Understanding the State: Right to Food Campaign in India

Abstract

Marginalized peoples’ struggle for subsistence rights in the neoliberal era has theoretical implications for understanding the role of the state in a globalized world. Variations in power exercised by state institutions at the local and national level have implications for the tactics that movements adopt. We examine the Right to Food Campaign in India, an informal network of organizations and individuals across local and national levels, which targets the state for entitlement to food. Using the interim orders of the Supreme Court in 2001, the campaign converted welfare initiatives for children into legal entitlements for access to nutritious food by holding state officials accountable at the local level; it also worked towards the enactment of the National Food Security Act of 2013. The campaign impacts local, national and global institutions, such as the WTO which expressed its disagreement with welfare provisions in the NFSA. Our analysis has three main implications. First, we note that the state is not a monolithic whole but comprises institutions at national and subnational levels (country, state, county or district, and village), all of which may not always work towards the same goal. Second, we argue that the state’s implementation of neoliberal policies that deny subsistence rights of the poor results in localized resistances that are linked to national and global protests. Third, a temporal lens on local and national politics is important to understanding the dynamics between local struggles and state institutions.