The Biobrio 13(1 & 2), 2026

A comprehensive survey of the demography, socio-economic and health status of the fishermen community along the Gangetic stretch from Fatuha to Gaighat, Patna District, Bihar, India

Aditya Ranjan, Aryan Raj & Dileep Kumar

ABSTRACT:

It's undeniable that fishermen from India's Gangetic plain are among the poorest working populations - however, comprehensive, site-specific household data that captures their nutritional, social, health, and economic profile has hitherto been unavailable in Bihar, at the Fatuha-Gaighat corridor of River Ganga in Patna district. This paper presents a baseline crosssectional, mixed-methods survey that collected data from 150 fishing households through a survey that used a structured questionnaire with 128 questions. Participants totalled 1,065, and the sample consisted of 4 major sub-castes involved in fishing: Nishad (38.7%), Mallah (28.0%), Bind (18.7%), and Kevat (9.3%). The average family size was 7.1, the dependency ratio is 0.83, and there were only 836 women for every 1,000 men in the population. Community literacy was low (58.3% of the population could read and write; for men, it was 69.8%, and for women, it was 45.0%), and the average monthly household income was 8,430. About 82.4% of families lived in poverty, with the highest income quintile earning 4.3 times the income of the lowest quintile. Income was extremely volatile through the seasons, from a high of 12,450 during the monsoons to a low of 3,800 in the dry season. Nearly 78.4% of households had experienced a waterborne disease in their lifetime; for children under five years, the rate of overall acute malnutrition was as high as 43.0%, which is 3 times the international threshold of 15%. The infant mortality rate was as high as 48 per 1,000 live births, which is almost 10 higher than the state average of 38. Awareness and uptake of a fisheries empowerment scheme run by the federal government (PM Matsya Sampada Yojana) were appallingly low, at only 12% and 0.5% respectively. This suggests a deeply impoverished and precarious community that relies on a degraded environment for survival, and points to an urgent need for holistic and integrated approaches in fisheries governance, nutrition and health care delivery.

Keywords:    

Ganga River fisheries; artisanal fishermen; socio-economic status; Bihar; inland fisheries; child malnutrition; occupational health; Fatuha-Gaighat; water quality; welfare schemes

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