News Type: Event

The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to ‘Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell us About Modern India’ on March 17, 2022 at 5 PM.

About the speaker

The speaker, Rukmini S is an independent data journalist.

The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to ‘Double Feminist Book Salon’ on 17th December 2021 from 5 PM to 6.30 PM.

About the speakers

• Dr. Srila Roy, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Witswatersrand, and author of Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India by Duke University Press (Forthcoming).
• Dr. Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, Assistant Professor, Law, University of California, Irvine, and author of Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility Among India’s Professional Elite by Princeton University Press, 2021.

NLSIU Assistant Professor, Sociology, Dr. Atreyee Majumder, will be a discussant at the session.

The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to a talk on ‘The Politics of Expendability: State Suppression of Police Workers in India’ by Prof. Beatrice Jauregui on December 8, 2021 at 6 pm.

About the speaker

Prof. Beatrice Jauregui is Associate Professor at the Centre for Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies, University of Toronto.

Abstract

Building on theorization of police in contemporary India as “expendable servants” (Jauregui 2016), this paper analyzes government responses to attempts by police constables to express job-related grievances and establish employee unions. Drawing on ethnographic observations, interviews, and archival documents collected in Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi over fifteen years, the analysis demonstrates that for more than a century, class warfare within police organizations has manifested in counterinsurgency lawfare between senior officials and subordinate personnel regarding whether and how the latter may collectively organize to transform their living and working conditions. It further shows how in this context the law subjectifies rank and file police as an ironically exploitable class of laborers who are always already suspect of rebelling against the state that they have sworn to serve. Through revelations of a long history of structural servitude compelling subaltern police in South Asia to do questionably legal types of work, this study raises challenging questions about how police as expendable workers have been conceived and practiced globally, and how, moving forward, we must work to reimagine what police work is, can be, and ought to be in India and beyond.

The Faculty Seminar was held on September 8, 2021.

Speaker

Dr. Anwesha Ghosh, Assistant Professor, History, NLSIU

Abstract

This paper highlights the role of the Municipal Corporation in Calcutta’s urban development in the second half of the nineteenth century. Specifically, it focuses on the aspect of “modernisation” as evident in the transformation of Calcutta’s prosperous Dhurrumtollah Bazaar into the city’s first municipal market. The paper discusses the multiform technologies of governance deployed by the municipality (municipal governmentality) in this elaborate task of improving Calcutta’s built environment. It argues that beneath the municipality’s grandiose sanitisation and beautification plans lay a more intricate arrangement of disciplining and economizing “errant” and “corrupt” bazaar economies to conform to the logic of the modern market. Using Market Committee Reports and contemporary literary fiction as chief primary sources, ‘Marking the Market’ is an invitation to rethink questions of modernity and informality — two popular themes in colonialist historiography — not as mutually exclusive but rather as co-constitutive categories.

The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to a talk on ‘Dimapur Matters’ by Dolly Kikon and Duncan McDuie-Ra on November 24, 2021 at 3 pm.

About the speakers

Dolly Kikon is an anthropologist. She teaches at the University of Melbourne.
Duncan McDuie-Ra is professor of urban studies at the University of Newcastle with an interest in urban cultures.

Abstract

The presentation discusses their recent book titled ‘Ceasefire City: Militarism, Capitalism and Urbanism in Dimapur’ (Nagaland, India) through the fluid meanings of particular spaces in the city, and the embodied experiences of the city by its residents. The authors use a description of a single site as the catalyst for drawing these parts together; the collapsed bridge over the Chathe River at Naga United Village in Dimapur’s east. At the collapsed bridge, the visions of Dimapur as a cohesive urban space, as city-like, meet the reality of its patchwork of places demarcated and governed as distinct units. The common spaces in between fall into disrepair, a locus for community frustrations materialized in concrete slabs in the riverbed, and an ornate village gate leading nowhere.

The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to a talk on ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of Legal Personality’ by Prof. Simon Chesterman. The talk will take place on Thursday, November 18, 2021 from 5.00 PM to 6.00 PM.

About the speaker:

Prof. Simon Chesterman, Dean and Provost’s Chair Professor of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Senior Director of AI Governance at AI Singapore. He is also Editor of the Asian Journal of International Law and Co-President of the Law Schools Global League.

Abstract:

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more sophisticated and play a larger role in society, arguments that they should have some form of legal personality gain credence. It has been suggested that this will fill an accountability gap created by the speed, autonomy, and opacity of AI. In addition, a growing body of literature considers the possibility of AI systems owning the intellectual property that they create. The arguments are typically framed in instrumental terms, with comparisons to juridical persons such as corporations. Implicit in those arguments, or explicit in their illustrations and examples, is the idea that as AI systems approach the point of indistinguishability from humans they should be entitled to a status comparable to natural persons. This presentation contends that although most legal systems could create a novel category of legal persons, such arguments are insufficient to show that they should.

Please register in advance for this meeting with the link provided above. You will receive Zoom details once you register.

The full paper is available here.

The NLS Public Lecture Series invites you to a talk on ‘ Coding Nature’s Code‘ by Prof. Katharina Pistor. The event will take place on Thursday, October 11, 2021 from 5.00 PM to 6.00 PM.

About the Speaker

Prof. Katharina Pistor, Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School & Director of the Law School’s Center on Global Legal Transformation. Katharina Pistor is a leading scholar and writer on corporate governance, money and finance, property rights, and comparative law and legal institutions.

Abstract

The legal code can also be used to code knowledge, including of nature’s own code, by legally enclosing it to the exclusion of others. Most intellectual property rights are of only limited duration so that the fountain of wealth they create will dry out eventually. Still, there are ways to prolong their life span by altering some features of the original invention, or by recoding them with legal modules that do not have an expiration date, such as trade secrecy law.

The paper is available here.

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.

The full paper is available here.

The panel discussion is part of the NASPPA South Asian Conference being held from November 12-14, 2021.

• Time: 14.30-16.00 (Dhaka Time)
• Panel Organiser: Sony Pellissery, Institute of Public Policy, NLSIU
• Panelists: Sachin Tiwari, Disha Ranjan, Vijay Paul, Vasundhara N., Mounik Lahiri, Anoushka Roy & Shreoshee Mukherjee

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.