The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to a talk on ‘The ‘Economy’ in Indian Politics: Some Inter-disciplinary Reflections‘ by Prathama Banerjee. The talk will take place on Wednesday, October 10, 2021 from 5.00 PM to 6.00 PM.
About The Speaker
Prathama Banerjee is a historian at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. She works at the cusp of political philosophy, philosophies of time, conceptual histories and aesthetic theory. Her most recent book is Elementary Aspects of the Political: Histories from the Global South, Duke University Press, 2020.
Abstract
The concept of the ‘economy’ has a paradoxical constitution. On the one hand, it is known as an abstract and specialised concept, produced out of expert discourses and governmental speak. On the other hand, being about bare life and basic needs, it is seen as the most real, immediate and intimate aspect of people’s lives, even if people might not realise it as self-conscious economic subjects.
In this presentation, the speaker explores the different ways in which the concept of the economy has been mobilised in popular politics in colonial and postcolonial India; and try to think through the conceptual mismatches between the economy of politics and the economy of economics.
She argues that today, it is not enough to offer a political critique of economic thought and policy. We need to fundamentally rethink, despite disciplinary obstacles, the relationship between the political and the economic in its historically mutating forms.
Six decades ago, Hannah Arendt spelled out the epistemic crisis that shrouds the world when it comes to decision making process in public sphere in her classic on Truth and Politics. The policy practice of ‘speaking truth to power’ has become increasingly opaque since Arendt’s prediction. This panel is exploring the problematic Arendt proposed in South Asian context.
Knowledge generation, knowledge transmission and knowledge reception in professional context of advice giving is extremely complex. How knowledge is able to influence policy decisions becomes the proof of the pudding in the context of professional education. Most of the South Asian countries with authoritarian decision making model face the difficulty of convincing a leader with the apolitical tool of knowledge. This is the epistemic crisis of policy practice in South Asia. Educational content in policy schools, pedagogy used to prepare the graduates and strategic linkage of policy schools with government creates an eco-system to deal with this epistemic crisis.
In South Asia, policy schools are yet to define their mission clearly, since most of these schools are attached with Management Schools, Law Schools, Economics Departments, private universities or even as entrepreneurial opportunities. Aaron Wildaswky’s insightful formulation of “Public policy schools do to government what business schools do to business” (ref. Speaking Truth to Power) can be one leading light in this mission defining exercise. This panel aims to contribute to this mission defining exercise by exploring the connection between knowledge and power in advice giving in policy context.
Three papers included in this panel are exploring the theme of the panel from three different viewpoints:
First, from the point view of curriculum of public policy schools. Curriculum is designed in policy schools to prepare graduates to equip necessary skills, knowledge and value orientation to deal with the challenge of ‘speaking truth to power’. However, different schools adopt different positions when it comes to policy practice. A clear divide that is emerging in South Asia is between techno-managerial approach and political approach.
Second paper in the panel is examining the question of mismatch between skill requirement in the job market for public policy professionals and curriculum in South Asian schools.
Third paper is examining the imbalance in relationship between public administrators and consultants. A good number of placements for graduates from policy schools are with consultants. Therefore, how the relationship between consultant and administrator is defined, shape the policy practice.
All the three papers together contribute to the understanding on vexed relationship between truth and power in policy practice in South Asian context.
Papers presented by the panel:
Title: Competition of techno-managerialism and political views in the public policy training
Authored by Sachin Tiwari (Centre for Labour Studies, NLSIU), and Disha Ranjan (Army Law College, Mohali)
Abstract: A visible change has taken place in last one decade for public policy education in India. Forty seven schools of public policy education have emerged in less than a decade in India. Among them, five streams of policy education are being offered. These five streams are: a) undergraduate degree in public policy, b) post-graduate degree in public policy, c) doctoral education in public policy, d) diploma programmes in Public Policy, and e) online education programmes in public policy. This paper is comparing the educational curriculum of these 47 schools based on the publicly available information, and interviews conducted with academic leaders and students of these schools. Pattern emerging here shows that in the post-graduate programme, there is a unifying trend. There is huge heterogeneity in all other streams of programmes. Therefore, further analysis is undertaken on the curriculum of post-graduate programme, where a divide of techno-managerial approach and political approach to public policy is visible.
Title: Context matters for employable skills in Public Policy: A study of job-seeking patterns of graduates in Public Policy in India Paper by Vasundhara (Doctoral Scholar, National Law School of India University, Bangalore), and Vijay Paul (Policy Innovation Lab, India & Graphic Era University, Dehradun)
Abstract: Is there a mismatch between skills sets imparted through public policy education in India, and demands existing in job market? It is important to answer this question to inform the emerging public policy schools, not just in India, but across Asia. We study this by gathering information on placements from public policy schools and by conducting in-depth interviews with graduates after 2015. We notice that, there is good skill overlap between Master of Business Administration and Master of Public Policy. Very often, firms are employing graduates with MBA degree in the absence of sufficient pool of public policy graduates. Yet, the defining feature of policy professionals is their versatility and deep rooted desire to bring positive societal change. In this manner, unlike MBA graduates, where works ends up perpetuating societal status quo through market focused work, public policy professionals are oriented to be organic intellectuals, where work is in the interfacing areas of market, the state and civil society. Thus, transformation of public sphere is contributed through the works of policy professionals themselves. The key finding of our paper is the need for context-specific knowledge to gain public policy jobs. Knowledge as a universal transferable category to inform skills often is not appreciated by policy firms that recruit professionals. This is the epistemic crisis in policy practice we find.
Title: Effective Policymaking and Implementation: Do we need Administrators when Consultants call the shots? Paper by Mounik Lahiri (Deloitt), Anoushka Roy (PwC), & Shreoshee Mukherjee (J-Pal)
Abstract: Opposed to traditional views of who constitutes the ‘circle’ of policymakers and implementors, the emergence of private management consultancies—the knowledge brokers, or intermediaries between knowledge generators and policy decision-makers (Craft& Howlett, 2012; Lindvall, 2009; Sundquist, 1978), has expanded the public policy ecosystem. This ecosystem has ventured well beyond closed-door, bureaucratic public institutions. The often-acknowledged impasse within the public administrative system has strengthened the role of policy consultants, presenting fertile institutional settings, and conducive developmental priorities for policy consulting as an industry, and a profession to thrive.
Against this background, we question whether there is a need to rethink the functions of traditional administrators. If consultants control the life cycle of a policy, do we need administrators at all? This paper seeks to answer the question by examining how policy consultants operate differently from public administrators, latently embedded within the governance processes for many years. The key objective of this paper would be to investigate policy decisions which are complimented by private consulting firms at various stages forms—as political aide, as research consultants or as on-field executors. With this paper, we aspire to call out the obliterating line between the public and the private in policymaking, a topic rarely addressed in policy academia.
The Law and Technology Society is organising its National Debate Competition on October 23 and 24, 2021.
About The Organisers:
The Law and Technology Society of NLSIU, Bangalore is a group committed to exploring the boundless contours of the intriguing interface between law and technology. The main objective of the Society is to develop up-to-date learning opportunities in this field by organizing a series of fantastic events. The Dialogue is a research-driven think-tank working on the intersection of technology, society, and public policy. By facilitating informed policy debates at various levels, it aims to drive a progressive narrative in India’s policy discourse.
Theme of the competition
The dynamic nature of the internet requires us to revisit the traditional frameworks and explore more enabling policies for regulating competition in digital space. To encourage critical thinking and public speaking on inter-disciplinary issues the motion for the rounds will be based on ‘Competition Law in the Digital Space.’
Guidelines for the Competition
● 2 vs 2 format
● Participants are encouraged to register in a team of two, however in exceptional cases one can register individually as well. The OC will match the individual registrants through randomised allotment a day before the rounds.
● 6 minutes will be given to each speaker
● 1.5 minutes will be given to each team for rebuttals
● No. of Pre-break Rounds: 3
● Motions for all the pre break rounds will be released 24 hours in advance
Eligibility Criteria
Students/research scholars enrolled in any UG/PG/Ph.D. course from any university are eligible to participate in the competition.
Note: Prior knowledge of law is not prerequisite for participation. The motions will be framed keeping in mind the interests of all the participants and short explainers shall also be released by the organisers on their social media platforms to assist the participants in their preparation.
Registration Details
Interested participants are required to register here.
Fee: Rs. 100 per participant
Last date for registration: 21st October, 2021
Date of the competition: 23rd-24th October, 2021
Awards
● Mentorship session: All participants will be invited to attend a mentorship session with the echelons of the legal and tech fraternity on the first day of the competition.
● Exciting Cash Prizes:
➔ The Best Team and Runners Up will be awarded a cash prize of Rs. 25,000 and 15,000 respectively.
➔ The semi finalist teams will be awarded Rs. 5,000 each.
➔ The best speaker and second best speaker will be awarded with Rs. 10,000 and Rs. 5,000 respectively.
Contact Details
For any further information/clarification, please reach out to The Law and Technology Society at
Shubh Mittal (Convener): 8604133361
Shantanu Mishra (Joint-Convener): 9140452335
Prayer meetings were an important part of Mahatma Gandhi’s life to celebrate the importance of all religions and faiths. To commemorate these ideals of Gandhiji, the alumni and participants of the Public Policy Programme of NLSIU are organising a Prayer Meet ‘SAT – CHIT – AANANDA’ on October 2, 2021. The event will be held at 5.15 PM IST via Zoom.
The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to a talk on ‘India Justice Report 2020′ by Maja Daruwala on Wednesday, 15th September 2021 from 5.00 PM to 6.00 PM.
About the Speaker
Maja Daruwala is the Chief Editor of the India Justice Report and Senior Advisor with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI).
About the Report
The India Justice Report ranks 18 large and mid-sized, and 7 small states according to their capacity to deliver justice to all. It uses government data to assess the budgets, infrastructure, human resources, workload, diversity and 5 year trends of police, prisons, judiciary and legal aid in each state, against its own declared standards. This first of its kind study is an initiative of Tata Trusts undertaken in partnership with Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), DAKSH, TISS-Prayas and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
Methodology
IJR 2020 brings together 87 indicators related to justice delivery. It uses the latest data drawn from various official documents and departments as available in the public domain at the time of publication. These data sets are brought together and collated to assess the capacity of 4 pillars– police, prisons, legal aid, and judiciary–of each state’s justice system to effectively deliver justice. Each theme – infrastructure, budgets, human resources, workload and diversity as well as trends – is in itself is a commentary on a key facet of the pillar and combines with other metrics to compute an aggregate score for each pillar and finally a rank for the state.
How to read this factsheet?
Each indicator has a different unit, to enable comparison, we rebased values to score the state’s performance in a band of 1 to 10. The data below show how the Odisha compares on each indicator, against the other 17 large and mid-sized states. The higher the score, the better the state is doing. ‘Worst value’ and ‘best value’ point to the highest and lowest results in that indicator. The green and red circles indicate positive and negative change respectively over IJR 2019.
Bangalore International Centre is conducting a webinar titled, ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent? Examining the Ethical Foundations of Criminal Justice’ on September 15 at 6.30 pm. NLS faculty members Mrinal Satish and Kunal Ambasta will be speaking at the event along with human rights lawyer Isha Khandelwal, and moderated by Manisha Sethi, Head, Centre for Criminal Justice Reform & Research, NALSAR.
Concept: The adage “innocent until proven guilty” is considered foundational to justice and the rule of law. However, the law in India does not give this adage the core significance one would expect. Our constitution permits what is called “preventive detention”. We have laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) which make it close to impossible to receive bail and allow great latitude to the state in declaring a case to be under UAPA. Our investigative and judicial processes move so slowly that it is not unusual for a person to be jailed in the pretrial stage for longer than the possible sentence if convicted.
Such conditions can be construed as a violation of ethical foundations of justice, also laying the grounds for the misuse of law enforcement for purposes of politics and power.
This Article argues that there exists little legal or penological justification in not treating those offences under the general criminal scheme. Finally, this Article demonstrates that procedural innovations applied under the guise of special statutes, result in further erosion of the rights of the accused persons, and the systemic effects of such laws work to the detriment of the criminal justice system.
The Article examines the various features of special criminal laws in broadly four parts. Part I of this Article looks at the theoretical justification of creating special laws. Part II will examine the procedural innovations developed by special legislations. Part III analyses the role of special legislations in engendering a system of informal plea bargaining. Part IV sheds light on the direct impact that reverse onus clauses in special legislations have on the right of the accused.
The full paper will be made available at a later date.
This paper is an empirical study on medical examination of the accused in rape investigation. The research was conducted between January – June 2018, in the cities of Lucknow, Dehradun, New Delhi, Pune, Patna and Bangalore; and involved interactions with police officers, medical practitioners in-charge of conducting the accused’s examination as well as forensic science experts.
These semi-structured interviews revealed information about the events preceding a decision to examine a rape accused; protocols and procedures performed during the medical examination; the institutional structures within which the examination is conducted and perspectives of those in-charge of it (primarily, the police and medical practitioners); the medical evidence obtained; and its role in the adjudication of rape.
The work was supervised by Dr. Mrinal Satish, who was then a Professor of Law at National Law University Delhi. It was during his seminar course on ‘Contemporary Issues in Criminal Law’ that I first learnt about the role of medical evidence in rape trials.
The full paper will be made available at a later date.
Abstract: In this Introduction to a set of essays that contemplate India’s liberal trajectory, Krishnaswamy, a philosopher, and Majumder, an anthropologist, consider with our divergent disciplinary toolkits, a map of Indian theory. As they see it, there have been four problems that have perpetuated a continuous theoretical dialogue within modern India. The four problems are the problem of caste and social injustice, Hindu-Muslim relations, the relevance of colonial institutions and the question of language and its self-assertive politics.
The full paper will be made available at a later date.
We look forward to welcoming a new cohort of undergraduate and postgraduate students for the Academic Year 2021-22. The University will be conducting a week-long Orientation Programme to introduce our new students to the NLS community. The Programme begins on Monday, August 2, 2021 and will continue till Friday, August 6, 2021. The Orientation sessions will be conducted virtually and our new students will have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the various academic and social activities at NLSIU. The Orientation schedule is attached below.
As our students make the transition from school to university environment, we look forward to ushering them into a University space that is committed to a holistic educational experience, a culture of free inquiry and socially sensitive lawyering.
The academic term for the incoming batch of BA LLB (Hons) and LLM students commences August 9, 2021.
Orientation Address
In this year’s orientation, we will be joined by five leading personalities from the world of law, public life and the arts, to reflect on the place of a law and liberal arts education in 21st century India. During the week, these eminent speakers will deliver an orientation address to our incoming batch of students.
Source: Texas A&M University School of Law
Justice Ravindra Bhat, Supreme Court of India
Justice Shripathi Ravindra Bhat is a Judge of the Supreme Court of India. He is former Chief Justice of Rajasthan High Court. He also served as a former Judge of Delhi High Court for 15 years. Justice Bhat has authored a constitution panel judgement on equality and affirmative action, as well as judgements on gender sensitivity in writing judgements, receiving electronic evidence in court, and insolvency law.
Justice Bhat has also authored landmark judgements on issues of constitutional law, taxation laws, administrative law, arbitration, and labour law, amongst others.
Watch the Orientation Address by Justice Bhat here.
Source: The Leaflet
Indira Jaising, Senior Advocate and former Additional Solicitor General
Indira Jaising is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India who is noted for her legal activism in promoting human right causes. In 2018, she was ranked 20th in the list of 50 Greatest Leaders of the World by Fortune magazine. She co-founded the Lawyers’ Collective, a legal NGO that has been working since its inception in 1980 for the rights of the marginalised, particularly women, LGBTQ peoples, sex workers, and many more economically and socially disadvantaged groups. Jaising’s role was pioneering in forming landmark laws against domestic violence, against sexual harassment at workplace, among other legal interventions.
Zia Mody, Co–Founder and Managing Partner, AZB & Partners
Zia Mody is one of India’s foremost corporate attorneys. She began her career as a corporate associate in the New York office of Baker & McKenzie, where she worked for 5 years before moving to India to establish the Chambers of Zia Mody, which became AZB & Partners in 2004. Zia is widely acknowledged for her expertise, ranking No. 1 in Fortune India’s ‘India’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business’ list in 2018 & 2019 and has also been a member of various regulatory and advisory committees , both domestic and international.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former Vice Chancellor, Ashoka University and President, Centre for Policy Research
Pratap Bhanu Mehta is a political scientist who has taught at Harvard University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the New York University School of Law. His areas of research include political theory, constitutional law, society and politics in India, governance and political economy, and international affairs. Dr Mehta has served on many central government committees, including India’s National Security Advisory Board, the Prime Minister of India’s National Knowledge Commission, and a Supreme Court-appointed committee on elections in Indian universities. He is also a contributing editor and newspaper columnist.
TM Krishna, Carnatic vocalist, author and activist
Thodur Madabusi Krishna is a Carnatic vocalist, writer, activist and author. He began performing at the age of 12 with his debut concert at the Spirit of Youth series organized by the Music Academy, Chennai. He has performed widely at various festivals and venues across the world. His music is often appraised as being soulful and full of ‘raga bhava’. He also speaks and writes about a wide range of issues beyond music and culture.
Session 1, 10 am – 11.15 am: Gender Sensitization Workshop
Session 2, 12 pm – 1.15 pm: Prevention of Sexual Harassment
Session 3, 2.30 pm – 3.45 pm: Caste Sensitization Workshop
Session 4, 5 pm: Orientation Address IV – Mr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Day 5 – Friday, Aug 6, 2021
Session 1, 10 am – 11 am: Meet your Batch
Breakouts groups moderated by faculty members
Session 2, 11.30 am – 1 pm: Welcome session by the Student Bar Association (SBA)
Session 3, 3 pm: Orientation Address V – Mr. T M Krishna
How do I attend the session?
You will receive the schedule on your personal email IDs as provided in the CLAT portal. Each time slot in the schedule will provide the following information:
a. Meeting Room Name.
b. URL and Meeting ID to join the meeting.
c. Please ensure that you use your personal email ID (as provided in the CLAT portal) for joining the meeting.
If you require technical assistance during the Orientation Programme, please send an email to .
Theme of the competition
Prayer meetings were an important part of Mahatma Gandhi’s life to celebrate the importance of all religions and faiths. To commemorate these ideals of Gandhiji, the alumni and participants of the Public Policy Programme of NLSIU are organising a Prayer Meet ‘SAT – CHIT – AANANDA’ on October 2, 2021. The event will be held at 5.15 PM IST via Zoom.
