The fishworkers' movement in India and abroad has come into its own over the last 30 years of the 20th century. This was largely the outcome of certain technology-oriented growth processes which led to increased industrialization of the sector and, in its course, to over-fishing, depletion of the oceans, indebtedness of the fishworkers and an acute threat to survival of fisheries in the wild in general and artisanal fisheries in particular. State interference in the fishery rights of local communities, intended to enhance productivity, destroyed customary practices of sustainable interaction with nature and not only led to depletion of the resource but also to destruction of local skills and knowledge systems. It led to a wild export-oriented growth of the sector which brought severe indebtedness and diminished returns for the mass of fishermen. By the end of the century, with liberalization, the state enters joint venture agreements with foreign countries and abdicates its responsibility to control the industrial trawlers from entering the inshore waters. It is the artisanal sector which has been fighting back, and ultimately the women in the artisanal sector who have been raising most sharply the questions of environmental sustainability and the protection of the lifestyles of the coastal communities.

This chapter makes visible the organizational process from its inception in the coastal villages in Kerala and Goa and pursues it in the struggles in some of the Indian states and at the national level. Different forms of organization like cooperativisation, unionisation (in the form of a social movement union), women's front, broader campaign committees and support work through an international NGO are analysed in historical perspective.

The chapter argues that forming a social movement union in the artisanal sector has been emancipatory, as it has defeated a development paradigm guided by technocratic market fascism, which was on the verge of destroying the resource base and the entire life-world of the coastal communities. Women's involvement in these struggles and in the conceptualization of a development model centered around life and livelihood instead of mere profit motive, is of central importance.

The chapter also shows how caste and religious identity are time and again asserting themselves against women's organizational processes and the class perspective of the movement. It outlines a developmental perspective of struggle and constructive work which is ecologically sustainable, participatory and culturally creative. As such, the experience of the fishworkers' unions in India and other Third World countries makes an important contribution to the understanding of trade unions in the traditional and artisanal sectors and their critique of profit and growth centered development.