Rights as Logistics: Notes on the Right to Food and Food Retail Liberalization in India

Abstract

This chapter examines right-to-food jurisprudence and activism in India. When Indian jurists and policymakers recognized a right to food, they were mindful of rights critique and did not articulate a narrow juridical entitlement that an individual, with sufficient resources, could attempt to vindicate only in court. Instead, they crafted a range of directives for regulators to translate the right to food from legal enactment to effective social action through the creation of new food supply chains governed by technology-enabled logistics and audit practices. In a volume devoted to the future of social and economic rights, we explore the double-edged potential of such techniques designed to narrow the gap between aspiration and implementation. In so doing, we illustrate how legal entitlements meant to put a break on market processes simultaneously illuminate ongoing struggles over how food markets should be constituted as new economic actors vie with indigenous capital for ownership and control.

Keywords: Social and Economic Rights; Right to Food; India; Logistics; Transparency; Supermarkets