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Hungry for Justice: Social Mobilization on the Right to Food in India
Author(s) -
Hertel Shareen
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/dech.12144
Subject(s) - grassroots , right to food , government (linguistics) , human rights , resource mobilization , economic justice , social justice , social movement , mobilization , political science , civil society , action (physics) , public administration , sociology , law and economics , law , food security , quantum mechanics , biology , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , physics , politics , agriculture
This article explores the potential and limits of contemporary economic rights‐based social activism by analysing an ongoing ‘Right to Food Campaign’ in India. While social movement theory often positions radical and reform strategies as alternatives, the RTF campaign has adopted a hybrid strategy: it has made a radical legal demand that the right to food be recognized as intrinsic to the right to life, while seeking implementation of this right through reform of existing government feeding programmes. The campaign's dual strategy reflects two distinct logics of human rights: a logic of non‐derogable rights that are immediately actionable (such as the right to life) and a logic of progressive implementation of rights that can only be realized fully over time (such as economic rights). This article draws on original data to demonstrate that the campaign's radical legal demands framed around the non‐derogable right to life have come closer to fulfilment than its reformist demands around progressive implementation. The RTF campaign's relative success in galvanizing legal action on hunger is tempered by ongoing challenges in sustaining grassroots‐level mobilization and influencing public policy implementation.