Inside Makeshift Fish Markets, While The Community Awaits Permanent Ones

On 27th January 2022, under Omprakash Raikwar, District President of the Fishermen's Society, the people of the fishermen's community had protested by kneeling in front of the Sehore collectorate. Remembering that day, he says, "We hoped that the administration would understand our helplessness. We are just demanding a market to earn two rotis with dignity.” Their demands were simple: build a permanent fish market and remove the encroachment from the existing market. After the sit-in protests, the administration removed the encroachments. 

In the same year and some months after the protest, the then Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced in Budhni a ₹20-crore plan to modernise fish retail across Madhya Pradesh. This included four hundred “Smart Fish Parlours”, each costing ₹5 lakh, that would offer ice-cooled displays, deep freezers, electric cutters, and peeling machines—an upgrade meant to guarantee hygienic fish to urban consumers while lifting incomes for small sellers.

Three years later, not a single parlour has been built in Sehore, the very district where the scheme was unveiled. The MLA and the municipal council president promised to help, yet decades later, these simple demands are still unmet. The city’s development plan has a new vegetable market, which is under construction, but the fish market is out of reach.

Omprakash says, "Because the income is low… people leave their traditional work and do labour work. No government scheme is reaching the fisher community either."

Ground Report visited the market to understand the state of the fishing community in the district.

For decades, Machli Bridge—“machli” meaning “fish” in Hindi—has stretched across Sehore’s C2 drain, its edges lined with meat and fish shops. Vegetarian residents refuse to cross it, while buyers wrap cloths around their noses before taking the route. Beneath them, the drain is so clogged with garbage and dirt that its stench can give anyone a headache. 

Beyond the bridge, two narrow lanes hold ten to fifteen small chicken-and-mutton shops, all run by members of the Muslim community. The shop itself endures the odour for up to ten hours a day. 

Between these lanes stands a 20-by-15-foot platform, roofed with a tin shed installed by the municipality. Here, fish sellers from the Kewat, Manjhi, and Bhoi communities set up shops, only four or five at a time. However, there are more than three hundred households in Sehore’s Kewat, Manjhi, and Bhoi communities and the wider Dhimar, Bhoi, Kahar, Kahra, Dhivar, Mallah, Navada, Turha, Kewat, Keer, Britia, Singhahara, Jalari, and Jalaranlu castes, who have fished for generations. They carry palanquins, grow water chestnuts and lotus seeds, fill water, and row in boats. 

One such is 42-year-old Anil Raikwar, who sets up his “Aman Fish Shop”. “There is already a lot of dirt here because of the drain, and we have to spend the whole day amidst the stench,” Anil says. “People throw the leftover pieces of meat and fish in the drain, which increases the stench.”

At seven each morning, Raikwar’s day begins. While he and his brother Golu set out tarpaulins beneath the tin shed beside Machli Bridge, Anil’s two sons cycle ten kilometres to Jamunia Pond to haul in the family’s first catch. By the time the boys return, the plastic sheet already glistens with water, and the first flies have made their way onto eight or ten fish, some half-cut, lying in a neat row; Golu keeps a bucket close, splashing the fish again and again, only for the flies to settle back moments later. 

The Raikwars are a family of 10, and by selling 10-15 kg of fish daily, they can save approximately 400-500 INR. The shed itself—a 20-by-15-foot platform roofed by the city administration—turns hot in June. Beneath the corrugated tin, the brothers crouch in the rising heat, knowing the fish must be sold before it is spoiled in the summer air. “The fish we catch has to be sold within the day,” Anil says.

“The fish gets spoilt in the heat and cannot be stored for the next day. In such a situation, we sell the fish at a low price in the evening so that we do not have to throw away the goods.”

“The administration is not paying any attention to the demands of the fishermen community,” Anil says, noting that most fishers must travel to Bhopal or beyond to sell their catch.

Nagar Palika (Municipal Council) president Prince Rathore said,

“At present, a shed has been built and given to the fishermen, but this place is not enough. We are looking for another place where more fishermen can do their business.” 

In another scheme, the Fisherman Credit Card Scheme, modelled on Kisan Credit Cards, offered working capital for nets, ice, and transport. “The applications of most people are still stuck in the banks,” Omprakash says. Fellow fish worker Anil Raikwar is still waiting for approval more than a year after filing.

There are 2,232,822 fishermen in Madhya Pradesh, and 135,646 fishermen's credit cards have been approved in the state as of 2024, i.e., only 6.07% of all fishermen. Above that, there is no clear information about how many of these cards have been issued.

“No scheme is reaching the fishermen,” Omprakash says. He even doubts the “seriousness” of these announcements. He wants a systematic fish market to accommodate at least 50-60 fishermen who can set up their shops.

Across Madhya Pradesh, fishing is anything but a niche trade. The state’s Fisheries Department counts 95,752 registered fishermen’s cooperatives managing 4.40 lakh hectares of water bodies. Last year alone, those ponds, tanks, and reservoirs yielded 3.82 lakh metric tonnes of fish—an 11.74 percent jump over 2022-23. 

In the Sehore district, 3,827 hectares of ponds and reservoirs produce about 2,695 metric tonnes of inland fish (freshwater fish) annually. 

Condition of Budhni

Under the flyover, near Bengali Colony, Budhni’s fish market sits draped in green tarpaulin. These makeshift curtains came up after Chief Minister Mohan Yadav announced a ban on the open display of meat and fish. The shops face the road, and the green cloth ensures that the fish are not visible to any passerby. Here, too, the scenes are quite similar to Sehore’s fish market. Though the stench was relatively less.

Dulal Rajvanshi has worked here for 23 years. “We have put up these curtains outside our shops so that no one has any problem with our work. But this is affecting our income,” he says. On good days before the order, Dulal made ₹1,000–1,200. Now, he counts himself fortunate if he reaches ₹600. “In business”, he adds with a resigned shrug, “only what is visible sells.” Rajvanshi accuses the government of discrimination. He said that the fishermen don’t get the benefits of the government, but they suffer the consequences of such announcements.

This fish market built under the flyover already looks cut off from the city. There are 10-12 fish sellers here. They are open on a platform; four to five fish sellers keep different fish for display. Next to it, there is an electronic scale on which the fish are sold according to their weight. There is a bulb hanging to provide limited or necessary light. Some meat sellers' shops are also in the narrow lane next to it. Filth is scattered everywhere. 

The fish sellers continuously splash water, but due to a lack of proper drainage, it's wet around the platform and often muddy. Apart from electronic weighing scales and QR codes for payment, no modern equipment is visible at these shops.

Most stall-holders echo the same wish as Sehore’s fishermen: if the administration built a proper, clean marketplace—somewhere the public could step in without a cloth on their noses—they would sell more. Until then, Budhni’s fishermen remain half-hidden, waiting for customers willing to peer past the green veils.

“It’s hard to call this inclusive development,” says fisheries cooperative member Anil Raikwar, watching customers hesitate at a muddy stall. “We are not doing any such work that we should be seen as criminals. People eat fish, and that is why we sell it. The administration will decide where and in what condition to sell it.”

The fishermen still work in markets tucked under flyovers or behind tarpaulin curtains, with the stench. What the community wants is simple: a purpose-built, hygienic marketplace—running water, drainage, waste pickup, perhaps cold storage—to match the state’s ambition for ever-higher production.

Edited by Rajeev Tyagi

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