Representatives of fishing communities from Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri and Dakshin Dinajpur districts held a consultation for two days in Siliguri to consider their livelihood issues and draw a strategy action plan to protect fish workers livelihood rights in North Bengal. They were joined by Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum (DMF) leaders Pradip Chatterjee, Milan Das and Ambia Hossain alongwith Office Bearers of DISHA Sasanka Dev, Shyamalendu Biswas and Supratim Lahiri. The meeting was convened by Anirban Choudhury, Convener of UMF. The meeting started with welcoming address by Anirban Choudhury followed by self-introduction of participants. Pradip Chatterjee spoke about the need to get organised and raise united voice to ‘Save Water, Save Fish and Save Fisher People’. Fishing communities can challenge the age old deprivation and neglect only by getting themselves organised he said. He mentioned the need for national policy on inland fisheries that would link up with national water policy and prevail over all development planning that affect water bodies, fish resources and livelihood of fishing communities. He also presented a brief description of the struggles and achievements of DMF and the newly formed National Platform for Small Scale Fish Workers (Inland). He urged upon the fishing community representatives to work hard for a united organisation of fishing communities in North Bengal which will link up with DMF and the National Platform and muster formidable strength. The consultation, held on 18th and 19th August 2018, first took stock of the situation with fish workers’ livelihood in North Bengal. One after another, the fish workers’ representatives, came up with annals of deprivation and neglect of a community that supplies the society with cheap and widely available animal protein in the form of fish, a community that cares for water and tries to protect water bodies as repositories of fish resources. Stories of their loss of livelihood intertwined with that of extinction of rivers and wetlands due to pollution, water diversion and encroachments. They lamented indiscriminate interventions on watersheds through constructions of roads, railways, buildings that lacerated both catchment and drainage channels resulting in intermittent overflowing and drying of water bodies. They also raised their concern about eschewing lease rents of both public and private water bodies that are making it impossible for small scale fish farmers to access those resources. They spoke about increasing usurpation of water bodies by a new breed of entrepreneurs who are taking over not only private water bodies by paying higher lease rents but also public water bodies through open bidding system introduced by the government. They also mentioned urgent need of reforming primary fisheries cooperatives, most of which are either non-functional or have been usurped by people with vested interest. Last but not the least, they unanimously complained about rampant malpractices in distribution of Government assistance for fish workers and raised burning need for transparency. In depth interactions and discussions among participants on important livelihood issues of fish workers led to an overarching conclusion – The root cause of the present day wretched condition of fishing communities lies in the lack of their rights on water. The meeting resolved to raise the following demands – Give titles of water bodies to fishers and fish farmers; – Provide security of tenure to fish farmers on private water bodies – stop eviction, introduce regulated increment of rent; – Stop auctioning of water bodies – livelihood of fishing communities cannot be auctioned; – Prohibit entrepreneurs from taking over water bodies used by fish farmers; – Provide each fish worker with government Identity Card; – Provide each fish workers with comprehensive social security; – Stop malpractices in distribution of government assistance – maintain full transparency. The fishing community representatives decided to convene district level meetings of fishing communities to prepare district level charter of demands through interactions with more fishers, fish farmers and fish vendors. They also decided to collect more memberships and submit memorandum of demands to district authorities.