Primers on the right to food	Lively and accessible booklets (in English and Hindi) on various aspects of the right to food: Supreme Court orders; the Employment Guarantee Act; mid-day meals; the Integrated Child Development Services; and more.
Key documents on the Employment Guarantee Act (EGA)	Including the full text of the Act, the Operational Guidelines, a "Primer" on EGA, powerpoint presentations on EGA, a compendium of articles, and so on.
Supreme Court orders	Full text of the interim orders of the Supreme Court in "PUCL vs Union of India and Others" (Civil Writ Petition 196 of 2001).
Reports of the Commissioners of the Supreme Court	Six major reports on the implementation of Supreme Court orders, and the Commissioners' recommendations for further action.
Research tools	User-friendly material for field surveys on the right to food, including sample questionnaires, guidelines for investigators, and survey reports.
Campaign material	A wealth of campaign resources such as posters, pamphlets, booklets, leaflets, plays, songs. Feel free to download, print, edit, cut, paste, translate, whatever - there is no copyright.
Campaign updates	Regular updates on activities of the campaign around the country.
Articles on the right to food	Hundreds of recent articles (2001 onwards) on various aspects of the right to food: employment guarantee, mid-day meals, the public distribution system, the Integrated Child Development Services, etc.

CPI(ML) NREG Activist Killed in Jharkhand

On 7 June, Kameshwar Yadav, a Block Committee member of CPI(ML) in Giridih, Jharkhand, was shot dead. Comrade Kameshwar had spent the whole day implementing CPI(ML)'s call for a bandh in protest against hike in oil prices, and was on his way home at 7.30 pm when he was attacked. He struggled with his assailants before he was eventually murdered. He is survived by his wife and three young children.

Comrade Kameshwar had been active in exposing the corrupt role of contractors and middlemen in implementation of NREGS. He had relentlessly highlighted a host of irregularities in the implementation of NREGS, and mobilised the rural labourers and job-seekers to demand proper implementation. He had also been exposing several instances of corruption in the Public Distribution System (PDS), and had led several struggles on this issue.

Comrade Kameshwar had no personal enemies and was a dedicated and well-loved activist in his village – Khatauri, of Deori Block in Giridih district. His murder was no random killing. Quite clearly, the middlemen and contractors who felt threatened by his campaign for proper implementation of NREGS are implicated in his murder.

Comrade Kameshwar's murder comes on the heels of the murder of another NREG activist Lalit Mehta in Palamu district of Jharkhand. There have also been several recent murders of rural activists in Giridih itself. Last month, Rajinder Das, a dalit activist of CPI(ML) at Rajdhanwar, Giridih, who had been at the forefront of the struggle against grabbing of land allocated to dalits by local land mafia, was killed. Two months back, another dalit CPI(ML) activist Munshi Tori had been killed. In these two cases, the perpetrators of the murder – leaders of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Babulal Marandi's party) – have been named in the FIR, yet they are yet to be arrested.

CPI(ML) condemns the continuing spate of assassinations of political grassroots activists in Jharkhand, and demands that arrest and exemplary punishment for the killers, whose identity is well known. The CPI(ML) will conduct a campaign with a series of protest programmes from 16-25 June culminating in a Giridih March on 25 June demanding justice for Kameshwar Yadav.

Murder of NREGA activist in Palamau

We are deeply disturbed by the recent murder of Lalit Kumar Mehta, member of Vikas Sahyog Kendra (Palamau District), who was brutally killed on 14 May 2008 as he was returning from Daltonganj to Chhattarpur on a motorcycle.

The circumstances of this murder are disturbing. Lalit (aged 36), an active member of the right to food campaign and Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, has been working in this area for more than 15 years on issues related to the right to food and the right to work. He was a very gentle person and his work was widely appreciated. However he was also fearless in exposing corruption and exploitation, and often came in the way of vested interests.

At the time of this incident, Lalit was helping a team of volunteers from Delhi and elsewhere to conduct a social audit of NREGA works in Chainpur and Chhattarpur Blocks of Palamau District. Attempts had already been made to dissuade the team from conducting this investigation, particularly in Chainpur Block. Is it a coincidence that Lalit was murdered just one day after the investigation began?

If this murder was an act of intimidation, it did not succeed. Friends and supporters from all over Jharkhand gathered at Vikas Sahyog Kendra on 17 May. They unanimously resolved to continue the campaign against corruption and exploitation in this area.

A public hearing of NREGA will be held in Chhattarpur on 26 May. We appeal to all those who stand in solidarity with Lalit and his work to participate in this event.

Our immediate demands: (1) CBI enquiry into this incident; (2) strict action on all the complaints and irregularities emerging from this social audit of NREGA.

Balram (Right to Food Campaign), Jean Drèze (Allahabad University), Jawahar (Vikas Sahyog Kendra), Meghnath (Akhra, Ranchi), Vinoy Ohdar (ActionAid) and others including all members of Gram Swaraj Abhiyan.

Local contact: 06566-290013 (Vikas Sahyog Kendra) or rozgar@gmail.com