Plans are afoot to weed out the role of middlemen in marketing of fishes produced in Bihar to ensure that fishermen get their due from direct sales. To start with, the Bihar Fish Cooperative Federation will be set up at the state-level, which will work as the apex body of all the fishermen’s societies. “The registration process of the federation is in the final stage and a formal announcement will be made soon. The secretary of the animal and fish resources department will be its ex officio chairperson, while the fisheries director will be its managing director,” an official in the state fisheries directorate told The Telegraph. The federation will also have representatives from the cooperative, agriculture, industry and finance departments and all the heads of the divisional level fishermen’s societies, which too will be set up soon, will be its members. The fishermen’s societies function at the block-level only and of 534 blocks of Bihar, these function in 462 blocks with 4.1 lakh fishermen as their members. “Once the state-level federation and the divisional-level societies get functional, the state government will get a channel to help fish farmers marketing their products directly to customers,” said the official. Majority of the fish farmers now sell their products to middlemen, who in turn, sell the fishes to wholesalers from where it reaches the markets. In this process, around 15 to 20 per cent of the actual fish price is pocketed by the middlemen and wholesalers. Also, another practice is common in the hinterlands – under which fishermen are asked to provide 1kg additional fish for every 5kg of fish purchased by middlemen. “Once we have the new system in place, the federation will help farmers bring their products to the market and they will just have to pay for the transportation. In the long run, we intend to set up fish outlets across the state using which fishermen can supply their products directly to these outlets at government rates,” said the official. The official said the new system will also help the department assess the fish production in a better manner because the data collected from the markets at present make the basis on which fish production is estimated. Bihar produces 5.87 lakh metric tonnes of fish now.