Planetary Health and Relational Wellbeing, a collaborative project between the National Law School of India University, the University of Westminster, the University of Sussex, and Policy and Development Advisory Group, is organising a workshop and an exhibition on 25 and 26 June at the University of Westminster in London.
The project, funded by the British Academy, explored the impact of ecological changes on the health and wellbeing of Adivasi communities in Kerala and Jharkhand through a two-year ethnographic and archival research between 2024 and 2026. At NLSIU, the project is led by Dr Sudheesh R.C.
The workshop brings together leading and early-career social scientists working on the lived experiences of compromised ecologies, the interrogation of biomedical perspectives on wellbeing, the materialities of climate responses, and the flip sides of technocratic approaches to climate-induced health crises.
You are invited to attend the workshop through the Zoom links provided in the schedule. There is no registration fee.
The workshop opens with the launch of Teńgo Daram (ᱛᱮᱱᱜᱳ ᱫᱚᱨᱚᱢ) — To Stand Firm — a public exhibition foregrounding Adivasi perspectives on autonomy and wellbeing on a changing planet. Curated by Dr Boro Baski, the exhibition brings together visual artworks, aural artefacts, and narrative pieces by Adivasi contributors that together articulate the epistemic and ethical foundations on which our collective scholarly work rests.
The exhibition will feature the works of Indigenous artists Rahul Buski from Kerala and Manita Kumari Oraon, Saheb Ram Tudu, Sramika Barja, Mukesh Kumar Sinku, and Biswajit Bage from Jharkhand.
The exhibition will stay on for public viewings from 24th to 27th June at the Old Gymnasium, University of Westminster. If you are in London and can drop by, please register for free here.
A tour of major venues across India and Europe will follow this premiere. The project findings will then return to the Adivasi communities in India who contributed their stories through the exhibition’s permanent installation at our partner institutions, the Museum of Santhal Culture in Bishnubati and the Ho Museum in Pandrasali.
The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru and the Ahmadi Foundation are jointly organising the second lecture of the Justice Ahmadi Distinguished Lecture Series on 12 July 2026, at the Bangalore International Centre, Domlur. Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi will be delivering the lecture titled, “Being Brutally Frank: Human Instincts and the Law.”
NLSIU and the Ahmadi Foundation entered into a MoU to set up the Justice Ahmadi Initiative on Rule of Law, Democracy, and Social Justice in honour of, and to preserve and promote the legacy of former Chief Justice of India, Justice Aziz Mushabber Ahmadi. The Initiative works to advance the ideas that Justice Ahmadi championed throughout his distinguished career, including but not restricted to human rights, education, inclusion and protection of vulnerable communities, judicial independence, alternate dispute resolution mechanisms, and strengthening of democratic institutions. Read more about the Initiative here.
The annual lecture series is a part of the Justice Ahmadi Initiative on Rule of Law, Democracy and Social Justice.
Short Abstract
What is brutal about frankness, or frank about brutality? Is being frank not the same thing as being honest? Are the two born of instinct or are they inculcated? And is that being frank and honest, an invitation to risk? The speaker will explore the status and prognoses in India for this faculty for frankness, with examples drawn from history, literature and the news of the day.
About the Speaker
Gopalkrishna Gandhi takes a course on India’s Civilisations at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. He is also Distinguished Professor at NALSAR, Hyderabad. He was in administrative positions for over twenty years as a member of the Tamil Nadu cadre of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), and later held diplomatic assignments for over ten years in the United Kingdom, South Africa with concurrent accreditation to Lesotho, Sri Lanka and Norway with concurrent accreditation to Iceland. He was Governor of West Bengal from 2004 to 2009, and was, additionally, Governor of Bihar for about a year during that period.
His recently published works include The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India (Aleph, 2025) and India’s Futures: A Collection of Essays (Bloomsbury India, 2025). Gopalkrishna Gandhi and his wife, Tara Gandhi, an ornithologist and nature conservationist, divide their time between Chennai, Bengaluru, Coonoor and no less on the road, railway-lines and skies travelling between those three places.
The JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a workshop on the topic, ‘Indebted to the Past: Sovereign Debt and Climate Finance Misalignment’ with Dr. Arjuna Charles Dibley, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore.
Day & date: Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 PM
Mode: Online
The talk is open to the public. Kindly register here.
About the talk
Sovereign debt is a major constraint on developing countries’ capacity to finance climate mitigation and adaptation, yet it is largely ignored in climate law scholarship. This article evaluates the law governing private sovereign lending against the Paris Agreement’s climate finance alignment objective. It argues that emerging sovereign climate-risk lending practices operate within a framework that largely disregards states’ historical contributions to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. Because climate risk is assessed mainly by reference to forward-looking exposure and vulnerability, sovereign debt markets place the greatest borrowing pressures on highly vulnerable, typically lower-emitting states, while historically high-emitting states face comparatively limited discipline. This failure to consider cumulative emissions generates distributive inequities, undermining alignment goals of the Paris Agreement and leaving both climate-vulnerable communities and investors exposed to escalating climate risks.
The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru hosted the 6th India Public Policy Network Conference (IPPN) from June 8 to 11, 2026. The theme for this edition was ‘Public Policy Praxis in the Global South: Building Coherence and Capacity for Future Challenges.’
The conference was hosted at NLSIU in collaboration with India Public Policy Network, University of Cambridge (Department of Land Economy), INET (Young Scholars initiative) and National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER).
Public Policy Praxis in Global South
Public policy praxis—the knowledge derived from practice and reflection—is transforming governance across developing economies. In India, this transformation is visible through the exponential growth of policy education programs, research institutions, and a vast industry of policy practice that spans government, consulting, and civil society. Yet, this expansion unfolds amidst technological, administrative, ecological, and political shifts that challenge existing legal and policy frameworks.
Developing economies are now key laboratories for governance innovation. From AI-enabled service delivery to local-level participatory experiments, these contexts highlight how governance capacity, institutional coherence, and policy equity must evolve together. The conference invites reflection on how public policy praxis can help bridge theory and action, regulation and innovation, and local and global approaches to policymaking.
We aim to foster dialogue between academia, practitioners, and policymakers to explore how developing economies can build coherence and capacity to meet future challenges in governance, technology, and sustainability.
Conference Tracks
The conference will be structured around three central tracks:
1. Teaching Track
Panels within this track will examine how law and public policy are taught in developing economies, with a focus on curriculum design, pedagogy, and the integration of emerging issues such as technology, sustainability, and inequality. Discussions will include the challenges of interdisciplinary teaching, the use of case-based and experiential learning, and how to prepare students for careers at the intersection of law, governance, and policy. The teaching track will also explore how new technologies—AI, online learning, and digital classrooms—are reshaping the delivery of legal and policy education.
A glimpse of thematics that will be explored:
What are the kinds of learning outcomes expected beyond disciplinary foundations?
How have experiential learning components been designed that are not necessarily focussed on empirical reporting and for academic research?
How do programmes balance generalist teaching and sectoral depth?
What are the pedagogical approaches being used to incorporate heterodox approaches that can overcome disciplinary boundaries?
What kinds of innovations have been tried in assessment, concept building, application ability to meet learning requirements?
How is public policy praxis in India being taught that makes it distinct from standard western approaches to teaching Public Policy?
2. Research Track
This track will focus on academic scholarship addressing the governance challenges of developing economies. Papers and panels will explore methodological innovations in studying law–policy intersections, comparative governance in the Global South, and the role of interdisciplinary frameworks. Key themes include technological governance, digital inequality, climate change, urban transformation, and human rights in digital spaces. The research track will highlight how developing economies are not only case studies but also producers of theoretical insights that can shape global debates.
Some illustrative themes include the following:
-What are the challenges to policymaking for sustainability in India and how can they be addressed?
-How do law and policy interact in the face of uncertainty?
-What are the emerging policy issues within sectors that require further research? What lessons can be drawn from comparative studies of governance in the Global South?
-What has been the impact of networks and actors on governance?
-How can developing economies balance innovation and regulation in policymaking?
-What are some new concepts and methodologies that are relevant to public policy research in India?
3. Practice Track
This track will bring together policymakers, practitioners, lawyers, and civil society actors to discuss how law and policy reforms are implemented in practice. It will highlight real-world innovations such as e-governance platforms, fintech regulation, community-driven governance, smart city initiatives, and dispute resolution mechanisms. Panels will emphasize lessons learned from the field, including both successes and failures, and explore how legal frameworks can be made more adaptive, participatory, and responsive to local contexts.
-What interventions have worked and what have not and why?
-How do legal practitioners address public policy challenges?
-How do policy practitioners understand and address the legal dimensions of policy?
-What areas of research do practitioners expect from the academic community?
-How can we explore and consolidate collaborative practices between academia, law, and the policy community?
List of panels
Click here to see full conference schedule, masterclass sessions, panel details and other information.
Plenary Session I
Public Policy Praxis in the Global South: Building Coherence and Capacity 9 June 2026 | 2:30 PM – 4:30 PM | Shri Narayan Rao Melgiri Memorial National Law Library
Moderated by Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy (Vice Chancellor, NLSIU), the session brings together distinguished leaders from academia, philanthropy, government, international development, and industry:
Dr. Shailaja Fennell, University of Cambridge
Ms. Shalini Kapoor, EkStep Foundation
Mr. L. K. Atheeq, Chairman, Bengaluru Business Corridor
Dr. Shishir Sankhe, Senior Partner Emeritus, McKinsey & Company
Ms. Neha Gupta, Senior Public Sector Specialist, World Bank
The discussion will focus on strengthening policy capacity, institutional coherence, and collaborative approaches to policymaking in the Global South.
Plenary Session II
Public Policy Education and Pedagogy in the Global South 10 June 2026 | 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Shri Narayan Rao Melgiri Memorial National Law Library
Moderated by Dr. Sneha Thapliyal (NLSIU), this session will explore the future of public policy education, curriculum design, and capacity building in rapidly changing policy environments. Speakers include:
Dr. Satyajit Singh, University of California, Santa Barbara
Dr. Aparna Chandra, National Law School of India University
Dr. Ishani Mukherjee, Singapore Management University
NLSIU is hosting the 6th Annual Indian Public Policy Network Conference (IPPN) from 8 to 11 June 2026.
We warmly invite all graduates of the Master’s Programme in Public Policy (MPP) programme to an Alumni Roundtable on Wednesday, 10 June 2026, from 2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. on campus. We are keen to connect with graduates, hear about their professional journeys since graduation, and share the latest developments at NLSIU.
The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is hosting the 6th India Public Policy Network Conference (IPPN) from June 8 to 11, 2026. The theme for this edition is ‘Public Policy Praxis in the Global South: Building Coherence and Capacity for Future Challenges.’
Food regulation in India is no longer confined to safety and standards. Increasingly, it is about how food is represented, marketed, endorsed, platformed and consumed. In a digital economy shaped by influencer cultures and platform intermediation, advertising has become central to the construction of consumer preferences and dietary behaviour. This transformation is particularly visible in the context of – Ultra-processed and HFSS foods; Influencer-driven marketing ecosystems; Health and immunity claims; Child-directed advertising; Digital food delivery platforms; Algorithmic targeting and behavioural nudges. Food brands increasingly market through Instagram influencers; YouTube content creators; affiliate marketing; dark patterns and targeted advertising.
The regulatory ecosystem is fragmented across Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI); Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI); Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA); Consumer Protection Act, 2019; Cable Television Networks Rules; IT Rules and intermediary obligations. And the legal questions are no longer merely about misbranding; they concern commercial speech, proportionality, platform liability, and regulatory overlap.
Against this backdrop, the webinar will examine the emerging challenges at the intersection of influencer marketing, digital platforms and disclosure norms in the food sector. It will focus in particular on the effectiveness of existing self-regulatory frameworks, the adequacy of disclosure obligations imposed on influencers and the evolving role of platforms as intermediaries in shaping and disseminating food advertising.
For more information or queries, please contact Dr. Sudhanshu Kumar/Ms. Meenakshi Ramkumar by writing to .
Under the conversation series by eminent speakers titled ‘Crafting Careers,’ our next lecture will feature Gayathri Sreedharan, founder of Anthropie, a research communication organization that specialises in applied anthropological, sociological and design research.
About the series
Crafting Careers organised by the NLS BA (Hons) programme is designed to help students navigate the world of work. Each session in the series will bring leading professionals from fields such as media, government, public policy, business, finance, and the creative arts to campus for candid conversations about their journeys. These experts will share insights and advice from their professional experiences and offer reflections on how social science majors may relate to different career pathways. These dialogues will offer students a chance to learn from diverse experiences, gain practical insights, and reflect on how to build careers that align with their own interests, skills, and values.
About the speaker
Gayathri Sreedharan
Gayathri is a Delhi-based applied anthropologist, ethnographer, and qualitative research specialist. She started her career as a journalist, initially in broadcast journalism before transitioning to long-form and investigative journalism for print and radio. In 2014, Gayathri earned her MA in Anthropology degree from the University of Chicago, where she studied sociocultural and linguistic anthropology. After years of working as a qualitative researcher and in development policy and strategy, Gayathri founded Anthropie in 2020. Anthropie is a research communication organization that specialises in applied anthropological, sociological and design research. Anthropie is made up of a core group of research and implementation experts, and works with a large collective of anthropological, sociological, economic, human centred design and gender researchers, based in and working on projects across the world.
At Anthropie, Gayathri uses her skills to study changing dynamics that impact different target audiences, communities, cultures, and sociocultural norms, behaviors, rituals, and beliefs, to design user-led strategies for change and intervention. Gayathri has worked for several years in different parts of the northeast, eastern India, north India and more recently southern India, working on projects that focus on documenting community customs and beliefs, changing cultural dynamics and definitions, and the impact on/of women’s collectives in the state on their livelihood, health and gender empowerment opportunities.
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.
This lecture by Rohit Bhat (Freshfields, Singapore) explores the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in international arbitration and its implications for dispute resolution practice worldwide. From legal research and document review to case strategy and procedural efficiency, AI tools are changing how lawyers and arbitral tribunals handle cross-border disputes. The session will discuss the opportunities AI creates, as well as the legal and ethical questions it raises, including confidentiality, transparency, bias, and the future role of lawyers in arbitration practice. Drawing on practical experiences from contemporary arbitration practice, the speaker will provide insights into how law firms, arbitral institutions, and practitioners are adapting to technological change, and what future lawyers should expect in an increasingly AI-enabled legal landscape.
About the Speaker
Rohit is a partner at Freshfields at their international arbitration group, based in Singapore. He has significant experience representing clients in complex, high-profile international commercial and Investor-State arbitrations across a wide variety of industry sectors. Rohit’s most recent experience includes representing the Republic of Korea in an UNCITRAL arbitration commenced by Elliott Associates L.P., an Asian State in proceedings to enforce a treaty award in the English High Court, and a leading private equity investor in a SIAC arbitration in the renewable energy sector. Read more here.
The lecture is organised by the DC Singhania Chair on ADR at NLSIU
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 organised by the Commons Cell at NLSIU 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), Brandeis 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
Planetary Health and Relational Wellbeing, a collaborative project between the National Law School of India University, the University of Westminster, the University of Sussex, and Policy and Development Advisory Group, is organising a workshop and an exhibition on 25 and 26 June at the University of Westminster in London.
