The JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a workshop on the topic, ‘Balancing Public Health and Personal Autonomy: Vaccine Governance, Proportionality, and Regulatory Design in India’ with Dr. Rishabh Kachroo.

• Day & date: Tuesday, May 26, 2026
• Time: 5:00 – 6:00 PM
• Mode: Online

The talk is open to the public. Kindly register here for the Webinar link.

Abstract

This paper examines India’s COVID-19 vaccination governance as a constitutional and regulatory design problem; doing so by focussing on the uneasy relationship between public health necessity, bodily autonomy, executive power, and legal justification. It argues that the pandemic revealed a deeper grammar of governance in which rights-burdening policies could be operationalised through guidelines, standard operating procedures (SOPs), administrative circulars, and access-based conditionalities without assuming the form of formal mandates. Exploring the gap between formal voluntariness and practical compulsion, this paper argues that vaccination was often carried out de-facto mandatorily. This execution involved material consequences for the citizenry.

The paper then proceeds further to claim that India’s pandemic response was shaped by an unstable statutory architecture that enabled a dispersed ecology of executive instruments. The resulting governance structure made it difficult for citizens to locate, contest, or demand justification for restrictions that affected their rights.

Another layer of analysis that this paper offers concerns scientific uncertainty. Vaccine-related restrictions were justified through evolving claims about transmission, severity, and risk reduction. The paper argues that in such cases, the State bears an obligation to make scientific premises legible, contestable, and updateable, while the courts must demand a reviewable evidentiary record and prevent uncertainty from becoming a vehicle for unexamined deference. Thus, this paper links proportionality, administrative legality, vaccine safety governance, transparency, and public trust in a bid to push the normative claim that emergency public health law must be designed to act under uncertainty without normalising constitutional shortcuts.

• Dates: May 14 and 15, 2026
• Venue: National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Campus

Workshop details

With rising urban temperatures, Bangalore needs collective and inclusive strategies to adapt to the heat. This two-day workshop brings together planners, researchers, communities, and decision-makers to co-create cooling solutions with a focus on Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) and existing policies.

The focus of the workshop will be two-fold:

First, the workshop will showcase the findings of the collaborative research project between NLSIU, University of Toronto Mississauga (Canada), Brandies University (USA) and University of Rajasthan funded by the University of Toronto India Foundation on urban heat islands in Bengaluru and Jaipur.

Specifically, the focus during the two days will be on how socio-spatial inequalities shape experiences of heat in Bengaluru. Through a combination of literature review, GIS-based spatial analysis, household surveys, and policy review, the project has generated evidence on patterns of heat exposure, differential access to BGI, and the governance challenges associated with equitable urban climate adaptation.

Second, the workshop aims to initiate discussions across diverse stakeholders on the unequal exposure to heat and access to mitigation strategies in Bengaluru. The workshop intends to bring the findings of the project into conversation with practitioners, community representatives, researchers, and public officials. The plenary session will focus on grounded discussion on implementation of inclusive actions.

Session details

Day 1: Framing the Challenge and Sharing Knowledge

Click here for Day 1 schedule and session details

Day 2: Planning Cooling Futures

Click here for Day 2 schedule and session details

The JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a talk and discussion on the topic, ‘Two Facets of AI and Law: Creativity and Privacy,’ by Advocate Srinath Sridevan, Senior Advocate practising before the Madras High Court and the Founding Partner of HSB Partners.

• Day & date: Friday, May 15, 2026
• Time: 2:00 – 3:00 PM
• Venue: National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Campus 

The talk is open to the public with mandatory registration here.

About the Speaker

Advocate Srinath Sridevan is a Senior Advocate practising before the Madras High Court and is the Founding Partner of HSB Partners, a leading full-service law firm in Chennai. With over two decades at the Bar, he is widely recognised for his expertise in commercial litigation, arbitration, insolvency, and corporate law.

A sixth-generation lawyer, Srinath combines deep legal tradition with a global outlook. He graduated with a gold medal in law from Madras University and went on to pursue an LL.M. from New York University, later working with international firms such as Allen & Overy in London before returning to India to establish his practice.

Beyond litigation, he is a thought leader in the intersection of law, technology, and society. He has written and spoken extensively on artificial intelligence (AI), large language models (LLMs), and their implications for legal practice and adjudication. His work and talks often explore how technology can enhance efficiency while preserving the core principles of judicial reasoning and fairness, a question that is increasingly relevant as courts cautiously experiment with AI-assisted processes.

Srinath is also deeply committed to public interest and access to justice, having worked on impactful litigation, including efforts to improve conditions for manual scavengers through collaboration with civil society groups.

A frequent speaker and mentor, he brings to his talks a rare combination of courtroom experience, academic insight, and forward-looking engagement with legal technology, making him a compelling voice on the future of AI and the law.

This week’s faculty seminar will feature a presentation by Dr. Swati Narayan, Assistant Professor, NLSIU, on ‘The Right to Retire: Universal Social Pensions in India.’

Abstract

More than sixty percent of the workforce in the Global South are in informal employment. Retirement is a luxury that few can afford, especially women. The capability approach emphasises the need for expansion of ‘substantive freedoms’ especially of the most vulnerable citizens. However, developing countries, such as India, often have inadequate social pension regimes to support adults in their older years. This paper with secondary data analyses the history, evolution and gaps in India’s pension regime with exclusions due to defective targeting, inadequate budgets, gender biases and faulty last mile delivery. Then it analyses the comparative political economy of social pensions in three pioneering countries of the Global South – Georgia, Nepal and South Africa. Based on this cumulative analysis, the research provides cost estimates for the universal expansion of the legal right to social pensions in India.

The Commons Cell and the Centre for Environmental Law Education, Research and Advocacy (CEERA) are jointly organising a panel discussion titled ‘Reading the City through Water – Stormwater, Systems, and the Ground Truthing at NLSIU on Monday, May 11, 2026, from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm. 

Venue: Allen and Overy Hall, Training Centre, First floor

About the discussion:

This discussion on stormwater systems in Bangalore will unpack how design, data, governance, and planning inform everyday urban life by examining how infrastructure is experienced, used, and often contested on the ground. The first half of the discussion will be focussed on MOD Foundation’s work on the K100 stormwater drain in Bangalore. The focus will be to enhance citizen engagement with public infrastructure by showcasing how to read stormwater networks on a map as well as lived systems shaped by design gaps, ecological pressures, and governance overlaps. The second half of the discussion will focus on stormwater systems as commons and how current water regulations address these systems. As urban water infrastructure, these systems shape everyday life, and collective knowledge can significantly contribute to better urban futures.

Our Panellists

• Amrita Ganapathy, Senior Urban Designer and Researcher at Mod Foundation
• Nikhila Gudipati is an Urban Research Associate at Mod Foundation working at the intersection of Strategy, Data Visualisation and Analysis.
• Dr. Sneha Thapliyal, Associate Professor (Economics), National Law School of India University
• Dr. Gayathri Naik, Assistant Professor (Law), National Law School of India University

The Centre for the Study of Social Inclusion (CSSI), at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is organising a webinar on ‘India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls,’ as per the details below:

• Day & date: Sunday, May 10, 2026
• Tim: 11.00 AM – 1:10 PM
• Venue:  online

Open to the public. Register on Zoom here.

The webinar will open with introductory remarks by Prof. (Dr.) Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice Chancellor, NLSIU and will be followed by two panel discussions.

Panel 1: Impact of the Special Intensive Revision on 12 states (11 a.m. to 12.10 p.m.)

• Prof. Yogendra Yadav, Member, Swaraj Abhiyan
• Dr. Srinivasan Ramani, Associate Editor, The Hindu
• Dr. Swati Narayan, Assistant Professor, NLSIU (moderator and commentator)

Panel 2: The Constitutional and Legal implications of the Special Intensive Revision (12.10 p.m. to 1.10 p.m.)

• Dr. Kamala Sankaran, Ford Foundation Chair in Public Interest Law, NLSIU
• S. Y. Quraishi, Former Chief Election Commissioner
• Prashant Bhushan, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
• Jasmine Joseph, Assistant Professor, NLSIU (moderator and commentator)

About the webinar

This online dialogue seeks to analyse and encourage research on the legal and policy nuances of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), especially in terms of the impact on marginalised communities.

In June 2025, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced a SIR in the state of Bihar to clean electoral rolls. While SIR was immediately challenged in the Supreme Court by a swathe of petitions, analysts argue that this exercise in Bihar alone could have potentially been the largest voter disenfranchisement in the world in the 21st century.

Article 324 of the Constitution and the 1950 Representation of the People Act entrusts the ECI with the preparation of electoral rolls, but not the mandate to determine citizenship. However, from October 2025 the ECI has expanded the SIR exercise to 12 states nationwide, with 18 more states on the anvil. Therefore, there is a need for nuanced research and debate on the legal precedents that it sets and its repercussions on Indian electoral democracy.

Webinar Schedule

Related links:

• The SIR, A Long Road to Exile? by Darashana Mitra, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU (The India Forum)
• Dr. Swati Narayan’s (Assistant Professor, NLSIU) remarks in an Al Jazeera story here.