Dr. Arun Gupta MD FIAP
Pediatrician | Public Health Advocate | Author
 

Dr. Arun Gupta is a pediatrician and public health advocate whose work has shaped breastfeeding protection in India for nearly four decades.

He began his career as a clinician in Jalandhar, Punjab, where he witnessed the devastating effects of unsafe formula feeding on infants. Those experiences led him to leave a flourishing private practice in the 1990s and dedicate his life to public health advocacy.

In 1991, he founded the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI) , which was gazetted by the Government of India in 1995 as an official monitor of the Infant Milk Substitutes (IMS) Act. In 1994, he filed a criminal complaint against Nestlé under the IMS Act — a case that spanned twenty years, involved over 100 court appearances across eight judges, and became one of India's longest unfinished public health prosecutions. The case did not end in a completed trial, but it strengthened the law and brought sustained public attention to the commercial determinants of infant health.

Dr. Gupta also led the campaign for the 2003 amendment to the IMS Act, which closed loopholes exploited by baby food companies and made India's law one of the strongest in the world. He successfully led the campaign to save the IMS Act from being repealed in 2005. He served as a member of the Prime Minister's Council on India's Nutrition Challenges from 2010 to 2015.

He is the conceptualiser of the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi) , now implemented in over 100 countries, and convenor of Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPI) , which works on ultra-processed food, marketing, and food labelling. He is active in the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) , recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (1998), and has advised governments and UN agencies across Asia.