Meeting with Small Scale Fisher Community at Mula Dam (Gyaneshwar Sagar Dam), Ahmednagar, Mahrashtra, India.

Human wellbeing is possible only by better health of wetlands, conservation of their biodiversity and sustainable livelihood use, consumption and management. Mula Dam, which is also called as Gyaneshwar Sagar Dam, is situated in Rahuri taluka of Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, India. It is one of the biggest dams in Maharashtra and was opened in 1972 for irrigation and drinking water supply. The dam feeds irrigation water to Rahuri, Newasa, Shevgaon and Pathardi taluka of Ahmednagar district and is the major source of drinking water to Ahmednagar city and surrounding. Mula Dam is an earthfill and gravity dam, made on Mula river near Rahuri. The height of the dam is about 48 meter and length is 2,856 meter. The volume content is 7,594 km3 and gross storage capacity is 736,320.00 km3. Its surface area is spanned over 53,600 km2 and Water capacity is 26 TMC. Apart from being major source of drinking and irrigation water, Mula Dam is also one of the major sources of fish and serve as livelihood support to thousands of small scale fisher families. Unfortunately the small scale fisher families are not recognised by the fisheries department of Maharashtra unless they are registered as unions or cooperatives. There is no record of fisher communities dependent on Mula Dam hence they are deprived of the benefits of government schemes. The heavy invasion of african Tilapia fish has further worsened the condition and due to decline in the diversity and catch of native fish species their income from fisheries has declined drastically and they are living in miserable conditions. The meeting with small scale fisher families of Mula Dam is primarily meant to know the critical issues challenging them and through discussions find ways and means of organising them for being able to avail the benefits given under th constitutional provisions.