Introduction
The "Right to Food Campaign" is an informal network of organisations and individuals committed to the realisation of the right to food in India. We consider that everyone has a fundamental right to be free from hunger. Our shared commitment is expressed in the campaign's foundation statement. For a brief account of the campaign's activities so far, here is an introductory note.
The campaign believes that the primary responsibility for guaranteeing basic entitlements rests with the state. This has led to a sustained focus on legislation and schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Mid-day Meals (MDM) scheme, and the Public Distribution System (PDS). This website contains a great deal of material on these laws and schemes, and on related campaign activities. (Note that while the campaign has dealt with a wide range of issues - employment guarantee, mid-day meals, the public distribution system, land rights, starvation deaths, coercive displacement, forest rights, social exclusion, among others - not all of them are well covered in this website, depending on the material available).
The main purpose of this website is to document the campaign and to share resources for campaign activities. It contains a wealth of documents such as court orders, research reports, briefing notes, guidelines for field surveys, posters and pamphlets, media reports and campaign updates. For more details, consult the site map. A list of the documents uploaded in the past month is available from our latest additions page.
The secretariat of the right to food campaign can be reached at righttofood@gmail.com. This website is maintained by volunteers on behalf of the secretariat of the campaign. It owes much to the creative work of Arudra Burra, who not only designed the site and maintained it for the first five years but also put in place a meticulous protocol for regular updating. The secretariat is most grateful for this work of love. Currently the site is maintained by Punyata Tuli, with a little help from Devika Lal and Trilochan Pandey and occasional advice from Arudra. Please send comments to web.rtf@gmail.com.
To sign the online petition for Food Security for All, Click Here
A glimpse of the website
The following is an illustrative list of the documents you can find on this website:
| 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. |
| Current Highlights | |
| 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. |
Last updated: 7 November 2009