Factors Contributing for Vulnerability on Livelihood of Fishers of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra State, India

Aims: The present study was carried out to investigate the impact of vulnerability on livelihood of fishers of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra state of India.

Study Design: For this study interview schedule was used to collect the fisher information.

Place and Duration of Study: In present study, the data were collected from the fishers of the three fishing villages of Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra during the year 2019-2020.

Methodology: The data were randomly collected from 64 fisher by using questionnaire in the Google form and interview schedule. The vulnerability variables considered in this study are categorised as natural shocks like cyclones, heavy rain, environmental changes; personal factors like illness, sea accidents, sudden death, social conflicts and seasonality includes decline in fish catches, unpredictable price fall and non-availability of markets. The opinions of respondents with respect to vulnerability factors were recorded on the basis of three categories i.e. high impact, medium impact and low impact. The descriptive statistics i.e. percentage and frequency analysis was used to represent the results.

Results: The overall results of vulnerability indicated that the natural shocks factors like cyclones, heavy rain, environmental changes and personal factors like illness, sea accidents, sudden death, social conflicts have high impact on more than 90% respondents; while seasonality factors like decline in fish catches, unpredictable price fall and non-availability of markets have high impact on livelihood of about 70% fishers respondents.

Conclusion: The respondents reported that the various factors of vulnerability have direct impact on livelihood of fishers and ultimately socioeconomic conditions of the fishers.