Fishery industry offers a big opportunity for exploitation of fishery resources of the coastal as well as inland waters. Despite a very high potential of fishery sector, the fishermen continued to remain socio-economically down trodden. They are mostly exploited by the middlemen and suffer a lot on account of their illiteracy, poor know how and technical inaptness. Institutional safeguards would be very effective against such exploitations. Fishery cooperatives are appropriate means to get rid of most of the demerits of fishing sector. They have enough potential to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the fishers. In fact, fishery co-operatives are directly involved in improving fishermen socially, physically and economically. This multidirectional influence is supposed to give a boost to rural development. Fishery cooperatives are instrumental not only in increasing fish production but also in amelioration of social and economic status of fishermen. They are amply able to generate employment opportunities in different sectors of fishery industry like, fish processing, fish drying and fish curing, fish storage, fish canning, fish transport and proper marketing of fish and their by-products etc. fish consumers are also directly benefitted from these societies as they easily get fresh fish at a fairly reasonable prices. No doubt, fisheries co-operative societies have a definite role to play in achieving the targets of ‘NEEL KRANTI’ (Blue Revolution) in India.
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