The Stakeholders Workshop was held on the campus of Birsa Agricultural University (BAU) in Ranchi, Jharkhand from 29-30 January 2003. The 82 participants (Appendix 1) represented state- and district-level Departments of Fisheries, GVT and other NGOs, BAU, jankars and recipients, DFID and NACA-STREAM. Discussions, reportbacks and documentation took place in Bangla, Hindi, Oriya and English.

The aim of the workshop, as with all project activities, was “contributing to ‘giving people a voice’ in policy-making processes that have an impact on their livelihoods”. The workshop objectives were:

• Understanding a process for transacting institutional and policy change.
• Providing feedback to “finalize” six case studies which document experiences of rural aquaculture services provision from the perspectives of representative recipient and provider groups.
• Reviewing and refining emerging “indicators of progress” to feed into a Consensus-building Process.
• Providing input into the subsequent Policy Review Workshop.

The Stakeholders Workshop followed three State-level Workshops in Purulia, West Bengal; Ranchi, Jharkhand and Bhubaneswar, Orissa in October 2002, which themselves followed an Inception Visit in March 2002, the “Rural Aquaculture Service Recipients and Implementers Workshop” held in May 2002 in Ranchi, Jharkhand and an August 2002 Planning Visit. Reports of these activities are available in separate documents.