On a rainy day in August, when the availability of fisheries resources is high in the Teesta river here, Bimal Das returned from a four-hour fishing trip with only three kg of fish. While sorting the fish from the ice slabs, a dejected Das contemplated quitting fishing to looking for jobs elsewhere. All across the northern part of the Indian state of West Bengal, fishers like Das are faced with the dire crisis of fish scarcity, pushing them out of inland capture fisheries.

The freshwater aquatic ecosystem of the northern region of the state, once a biodiversity ‘hot spot’, is now threatened by multiple anthropogenic activities. Such threats not only impact the freshwater biodiversity and fish availability but also livelihood viability of the small-scale fishers. Considering cases from riverine ecosystems in four northern districts of West Bengal, a study tried to understand the ecological, social and political drivers of the vulnerability of small-scale fishers engaged in inland capture fisheries.