News Type: Event

On 3rd May 2023, the faculty seminar will be by guest speaker, Shri. Feroze Varun Gandhi, who will be delivering a talk on his recently published book, ‘The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India’s Urban Spaces’.

About the Speaker: 

Shri. Feroze Varun Gandhi is a third-term Member of Parliament, representing the Pilibhit constituency in Uttar Pradesh. In his last book, ‘A Rural Manifesto: Realising India’s Future through her Villages’ (published in November 2018), Shri Gandhi presented an alternative approach to mainstream ideas of rural development, which despite their many achievements have certain inherent limitations. Shri Gandhi has published two volumes of poetry – ‘The Otherness of Self’ and ‘Stillness’ – that have been well received. He also writes widely in English as well as several regional language newspapers including The Hindu, The Economic Times, Amar Ujala, Lokmat, and Bartaman.

About the Book: 

For most urban Indians, the past few years have been unsettling—we have seen neighbourhoods locked down for months during a pandemic, increasing the daily challenges of earning a living as well as of access to good healthcare and education. Inflation has ravaged the land with spiralling prices of food, rent and transport. Our cities are hard to live in; lacking basic amenities, while being
unaesthetic and discordant with our civilization.

As economic growth takes priority, questions about liveability and meaningful employment arise, along with concerns about the deteriorating law and order. In blindly and poorly aping Western
models, our cities homogenize, losing their character, their identity and their soul. Meanwhile, climate change is no longer a mythical or distant possibility but a distinct and immediate reality. A typical city must now cope with extreme temperatures, both flooding and water shortages and abysmal air quality. These can no longer be treated as threats but as certainties to be planned for.

The Indian Metropolis seeks to begin a national conversation on these issues and suggests ways to turn our cities into enabling, energizing environments geared towards enhancing the daily life of the average city dweller.” (Source: Rupa Publications) 

The seventh cohort of the Master’s Programme in Public Policy, NLSIU is organising a seminar on “100 Years of Independence: Evolving Identities, Markets, and the Environment” on February 3-4, 2022. The seminar will cover a number of themes as part of the sessions over these two days.

Abstract:

At the stroke of midnight on 15th August 1947, India awoke to a new journey that would go on to define the local and global socio-economic trends for the next seven decades. 75 years later, we find ourselves at a juncture where equitable public policies must act as linkages between our post-colonial past and our post-pandemic future. At this critical point, it is important to introspect as well as look outward, to gauge where Indian development stands. This becomes specifically relevant given that in 25 years’ time, the country will celebrate its independence centennial. The path to the future, thus, needs to be connected to the past, for an equitable present.

India has come a long way since its independence, with evolving economic systems, emerging new markets, rapid development in technology, and a conscious acknowledgment for the need to protect our ecosystems. Indian society faces the challenges of rising inequalities across regions, income categories, social groupings, gender, and rural-urban divides. Moreover, concerns regarding flailing constitutional morality, populism, conservatism and the creation of several ‘imagined communities’ also need to be discussed in this context.

For further details including the programme schedule, click here.

Join a virtual discussion with Dr. Sushmita Pati on her new book, titled Properties of Rent: Community, Capital, and Politics in Globalising Delhi. Sushmita is Assistant Professor, Political Science at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban politics and political economy.

In her new book, she traces the social history of urban villages around Delhi and offers a new perspective on land, labor, and accumulation in urbanizing India.

Read more and RSVP here.

The Law and Technology Society, NLSIU, in association with the All India Game Developer Forum (AIGDF), announces ‘Consilience 2023′, the 22nd edition of L-Tech’s flagship conference. This year’s conference focuses on emerging issues in the Gaming Industry, particularly online gaming regulatory frameworks and fundraising within the industry. 

The conference will be hosted physically on 21st April, 2023 at the Bangalore International Centre. This year’s conference is anchored on the Online Regulatory Framework on Gaming and is composed of four panels: A. Online Gaming Regulations, B. Taxation of Online Gaming, C. Navigating the Gaming Landscape: Strategies for Successful Fundraising in Today’s Market, D. Making India a global gaming powerhouse: Building Games for Indian and Global Audiences.  

The conference shall include panelists from legal, policy, technology, and business backgrounds including Mr. Arun Prabhu, Mr. Meyyappan Nagappan, Mr. Abhinav Srivastava, Mr. Joyjyoti Mishra, Mr. Sai Srinivas, Mr. Akshat Rathee, Ms. Sanyukta Chowdhury and Mr. Rahul Singh amongst others.

About Consilience:

‘Consilience’ is the annual flagship conference organised by the Law and Technology Society at NLSIU on contemporary issues at the interface of law and technology. First organised in 2001, Consilience is the first conference of its kind in India, bringing together legal insights and technical expertise on a common platform, providing a launch pad for creative and pragmatic solutions to some of the most pressing issues in the domain of technology law and policy. 

Over the years, this annual summit has hosted themes like Artificial Intelligence, Net Neutrality, Cloud Computing, and Intermediary Liability, and has featured prominent speakers, including Kris Gopalakrishnan (Co-Founder, Infosys), Antony Taubman (Director, IP Division at WTO), Prof. Rahul De (Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor, IIM Bangalore), Justice S. Murlidhar (Chief Justice, Orissa High Court), Montek Singh Ahluwalia (Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India) and Meenu Chandra (Senior Attorney, Microsoft India), among others. 

For more information, please visit the L-Tech website. For any queries, please write to

Registration Details: 

Please fill out the registration form by clicking on the relevant link below:

Registration form for students (from any institution).

Registration form for other participants

This week faculty seminar will feature a discussion by our faculty member Harsha N on the topic “Right to occupy airspace – Conflict between airports and landowners on the use of vertical space in India”. Faculty member Dr. Betsy Rajasingh will be the discussant.  The conversation will be followed by a Q&A session.

Abstract

The population density is rising near airports in India due to the economic benefits one can derive. The opportunity to accommodate the interest of various groups for commerce and dwelling has created a dependency on vertical growth. The conflict arises from utilising vertical space by two competing interests, one of the airports and the other of the adjacent residents. Demolition of buildings and structures to ensure safe airspace has become a necessity. Earlier jurisprudence of limiting the rights based on upper and lower stratum might be irrelevant today. The paper will address the Indian perspective and judicial interpretations of airspace in three broad areas: the concept of airspace, challenges to the demarcation of rights and obligations, and the method of determination of rights and obligations in the airspace. The paper will look into the principles of property from Roman Law to the contemporary principles of property law and their applicability to aviation law. The issue of competing interests of various groups to occupy the airspace is also a focus area of the paper.

NLS faculty member Dr. Aparna Chandra will be part of a panel discussion on “House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy” on April 14, 2023 at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) at 6.00 pm.

Abstract:

While there is overwhelming support for democracy in India and voter turnout is higher than in many Western democracies, there are low levels of trust in political parties and elected representatives. House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy, written by Ronojoy Sen, looks beyond Indian elections, which has increasingly occupied analysts and commentators, and focuses on the Lok Sabha. The book examines two broad questions: Is the Indian Parliament, which has the unenviable task of representing a diverse nation of a billion-plus people, working, if not in an exemplary manner, at least reasonably well, to articulate the diverse demands of the electorate and translate them into legislation and policy? To what extent has the practice of Indian democracy transformed the institution of parliament, which was adopted from the British, and its functioning?

The author will be in conversation with Aparna Chandra and Rajeev Gowda, moderated by Nitin Pai. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

About the Speakers

Ronojoy Sen, Author & Senior Research Fellow, National University of Singapore

Dr Ronojoy Sen is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies and the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has worked for over a decade with leading Indian newspapers, most recently as an editor for The Times of India. His latest book is House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He is also the author of Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press/Penguin, 2015) and Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism, and the Indian Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2010; revised ed. 2018) and has edited several books. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and read history at Presidency College, Calcutta.

Dr. Aparna Chandra, Associate Professor, NLSIU

Dr. Aparna Chandra is an Associate Professor of Law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Her areas of teaching and research are constitutional law, human rights, legal theory, gender and the law, and judicial process reform. Her on-going research includes a collaboration with the Israel Democracy Institute on a European Research Council funded multi-nation study titled Proportionality and Public Policy; a University of Chicago funded research project titled Empirical Analysis of Indian Supreme Court decisions; and a collaboration with the Centre for Reproductive Rights, New York on a book on Reproductive Justice in India.

Aparna received her LL.M and JSD degrees from Yale Law School in 2007 and 2013, respectively. She was a Lillian Goldman Scholar at Yale Law School from 2010-2012. Her doctoral dissertation (under the supervision of Judith Resnik and guidance of Bruce Ackerman and Alec Stone Sweet) examined the role of international law in domestic constitutional adjudication, with a primary focus on the Indian Supreme Court.

M V Rajeev Gowda, Politician & Academician

Professor Rajeev Gowda is Ex-Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha from Karnataka. He has a B.A from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore, an MA in Economics from Fordham University and a PhD in Public Policy and Management from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has been a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and taught at the University of Oklahoma. Until recently, he was Professor of Economics and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and a Director on the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India. He has authored and edited books, scholarly articles and reports on policy issues. He has mentored start up companies and works on urban renewal and youth empowerment, among other areas of interest. He has been a Carnegie Council Global Ethics Fellow.

He is the Managing Trustee, Resurgent India Trust, which launched the Bengaluru Needs You initiative.

Nitin Pai, Co-Founder & Director, Takshashila Institution

Nitin Pai is co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy; and author of Nitopadesha: Moral Tales for Good Citizens. His current research includes information warfare, the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific. He teaches international relations, public policy and ethical reasoning at Takshashila’s graduate programmes. He is currently a columnist with Mint, ThePrint and Sakal, and a non-resident fellow at the Institute for South Asian Studies, Singapore.

Pai spent over a decade at the Telecommunications Authority of Singapore (TAS) and its successor the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) in broadband development and technology foresight. He has also worked with SingTel’s international connectivity business and undersea cable projects. He was a gold medalist from the National University of Singapore’s LKY School of Public Policy, an undergraduate scholar at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and an alum of National College, Bangalore.

 

About the Book 

A panel of scholars and musicians will engage in a discussion with author Sebanti Chatterjee on her recent book, Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality (published by Bloomsbury Academic, February 2023). The book uses the lens of sound and musical practices to tell the stories of two Christian communities in Goa and Meghalaya and introduces voice and genre as social objects. Given the imperial pasts of both regions, the book inquires how indigenous and cosmopolitan forces shape the sacred music repositories and their manifestations. The book takes us on a fascinating sojourn through seminaries, Bollywood Broadway, festivals, recitals, and belonging. Through the rituals of performativity and everyday interpretations of devotion, choral voices illuminate the interior and public lives of the sacred.

About the Speakers 

Sebanti Chatterjee, Senior Academic Fellow, NLSIU Bangalore, is a cultural anthropologist, who is currently a Senior Academic Fellow at the National Law School of India University Bangalore. She holds a doctorate in Sociology. Her monograph, Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in Feb 2023. Sebanti's research interests span sound studies, gender studies, and religious studies. She has previously held regular and ad-hoc teaching positions at Sharda University, Greater Noida; Christ University, Bangalore; University of Delhi; and IIT Jodhpur. She has presented her work both nationally and internationally. Her research has been published in the journals of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and Society and Culture in South Asia. Sebanti also writes for children and occasionally wears the hat of a storyteller.

Karl Lutchmayer, Pianist, is equally renowned as a concert pianist and a lecturer. A Steinway Artist, Karl performs across the globe, and has worked with conductors including Lorin Maazel and Sir Andrew Davis, and performed at all the major London concert halls. He has broadcast on BBC Television and Radio, All India Radio and Classic FM, and is a regular chamber performer. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Karl has also given over 90 world premieres and had many works written especially for him.

Sarbani Sharma, Assistant Professor, Azim Premji University, is an Assistant Professor at the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Her work focuses on itineraries of political aspirations for freedom and everyday life in Kashmir. She has previously taught Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Tübingen, Germany, and at the University of Delhi. Her research has been published in the Journal of Human Rights, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Society and Culture in South Asia, Allegra Labs, and Political and Legal Anthropological Review.

To RSVP, click here

Our next public lecture will be delivered by Prof. (Dr.) Francis Cody on his recently published book, The News Event: Popular Sovereignty in the Age of Deep Mediatization (Chicago 2023). The lecture will take place on April 6, 2023 at 5 pm.

About the Speaker: 

Dr. Francis Cody is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on politics, language, and media in southern India. His first book, The Light of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India (Cornell 2013), won the 2014 Edward Sapir Book Prize awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology. Cody’s new book, The News Event: Popular Sovereignty in the Age of Deep Mediatization (Chicago 2023) explores questions of law, technology, and violence in the context of journalism and populist politics.

Book Abstract:

In the hypermediated world of Tamil Nadu, Francis Cody studies how “news events” are made. Not merely the act of representing events with words or images, a “news event” is the reciprocal relationship between the events being reported in the news and the event of the news coverage itself. In The News Event, Francis Cody focuses on how imaginaries of popular sovereignty have been remade through the production and experience of such events. Political sovereignty is thoroughly mediated by the production of news. And subjects invested in the idea of democracy are remarkably reflexive about the role of publicly circulating images and texts in the very constitution of their subjectivity. The law comes to stand as both a limit and positive condition in this process of event making, where acts of legal and extralegal repression of publication can also become the stuff of news about news makers. When the subjects of news inhabit multiple participant roles in the unfolding of public events, when the very technologies of recording and circulating events themselves become news, the act of representing a political event becomes difficult to disentangle from that of participating in it. This, Cody argues, is the crisis of contemporary news making: the news can no longer claim exteriority to the world on which it reports.

The event is open to all. We look forward to seeing you at the session!

This faculty seminar will feature a conversation between NLS faculty members Dr. Aniket Nandan and  Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan on his book titled “Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism” (Orient Blackswan, 2022). Dr. Manoharan published an article in 2020 titled “Freedom from God: Periyar and Religion” which carries the crux of the book’s argument. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A session.

Abstract

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy (1879-1973) was a rationalist anti-caste leader from South India. Known for his critical views on caste, nationalism, gender, and social justice, he earned a controversial reputation in his lifetime and after for his views on religion. Criticized by his opponents for being a ‘crude atheist’, Periyar’s critique of religion however was not a simple rejection of god, but a critique of political theology. In Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism, Manoharan discusses Periyar’s controversial, sometimes contradictory, but overall nuanced approach to religion, and explores how his criticisms of religion were fundamentally rooted in an opposition to hierarchical social power and a concern for social justice. The first academic book in English to explore this subject, Manoharan reads Periyar in the anarchist tradition, drawing comparisons with the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, to consider how Periyar was critical of both divine and secular power. With an elaborate introduction that places Periyar in historical and intellectual context, the other chapters discuss Periyar’s political atheism, his approach to Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Marxism, and concludes with a discussion of his relevance for contemporary debates on secularism and post-secularism.

The Institute of Public Policy, NLSIU along with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and its Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) is organising a three-day conference on ‘Inclusive Development: Role of Employment and Environment’ from March 28-30, 2023. The conference will focus on inclusive development, especially the role of employment opportunities in a changing world of work and the environment in envisioning inclusiveness. The program will include contributions from senior academicians, policy makers and legal professionals as well paper-presentations from selected young scholars from across the subcontinent.

DAY 1: March 28, 2023 | 6 pm – 8 pm

Keynote Talk: Structural Labour Discrimination in India
Speaker: Prof. Jens Lerche, Professor, Agrarian and Labour Studies, SOAS, University of London 
Bangalore International Centre  

This presentation focuses on structural labour discrimination at the bottom of the labour hierarchy in India. Globally, labour market discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender and place is well documented. This is also the case for work related inequalities and discrimination along the lines of caste and ethnicity in India.

Combining labour market data with qualitative studies, this presentation by Jens Lerche shows that structural discrimination is central to labour market segmentation, also in the modern economy. This follows lines of caste, ethnicity and place.

Seasonal labour migrants, and among them especially Adivasis and Dalits, undertake the hardest, lowest paid hyper-precarious informalised jobs, often without access to the same rights as local labourers. They do this at the the cost of their and their household’s long-time social reproduction and care which is externalised by the employers. This is a result not only of direct labour market discrimination but is also based on discrimination in access to skill and historical disadvantage. The presentation concludes with a discussion of policy recommendations.

RSVP here.

DAY 2: March 29, 2023

Panel discussion & Paper Presentations 
NLSIU, Bengaluru

Can technological change lead to an inclusive future of work and promote inclusive development?Adoption of new technologies such as automation, AI and industrial robots in the production process continues to grow rapidly in every country. The question that has emerged globally is the impact of these technologies on employment and on overall society. In the context of a developing country with already existing inequality and social exclusion, the question is twofold: what is the future of work and is the future of work inclusive? This is a critical juncture for discussions around labour as technology has brought about not only a rapidly changing workforce, but also workplace scenarios. The emergence of gig and platform work has introduced labour law to new challenges where the employment relationship is digitally mediated and involves the algorithmic management of labour. As a response to this, lawmakers and workers’ organizations have experimented with different approaches: ranging from the demands for a bare minimum of social security and transparency in working conditions to a more comprehensive, worker-centred transformation of how gig and platform work is structured.

The ultimate effects of technological progress on labour relations will be determined by how it is used and how people, firms, governments, institutions, and international organizations respond and prepare for these changes in the economy and society. This panel will discuss these challenges faced by a developing country like India and reflect on possible ways forward, with a focus on gig and platform work.

Featuring: Prof. Bino Paul (TISS), Prof. Vijay G (Hyderabad University), Dr. Manjunath (Additional Labour Commissioner, Industrial Relations –
Government of Karnataka), Jane Cox (Attorney, India – Labor and Trade Unions), Chair: Prof. Babu Mathew (National Law School of India University)

DAY 3: March 30, 2023

Panel discussion & Paper presentations
NLSIU, Bengaluru

How can inequalities and injustices of pollution be accounted for in envisioning inclusive development? Impacts of pollution (including climate change), while ubiquitous, vary in pattern and strength across regions as well as across socio-economic groups within a region. On the one hand, disadvantaged groups are more exposed and susceptible to pollution related damages with limited ability to cope and recover from the losses. On the other hand, socioeconomic inequalities further facilitate the obstruction of climate policies by wealthy elites, undermine public support for the policy, and weaken the social foundations of collective action. This panel will discuss how such environment related outcomes of must feature in the conceptualization of inclusive development.

The conference will conclude with a session on “Consolidation & Future Research Collaborations” involving a summary of the conference, an open discussion on potential future research collaborations, and opportunities for continued involvement.

For more details about the programme, please click here.
Please note, this conference is for invitees registered participants only.
For further information, please write to ,