Researcher Siddharth Chakravarty and anthropologist & researcher Vani Sreekanta exchange notes on their most recent visit to West Bengal post the lifting of the lockdown. They talk about complexities of food habits, food production, policies that govern the ecologically sensitive areas of the Mangroves, coastal mechanisation, gender politics and the politics of migrating fishing workers and labour.

This wide ranging conversation mulls over the role of the researcher and the engagement, intervention and impact on their subjects.

Siddharth Chakravarty is an independent researcher interested in the encounters between land-based policy-making and the biophysical properties of the oceans. He is interested in fish as they shape and are shaped by processes of territory-making, resource-sharing and trans-boundary migration.

Vani Sreekanta is an independent researcher interested in the complex enmeshment of human and more-than human systems. She also likes to think about the roles networks and collaborations play in building more representative, participatory research. She has worked in environmental conservation for nearly a decade and is currently involved with a transdisciplinary collaboratory called the Southern Collective.