Shillong: Meghalaya remains tethered to outside suppliers for its food. Despite 15 years of state-led aquaculture interventions, the region still imports nearly 40 percent of its fish from West Bengal, Assam, and Andhra Pradesh.
Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma recently pitched a new fisheries cluster project. He plans to use the Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund alongside the National Fisheries Development Board, NABARD, and private firm Uday Aqua to integrate hatcheries and cold-chain facilities. The government claims this new ecosystem will fix broken links in production and marketing.
Details remain thin. When asked for specifics on budgets, timelines, or targets, Fisheries Secretary Swapnil Tembe offered little. "At this point, the project is at concept stage only so project specific details cannot be shared," Tembe said.
State data shows a glaring gap. Annual demand hits 32,000 metric tonnes, yet local production only covers about 20,000 metric tonnes. This persists even after the Meghalaya State Aquaculture Mission launched in 2011 to bridge that exact divide. While the government boasts of building 3,230 ponds and 61 hatcheries since 2020, the reliance on imports stays stubborn.
Officials hope a new, integrated approach will finally help 1,000 local farmers. Whether this iteration succeeds where others stalled is an open question. For now, the state continues to pay outsiders to put fish on the table.
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