न्यायपथ

What Nyayapath is

Nyayapath is a registered charitable trust, formally constituted on 17 December 2002 under registration number UP12/IV/03. Its activities began a year earlier, in 2001, when a group of law and technology students in Lucknow started running socio-legal and intellectual-property awareness programmes — work that has since reached thousands of students across India.

The trust is volunteer-based. Members contribute in their own areas of expertise through independent committees and sub-committees, guided by a Central Advisory Board drawn from its honorary members. Its stated objectives include promoting legal awareness on environment, energy, biodiversity, data privacy and intellectual property; providing free legal aid to indigent people, including innovators and creative artists from indigenous communities so that they can protect their intellectual property and preserve their traditional knowledge; and promoting sustainable agriculture for holistic health and wellbeing.

Why Grihvatika was created

Two of those objectives meet in a garden. One is the preservation of traditional knowledge held by indigenous and local communities. The other is sustainable agriculture and everyday wellbeing. Grihvatika is where they are put into practice on the ground.

The project turns underused urban land into productive green space, and documents the plant knowledge that makes it work — so that access to fresh food, to medicinal and edible native plants, and to the practices that keep soil and water in place, does not depend on where a household happens to live. Gardens established under the project in Agra and Lucknow grow medicinal plants and herbs for daily household use, alongside regular workshops on rainwater harvesting, composting, waste management and sustainable living.

The plant library on this site exists for the same reason: knowledge that lives only in one person’s memory is one generation from being lost, and knowledge that is written down is much harder to take away from the community that holds it.

Governance

Grihvatika has no separate board, bank account or legal personality. It is governed by Nyayapath’s trustees, run through Nyayapath’s committee structure, and answerable to the Central Advisory Board like every other Nyayapath project. Partnerships, grants, donations and school agreements are entered into by the trust, not by the project.

Editorially, the project holds to the standard set out on the Traditional Knowledge page: knowledge is recorded as belonging to a named place and community, traditional use and scientific evidence are stated separately and never merged, sources are named, and any community may ask for its knowledge to be removed.

Team

The people who run Grihvatika are Nyayapath volunteers working through its committees — botanical review, editorial, the schools programme and community gardens. Nyayapath publishes its people at nyaypath.org/our-team, and volunteering for either the trust or this project starts on our Volunteer page.

Legal identity and contact

Legal name Nyayapath, a registered charitable trust.
Registration No. UP12/IV/03, constituted 17 December 2002.
Registered office #307, Third Floor, Shalimar Square, 126/31, B.N. Road, Lalbagh, Lucknow 226001, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Telephone +91-522-4301771 · +91-9412415341
Trust office email office@nyaypath.org
This project hello@grihvatika.org, or schools@grihvatika.org for classroom work.

Institutions, schools and funders should address correspondence, agreements and due-diligence requests to Nyayapath at the registered office above, naming the Community Gardening Project (Grihvatika).