far been spent. It is yet to be completed. To combat the increase in construction cost over the years, the department is now eyeing more funds.Experts say that instead of investing on such projects it would have been better had the Fisheries Department utilised that money for identifying wasteland and leased it to farmers for fish cultivation.People in the state claim that whatever fish is produced in these government farms never reaches the market and instead makes its way to the kitchen of power elite, the bureaucrats and ruling party politicians.Fishy Figures COLD STORAGE PROJECT AT NARWAL, JAMMU CENTRALLY SPONSORED PROJECT, UNDERTAKEN BY NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT CORP. MONEY SPENT: RS 1 CRORE STATUS: BUILDING BUT NO FISH UNDERGROUND AQUARIUM CUM HABITAT CENTRE AT BAGH-e-BAHU MONEY SPENT: OVER RS 6 CRORE STATUS: UNDER CONSTRUCTION SINCE 1985Nisar Jan, Development Commissioner Fisheries, dismisses these allegations as baseless. Jan says that after every four or five years they sell the fish produced in these farms. But several questions arise: do the fish survive for that long a period? And if they do where is the revenue that comes from selling them? Neither Jan nor any fisheries official has an answer.Increasing pollution in the rivers coupled with mismanagement of the Fisheries Department has left nearly two lakh fishermen in dire straits. As against a rich catch of 20-25 kgs of fish daily in the early 1980s, a fisherman in J&K now has to be content with 1-2 kgs or even less.To compound the problem, the extraction of boulders and sand by the contractors from Ganderbal, Kangan, Pahalgam and Kokerbag streams has caused erosion of the soil and destruction of the natural habitat of the fish. Local Kashmiri varieties like Schizothorax, Labeo and minor carps are on the verge of extinction.‘‘The Fisheries Department has provided us with no facilities like tents, or warm clothing to guard the fish at freezing altitudes. We are lowly paid as compared to the forest guards for the same nature of work,’’ says one of the fisheries guards.The department has shown no interest in dealing with private entrepreneurs who want licences for starting fish farms. Though the centrally-sponsored Fish Farmers’ Development Agency has been there since 1982, the Fisheries Department has not entertained any application yet.Professor M K Jyoti, a well known expert in fisheries, blames the policies of the Fisheries Department for the dismal state of affairs. He blames them for not conducting any proper study before introducing Carp fish from Sri Lanka into the Dal waters. This affected the Schizothorax—an indigenous variety. ‘‘Failing to compete with Carp for food, the Schizothorax has decreased,’’ says Jyoti.In this game of increasing funds and depleting fish, it is the fishermen who have suffered. They have been forced to fish in far-flung waters but the heavy security presence at such spots has put an end to that too.
