To organise, to form a union, to become an alliance, is a fundamental of human social behaviour. Farming is one of the earliest examples of sustained collective livelihood. This missive relates some early exciting experiences of associations of farmers that are emerging from amongst tribal communities, which constitute some of the most disadvantaged in India, and the work that these organisations and other partners have made towards poverty alleviation through support for aquaculture.

The three State-level Workshops were held in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa in October 2002. The aim and objectives of the workshops were to contribute to “giving people a voice” in policy-making processes that have an impact on their livelihoods, to understand a process for transacting institutional and policy change, to provide feedback on case studies and to review emerging “indicators of change” and provide input into the subsequent Stakeholders Workshop.

This paper is about a process and practice which is bringing representatives of tribal communities in three Indian states together with district, state and national government officials, around the issue of aquaculture services provision. The project comprises a series of visits, fieldwork, workshops, case studies, a consensus-building process, literature research and documentation. Among its aims are building shared understandings of government services provision among recipients, implementers and policy-makers, and facilitating an equitable dialogue towards policy change.

The workshop objectives were to understand a process for transacting institutional and policy change, provide feedback to “finalise” six case studies which document experiences of rural aquaculture services provision from the perspectives of representative recipient and provider groups, to review emerging “indicators of progress” to feed into a consensus-building process and to provide input into a subsequent Policy Review Workshop. It contributed to giving people a voice in policy-making processes that have an impact on their livelihoods.

There are many “stakeholders” involved in the development of schemes to support tribal people to undertake aquaculture. These should include tribal people, researchers, policy-makers and others. Stakeholders often face a situation in which different people have conflicting views. Such differences can be over the appropriate goals of a scheme, the types of outcomes, who should be helped and in what way, or the merit and worth of particular activities.