News Type: Event

Faculty Seminar | Rahul Hemrajani and Varsha Aithala

This week’s faculty seminar will feature a presentation by Rahul Hemrajani and Varsha Aithala, Assistant Professors (Law) at NLSIU, on ‘Mapping the Landscape of Consumer Disputes in India: Evidence from a Household Survey, Helpline Records and Consumer Commission Data’.

Abstract

India was among the first countries to establish a specialist statutory system for consumer-dispute resolution. The Department of Consumer Affairs has further strengthened this framework through initiatives such as the Jaago Grahak Jaago campaign, the National Consumer Helpline, and the e-Daakhil portal, all designed to ease grievance redressal. Yet, research on the impact of these initiatives on consumer dispute resolution remains scarce. A central obstacle is the lack of data: little is known about the incidence of disputes, consumers’ legal needs, or their actual dispute-resolution practices in India.

In this paper, we map the landscape of consumer disputes in India by combining five bodies of evidence located at different tiers of the dispute pyramid: a household consumer needs survey fielded in Bengaluru, the National Consumer Helpline’s annual reports (2017–21), a hand-coded sample of 1,110 district commission cases disposed of in 2023, all 3,819 NCDRC orders issued between September 2023 and September 2024, and aggregate statistics on 3.17 million cases from the e-Jagriti platform. We find that the dispute pyramid in consumer law is steep. While 44% of households report consumer grievances, more than 40% are never fully resolved, under 10% go through resolution processes and less than 2% of grievances reach formal dispute resolution under consumer law. We also find variance in types of disputes that reach each part of the pyramid. Low-value e-commerce grievances dominate lived experience and helpline dockets, while insurance, real estate and banking, sectors that each have a dedicated regulator, form over 40% of all consumer litigation. Finally, we find that consumers who litigate win 71% of district court cases, but the median case takes 750 days against a statutory norm of 90. We conclude that India’s consumer protection regime, now entering its fifth decade, serves primarily a narrow class of high-value disputes while remaining largely inaccessible to the ordinary consumer.

Public Lecture | Impermissible Punishments by Prof. Judith Resnik | 13 August 2026

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, is organising a public lecture by Prof. Judith Resnik on her recently published book, Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy (University of Chicago Press), on 13 August 2026 at 6 PM in the Conference Hall, Ground Floor, Training Centre, NLSIU. Prof. Mrinal Satish will moderate the talk with Prof. Resnik, who will be joining us virtually. The lecture will be held in a hybrid mode and is open to the NLS Community only.

Attendees will receive selected chapters from the book via email prior to the lecture. Register here.

About the Book

In Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy (University of Chicago Press), Prof. Resnik explores the history of punishment inside prisons and the rules that organise prisons. She charts the invention of the corrections profession, which called for decent conditions while imposing radical restrictions on human movement as if doing so was normal. She weaves together the stories of people who debated how to punish and the stories of people living under the regimes that resulted. The book traces the constitutional challenges to hyper-crowded cells, filth, violence, and profound isolation, as well as the cross-border expansion of the prison industry, waves of abolition efforts, and the impact of legal precepts rejecting “excessive,” “cruel and unusual,” and “degrading” sanctions. Exploring the interdependency of people in and out of prisons, “Impermissible Punishments” argues that governments committed to equality cannot set out to ruin people and therefore many contemporary forms of punishment need to end.

About the Speaker

Prof. Judith Resnik is the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at the Yale Law School, and the founding Director of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law. She teaches courses on federalism, procedure, courts, prisons, equality, and citizenship. Her scholarship focuses on the relationship of democratic values to government services such as prisons and post offices; contemporary conflicts over privatisation; the relationships of states to citizens and non-citizens; practices of punishment; and equality and gender. She has authored several books, including Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courthouses.

Public Lecture | Caste-based Segregation in Urban India by Deepak Malghan | 13 August 2026

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, and Talasamudaya is organising a public lecture on “Caste-based Segregation in Urban India” by Prof. Deepak Malghan on 13 August 2026 from 4:15 PM to 5:30 PM in the Conference Hall, Ground Floor Training Centre, NLSIU.

About the Lecture

Urban India is characterised by a high degree of intra-city spatial inequality in the availability of public services like piped water and sewerage. We unpack the political channels that link residential segregation with access to public services. ‘Micro-segregation’, or neighbourhood residential sorting within a ward (the elementary administrative and political unit in urban India), enables segregated neighbourhoods to better organise and petition public services. Political competition further amplifies these demands from segregated neighbourhoods. The state’s response to such demand is, however, modulated by both in-group favouritism and outgroup discrimination. States’ ability to indulge in such favouritism and discrimination is in turn contingent on how the caste composition of a ward is different from that of the city as a whole –‘macro-segregation’.

This talk sheds light on how caste continues to shape patterns of residential segregation in urban India and caste-based inequalities are reproduced through urban governance and public policy. From the talk, one will be able to critically engage with contemporary research on caste, spatial inequality, and state capacity in India.

Profile of Speaker

Deepak Malghan is a chemical engineer and ecological economist at the interface of thermodynamics and scale theory. Among other recognitions for his contributions to scale theory, Malghan received the 2015 VKRV Rao Prize in Social Sciences and the 2023 T N Khoshoo Memorial Award. Malghan was an editor at the field’s flagship, Ecological Economics (2018-26), where he is now on the editorial board.

Malghan is an affiliated researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, where he conducts translational research on urban hydrology. Beyond ecological economics, Malghan’s Ecological Political Economy group at IIMB has pioneered new methods for characterizing ethnic inequality and stratification by combining tools and insights from economics, demography, and political science. His current projects apply these methods to study classical and emerging problems in ethnic politics and environmental injustice.

As a historian, Malghan is the co-author of an intellectual biography of J. C. Kumarappa (1892-160), a pioneering Indian ecological thinker and political philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2016). He is currently working on a book project (Citius, Altius, Fortius: A History of How the World Became Efficient) that develops the global history of the modern idea of efficiency.

Public Lecture | Gandhi’s Swaraj as a Constitutional Idea: The Afterlives of Decentralised Constitutionalism in India

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, is organising a public lecture on “Gandhi’s Swaraj as a Constitutional Idea: The Afterlives of Decentralised Constitutionalism in India” by Matthew Idiculla on 03 August 2026 at 5 PM in the Conference Hall, Ground Floor Training Centre, NLSIU.

About the Lecture

Mahatma Gandhi is rarely regarded as a constitutional thinker. His scepticism towards the modern state has largely obscured his influence on constitutional thought and his role, albeit limited, in crafting and inspiring alternative constitutions. Through this paper, Matthew examines Swaraj, specifically Gram Swaraj (village self-rule), as a constitutional idea. The paper traces Gram Swaraj through Gandhi’s writings and historical or aspirational constitutional documents, including the Gandhian Constitution for Free India and the Aundh State Constitution. It explores Gram Swaraj as an alternative constitutional imaginary, or a phantom constitution, that was debated, never realised, yet continued to inform constitutional thought. Although the Constituent Assembly appeared to reject the Gandhian alternative by embracing a centralised parliamentary democracy, the Constitution nevertheless incorporated a commitment to village Panchayats within the Directive Principles of State Policy, which acquired an interesting constitutional afterlife in the 1990s. This paper examines whether, and to what extent, the constitutional reforms for decentralisation, through measures enabling Panchayati Raj and Adivasi self-governance, resonate with Gandhi’s idea of Gram Swaraj. It argues that Swaraj, and its adaptation into modern constitutional frameworks for community self-governance, offer a rich intellectual repertoire for pursuing an alternative decentralised constitutional order.

About the Speaker

Mathew Idiculla is a Doctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow at the Faculty of Law & Justice, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney and a Visiting Doctoral Scholar at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU). His research interests are broadly in the areas of democracy, federalism, and constitutionalism, especially in the context of local governance. His doctoral thesis explores the idea and practice of decentralised constitutionalism in India, through an examination of the city as a site and unit of authority. Prior to joining UNSW, Mathew worked as a legal consultant and academic in India for over 12 years. He was a research associate and visiting faculty at Azim Premji University (APU), a research consultant at the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR), and a visiting faculty at NLSIU. He has been part of multiple international research and consultancy projects on topics related to urban governance, planning, land, environment, and livelihoods and has actively engaged with urban policymaking across various states in India. Mathew writes frequently on various law and policy issues in the op-ed pages of India’s leading publications, and his scholarly work has appeared in multiple books and peer-reviewed journals.

Workshop on ‘The Long Arm of the State in the Tech Sector and its Impact on Corporate Purpose’ | JSW Centre for Future of Law

The JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a workshop titled ‘The Long Arm of the State in the Tech Sector and its Impact on Corporate Purpose’ with Victoria Baumfield, Assistant Professor, Bond Law School, and Akshaya Kamalnath, Associate Professor, ANU Law School.

  • Day & Date: Friday, 14 August 2026
  • Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
  • Mode: Online

The workshop is open to the public. Kindly register here.

Abstract

Corporate purpose debates, much of it theoretical, have captured academic and industry attention in the recent past. This paper will examine the specific case of government investment in companies within the tech sector with a view to understanding the aims of such investment, and further, the implications of this on the idea of corporate purpose. The tech sector is particularly relevant because, at every stage in history, the cutting-edge technology of the time has been a matter of interest for the government. This paper uses case studies from U.S. and Australia, but we envisage future research using case studies from emerging economies to further advance knowledge on the issues of corporate purpose and the entanglement of states and private enterprises. Based on the analysis of case studies in this paper, we argue that governments are pursuing strategic aims through their investments in the tech sector – something we call strategic socialism. To be clear, we are critical of such strategic socialism and caution against the long arm of the State. The paper not only contributes to our understanding of corporate purpose based on practical insights but also contributes to our broader understanding of intertwining of business and government.

Faculty Seminar | Arnav Sharma

This week’s faculty seminar will feature a presentation by Arnav Sharma, Assistant Professor (Law) at NLSIU and Ashutosh Kashyap, on ‘What Makes Raw Materials Critical?: Global Supply Chain Priorities Under Review.’

Abstract

Critical Minerals are considered essential by nations to enable transition towards a cleaner economy. These minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements are used in batteries as an alternative to traditional fuels. As is the case with traditional fuels, there are a few countries having sufficient reserves of critical minerals. Additionally, this space is dominated by a few countries in terms of processing capacity. The scarce distribution of critical minerals and concentration of processing capacity, coupled with a race to secure these minerals for domestic needs, has alarmed various countries to group together or take steps at individual level to diversify critical mineral supply chain.
In this direction, some of the plurilateral initiatives include US-led Mineral Security Partnership (MSP), EU-led Critical Raw Materials Club, and Critical Minerals Working Group in the Indo Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) Supply Chain Agreement. There is a myriad of unilateral initiatives, and the ones which stand out are EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, Spain’s Mineral Raw Materials Action Plan 2025-2029, Future Made in Australia Plan, UK’s Critical Mineral Refresh, Korea’s Circular Economy Policy, and India’s Critical Minerals Missions, among others. According to a database maintained by the International Energy Agency, Asia-Pacific is one of the most vibrant regions in terms of introducing policies for critical minerals.

These initiatives have significant potential in terms of redefining critical minerals supply chain. These plurilateral initiatives, for instance, is witnessing a new era of cooperation and joint initiatives in this area. A key question is: do all these countries share a collective understanding of which material or mineral is critical? Furthermore, the workings of multilateral initiatives like the MSP and the IPEF Working Group on Critical Minerals, are not transparent.

The recent surge in targeted domestic initiatives aimed at regulating the supply chain of critical minerals is a phenomenon that demands systematic research. In this context, the paper seeks to contribute to a collective understanding of critical raw materials and the approaches adopted by various countries in this domain. Moreover, it aims to explore the potential implications of these initiatives, not only in terms of reshaping the supply chain of critical minerals but also in the context of potential violations of certain WTO principles.

Public Lecture | Babasaheb Ambedkar on the Limits of Law | Ashok Gopal | 24 July 2026

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, is organising a public lecture on “Babasaheb Ambedkar on the Limits of Law” by Ashok Gopal on 24 July 2026 at 5 PM in the Conference Hall, Ground Floor Training Centre, NLSIU.

Abstract:

Dr B. R. Ambedkar was a lawyer, deeply committed to legal education, and one of the principal architects of the Constitution of India. His legal acumen is evident in the argumentative style of many of his writings. He had a strong faith in the power of law to bring about progressive social change. Yet he was equally conscious of its limits. Deep and lasting changes in social relations and behaviour, he maintained, ultimately depended on the ‘social conscience’ of the majority and the moral values that shaped it. This talk examines this tension in Ambedkar’s thought and argues that his recognition of the limits of law contributed to his turn towards Buddhism as an ethical framework for building an egalitarian and democratic society.

About the Speaker:

Ashok Gopal is the author of the acclaimed biography A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B. R. Ambedkar, which received the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize (2024). He is currently working on an annotated edition of Ambedkar’s The Buddha and His Dhamma, which is forthcoming.

Public Lecture | Science, Law, and the Rights of Nature: Innovative Approaches in Latin America

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is organising a public lecture on “Science, Law, and the Rights of Nature: Innovative Approaches in Latin America” by Dr Clara María Minaverry and Daniela Belén Velazquez in discussion with Dr. Gayathri D. Naik, on 27 July 2026.

The event is open to public, please register here.

Abstract:

Technical reports from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provide the factual basis demonstrating the inadequacy of traditional environmental law. The latter—predominantly anthropocentric in nature and administrative-regulatory in design—has historically been structured around weighing and authorising permissible negative externalities, while keeping ecosystems within the dogmatic category of objects of property and resources for economic exploitation.

In response to the limitations of this regulatory approach, Latin American constitutionalism has introduced an epistemic shift by granting legal personhood to nature. This process of legal formalisation is evident in the Constitution of Ecuador and in legislative developments in Bolivia, where nature transitions from an object of protection to a subject of substantive rights (regarding existence, structure, and regeneration).

At the jurisprudential level, the Constitutional Court of Colombia has complemented this doctrine by formulating the concept of biocultural rights. This approach inextricably links biodiversity preservation with the safeguarding of the autonomy and traditional practices of local ethnic communities, recognising them as co-guardians of ecosystem stability.

However, the sociological efficacy of these norms faces a stark legal contradiction. An ecocentric normative framework coexists alongside public development policies based on neo-extractivism and transnational commercial law in the region. Operationalising the Rights of Nature, therefore, requires resolving these normative conflicts by subordinating commercial and contractual regulatory frameworks to the global biophysical limits established by scientific consensus.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Clara María Minaverry is an Independent Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina) and Associate Professor of Environmental Law at the National University of Luján. She holds a PhD in Law from the University of Buenos Aires, a Postdoctoral degree in Social Sciences and Humanities, and a Master’s degree in Environmental Law from the Complutense University of Madrid.

Her academic and research work focuses on environmental and international law, ecosystem services, forests, climate change, biodiversity, and the rights of nature from socio-legal and interdisciplinary perspectives. She was a Visiting Scholar at Duke University Law School (USA) in 2024 through a Fulbright-CONICET postdoctoral fellowship. She is the Director of the Environmental Law Program (PRODA) at the Department of Social Sciences at the National University of Luján (UNLu).

Dr. Minaverry currently serves as Lead Author for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities and for assessments developed by IPBES under UNESCO. She has also collaborated with international organizations and public institutions on environmental governance and biodiversity-related projects.

She has directed several research projects in Argentina and has an extensive academic production, including books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles. She also supervises doctoral and master’s theses and environmental law research programs.

Daniela Belén Velazquez is an Argentine attorney graduated from the Universidad Abierta Interamericana (UAI), specializing in Environmental Law from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and is an Internal Doctoral Fellow at CONICET.

With a strongly interdisciplinary profile, she has extensive experience in the defence of Human Rights, providing legal counsel to Indigenous communities in land-related conflicts, and contributing to the development of public policies focused on gender equality and sustainability.

She has served as a technical advisor to national institutions such as the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) and has been a member of the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA).

In addition, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at various universities and is a researcher with the Environmental Law Program (PRODA) within the Department of Social Sciences at the National University of Luján (UNLu). Her work is supported by an extensive record of research and specialised publications on environmental law, the rights of nature, and biocultural rights, among other topics.

In Memoriam: Marc Galanter | Online Panel Discussion | 18 July 2026

The National Law School of India Review (NLSIR) and the Socio-Legal Review (SLR), student-edited journals of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, are co-organising an online panel discussion on 18th July 2026, 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM, to commemorate the life and work of the late Professor Marc Galanter. An influential scholar of law and society, he passed away on 14 April 2026.

Professor Robert Hayden, Professor Robert Moog, and Mr. Nick Robinson, close collaborators, peers, and interlocutors of Prof Galanter, will be discussing his contributions. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Sidharth Chauhan. The panel discussion is open to all. It will be followed by an audience Q&A round with the panellists.

Please note that registration is mandatory.

About Professor Galanter

Professor Marc Galanter was a scholar of public law, South Asian law, law and religion, and socio-legal studies. His engagement with Indian law and society dates as far back as 1957, when he enrolled at the University of Delhi on a Fulbright Scholarship to study untouchability and its abolition. Professor Galanter’s career and the Indian legal system developed alongside each other, with his work playing a major role in shaping law in the country. Indian courts, legislators, and lawyers alike have treated Professor Galanter’s work, which ranges from caste and reservation to alternative justice mechanisms, as instructive.

Professor Galanter’s shared history with NLSIU, having served on the first Expert Panel, which reviewed the university’s performance and suggested a roadmap ahead, makes this discussion especially relevant. He also authored a Foreword titled ‘The Inscrutable Future of the Indian Legal Profession’ for the university’s student-authored diversity report The Elusive Island of Excellence.

About the Panellists and Moderator

Professor Robert Hayden is a legal and political anthropologist, and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Law at the University of Pittsburgh. His doctoral research brought him to India, where his ethnography focussed on dispute settlements before caste panchayats. He was Professor Galanter’s student at the Buffalo Law School. He has worked extensively on religion and culture, communal conflict, and nationalism and constitutionalism in socialist and post-socialist societies.

Professor Robert Moog is a political scientist, and Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University, where he also served as the Chair of the Department of Political Science. His work focuses on South Asian justice systems, environmental politics, and electoral processes, judicial politics in the United States, and higher education in Turkey. Professor Moog has on various occasions credited Professor Galanter as being influential to his own work.

Mr. Nick Robinson is a lawyer and legal academic, whose work has extensively focused on the Indian legal system. His areas of expertise include empirical legal studies, counter-terrorism laws, the legal profession, and judicial systems. He has previously clerked under the Chief Justice of India, served as Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Law School.

Dr. Sidharth Chauhan is an Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU. His research expertise lies in the field of public law, including constitutional law, as well as socio-legal studies, and law and literature studies. Professor Chauhan has previously worked as law clerk under the Chief Justice of India, after which he taught at NLSIU and later at NALSAR for 11 years. He has since returned to NLSIU, where he teaches courses on public law, legal methods, and administrative law.

About the Journals

NLSIR is the flagship student-edited law journal of NLSIU. Open-access and double-anonymous peer-reviewed, the journal is one of India’s oldest student-edited law reviews. It is now in its 38th year of publication. NLSIR occupies a distinctive place in Indian legal academia as a forum that has consistently sought to combine rigorous doctrinal analysis with broader normative and theoretical inquiry. Over the years, the journal has been cited by the Supreme Court of India on multiple occasions—in KS Puttaswamy v Union of India, Unaided Private Schools of Delhi v Director of Education, Union of India v M/s Mohit Minerals, and AMU v Naresh Agarwal.

SLR is an open-access, student-run, peer-reviewed journal that encourages interdisciplinary research at the intersection of law and social science. The journal is published by the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. First published in 2005 with the help of a grant from the Modern Law Review, SLR has carried articles by luminaries in the field of law and society, such as Roger Cotterrell, WT Murphy, Werner Menski, Asghar Ali Engineer, Pratiksha Baxi, and Gina Heathcote. The journal has been cited by the Supreme Court of India on two occasions—in Justice Chandrachud’s opinion in Justice KS Puttaswamy and Anr v Union of India and Ors (2018) and by Justice Indu Malhotra and Justice Chandrachud in their respective opinions in Joseph Shine v Union of India (2018). SLR has also been cited by Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia of the High Court of Uttarakhand in Tanuja Tolia v State of Uttarakhand (2020).

For further details, please reach out to or .

Faculty Seminar | Surbhi Vatsa

This week’s faculty seminar will feature a presentation by Surbhi Vatsa, Visiting Faculty at NLSIU, on ‘Revisiting the Invisible Labour Theory of Housework: A Response from the Contemporary Archive.’

Abstract

This essay locates itself in the lineage of the Wages for Housework Movement of the second half of the twentieth century, both academically and politically. Revisiting the thesis that capitalism keeps women’s labour underpaid or unpaid by ‘invisibilizing’ it, the essay argues for a new strategy of ‘hypervisibilisation’ and adds to the argument made by the likes of Silvia Federici, Dalla Costa, Selma James and Nancy Fraser. This argument emerges from a study of the advertisements and their usage of women’s images- especially as ‘mother’ and ‘housewife ’- in the 1960s and 70s North Indian, Hindi public sphere. Reading these advertisements alongside Marx’s theory of the fetishism of commodities, the paper argues that the capitalist market turns women’s care labour into a ‘meta commodity’ that can not be compensated for in terms of human wages, and hence uses hypervisbilisation as a tool of keeping women’s care outside of the realm of monied wage labour.

About the Speaker

Surbhi is a visiting faculty at NLS Bangalore and has recently been awarded their doctorate from the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU. Surbhi’s research area straddles questions of popular culture and gender in contemporary India. Before joining NLS, Surbhi has taught at Miranda House and Krea University.