India, as one of the world’s largest fish producers, plays a crucial role in the global fisheries industry, contributing 7.58 percent of the total global production. The fisheries and aquaculture sectors are not only vital to the country’s economy but also essential for ensuring food security, nutrition, and employment for millions. With a vast coastline and extensive inland water resources, India has developed a strong fisheries sector that caters to both domestic consumption and export demands, driving growth in rural areas and providing sustainable livelihoods.

Inland fisheries, in particular, offer significant livelihood opportunities to poor and marginalized farmers across the country. These fisheries utilize diverse water resources, including rivers, reservoirs, floodplain wetlands, lakes, derelict water bodies, and tanks, which are spread across India.

India is one of the world’s largest fish producers, accounting for 7.58 per cent of global production. Fisheries and aquaculture continue to be a major source of food, nutrition, income, and livelihood for millions of people. Inland fisheries provide livelihood options to a large number of poor farmers in India. Inland fisheries and comprise water resources like rivers, reservoirs, floodplain wetlands, lakes, derelict water bodies and tanks. The economy of Bundelkhand region is primarily agrarian and the prevailing conditions suggest the need to make agriculture including fisheries more remunerative, and the region has a number of small and large water bodies, which provided better fisheries and aquaculture prospects. All these water bodies, reservoirs and rivers are rich in fish fauna.

The high mortality of fish due to disease was found to be main problem followed by non-availability of quality fish seeds along with the lack of awareness about stocking density and proper feeding for fishes in different strata of water bodies. Training related to appropriate fish feed preparation should be imparted to the inland fish farmers for proper growth of fish fingerlings. Need based training needs to be provided to the inland fish farmers to develop skills in fish production. Therefore, skilled human resources in the field of fisheries are needed to fulfill the aspirations of the fish farmers in the Bundelkhand region. With this background, the College of Fisheries has been established at Datia in Madhya Pradesh which is situated at Noner about 15 km from Datia along the Shivpuri highway in 200 acres of land under Rani Lakshmi Bai Central Agricultural University, Jhansi to meet the needs of quality education, research, extension and training in the field of fishery science.