This year the theme of the Consumer Rights Day was the call to stop marketing of unhealthy food for children. The production and supply of what has been called junk food worldwide is known to be a health hazard and some recent findings have given fresh evidence of it. According to the Consumer International, about 22 million children of the world aged below five are overweight or obese. Junk food has been listed as the cause of obesity among grown up people as well and a predisposing factor in the growing spread of diabetes. The corporatisation of food items has not proved beneficial to the world in any way. Corporate globalisation has strengthened these enterprises so that the fight for health-giving food is a fight against the giant food companies which have firmly entrenched themselves in modern lifestyle. In this country too seminars highlighting the need for protection of consumers’ interests were held and resolutions adopted. These are of course routine annual exercises. Junk food is getting popular in this country also, especially among the better-off sections and we have reason to beware before consumption of these packaged and preserved food items is universalised. But in our case the problem is cruder than that and consumers are more helpless than in most other countries. The legal cover for guarding their interest is non-existent or weak and, secondly, consumers themselves are not keenly aware of their own rights. Also, consumers could not organise themselves into effective bodies to resist exploitation and to provide a balancing factor in the market. Consumers are cheated in different ways and in different fields of transaction. There is no protection for them when they go to buy their daily necessaries from the market, or consumer goods or seek medical treatment. Overpricing and supply of substandard goods are the common malpractices. And there are also the more sinister practices which once thrived, and are perhaps still thriving unchecked. Formalin in milk and fish, DDT in dry fish, urea in popped rice, toxic chemicals in fruits to ripen them quicker — the list is a long one. In any advanced country this would have been unthinkable. But we had almost learnt to live with these murderous rackets. Mobilisation of the mobile courts may have made a dent in the problem temporarily but mobile court with its summary decision is not a normal phenomenon. The drive against adulteration and poisoning of food-items has to be an ongoing function and not a haphazard, casual affair. We would also want the manufacturers and suppliers of food-items and consumer goods not to act from fear but from a sense of responsibility. We would expect formation of numerous consumer welfare bodies at different levels to raise popular awareness and build up resistance against mala fide acts.