Iyengar, Shalini

Community governance organizations known as khotis in the coastal and marine fisheries of Bengal have long been critical to the management and governance of these fisheries. Animated by a communitarian ethos, these collectives have developed elaborate mechanisms for regulating and stewarding resources which are able to adapt to the dynamism of the coast. Traditionally, these collectives drew upon contributions from their members for their functioning including large celebrations that continue to mark the end of the winter fishing season on the Bengal coast. These collectives, however, have not remained distant from the state. Over the last several decades, state authorities in Bengal have recognized these collectives through a variety of institutional forms, most notably that of the cooperative. This recognition has made these collectives a critical node for state support to fisheries in the state. I draw upon historically-informed ethnographic work in two fisher collectives in Bengal to trace the impact of this transition from khoti to cooperative for the functioning of community governance institutions. When and why have fishers chosen to create cooperatives and how has that influenced practices of giving within the community? To what extent has this translated into different relationships with the coastal commons?