Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is the only

major national programme that addresses the health and

nutrition needs of children under the age of six. It seeks

to provide young children with an integrated package of

services, including supplementary nutrition, health care

and pre-school education. Since the needs of a young

child cannot be addressed in isolation from those of his

or her mother, the programme also extends to

adolescent girls, pregnant women and nursing mothers.

ICDS services are provided through a vast network of

ICDS centres, better known as "Anganwadis".

This section of the website presents a range of action-

oriented documents on ICDS, including a reader-friendly

"primer", the "FOCUS report" on children under six,

Supreme Court orders, extracts from Commissioners'

reports, government documents, research articles,

survey findings, and much more. The following may be

particularly useful: n 28 November 2001, the Supreme

Court directed state governments to introduce cooked

mid-day meals in all government and government-

assisted primary schools within six months (see legal

action section for further details). This

landmark order was one of the first achievements of the

right to food campaign. The order was followed by

organised public pressure for the introduction of cooked

mid-day meals in primary schools, e.g. in the form of a

country-wide "day of action on mid-day meals" in April

2002.

In response to this pressure, and to the court orders, all

state governments have initiated mid-day meal

programmes. Today, with more than 100 million children

covered, India���s mid-day meal programme is by far

the largest nutrition programme in the world.

The quality of mid-day meals, however, varies a great

deal between different states. Some states, notably in

southern India, have reasonably good mid-day meal

programmes. Others initially introduced ramshackle mid-

day meals on a shoestring budget, mainly to appease the

Supreme Court. The campaign focuses not only on the

implementation of Supreme Court orders but also on

quality issues.

One of the long-standing demands of the right to food

campaign (and of the labour movement in India) is a

national "employment guarantee act". This demand was

partially met in mid-2005 with the enactment of the

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA

2005). Under this Act, any adult willing to do casual

labour at the minimum wage is entitled to employment

on local public works within 15 days, subject to a limit of

100 days per household per year.

The NREGA is a landmark in the history of social security

legislation in India - or indeed, anywhere in the world -

and promises to be a major tool in the struggle to secure

the right to food. However, the path to the NREGA has

been far from smooth. It required sustained campaigning

on the ground, lobbying with political parties, and

overcoming active opposition from votaries of the

"minimal state" (see the archives).

Since the enactment of the NREGA, a wide range of

organisations across the country have been struggling to

ensure that people are able to claim their entitlements

under the Act. This section presents reports of these

activities as well as a range of tools for further action.

Regular "updates" on NREGA-related activities can be

found in the updates page (if you would like to receive

these updates by email please send a line to rozgar@gmail.com).

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).