We invite curious, interested and aspiring students, lawyers and other professionals to the open house on NLSIU’s Master’s Programme in Public Policy. This conversation will revolve around public policy education and practice, focussing on the curriculum and pedagogy of what NLS has to offer in this subject. This discussion will be hosted at the Lecture Room 1, India International Centre, New Delhi from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm on December 7, 2025.

The open house will be conducted by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Public Policy programme at NLS – Dr. Srikrishna Ayyangar and Dr. Devyani Pande. Having a combined experience of around three decades in this field both in India and abroad, they will convey the distinctive approach that NLS has to offer in public policy education.

Context

Over the past two decades, public policy has fundamentally changed the landscape of governance in India. With more than 60 academic programmes and a multi-billion-dollar public policy industry in India today, professionals to work in the area of public policy are certainly in demand and on the rise. These jobs range from strategic advisory, policy analysis, evaluation and monitoring of government programmes and advocating for issues in the public interest such as climate and environment advocacy, energy sufficiency, gender and human rights, and community empowerment. Be that as it may, different public policy professional programmes offer a distinct approach to educating aspiring professionals to meet the needs of this profession.

The Master’s Programme in Public Policy (MPP) at the National School of India University (NLSIU) offers one such distinctive approach. Being one of the first to launch a full-time MPP programme in India and having faculty with diverse experience with global and local academic backgrounds from a variety of disciplines and including some of the founding faculty and students of NLS, the MPP has adapted and is at the forefront of public policy education today.

The MPP provides a comprehensive education for aspiring public policy professionals to constructively meet the challenges of complex public problems. Our programme comprises relevant and contemporary perspectives from the social sciences, multi-methods research, experiential and immersive field projects and internships. Additionally, how governments function cannot be fully understood by only looking only at data-based evidence and socio-political contexts. Data helps to evaluate how governments act because data reflects government action. And laws help to assess how governments think. Public policy requires understanding administrative procedures, constitutional norms and a case-based understanding of how governments think and act. This programme is distinctive because it is singularly poised to also provide an exemplary foundation in the law relevant to public policy.

To register for the event, please click here.

A PDF version for circulation is also available here.

In this week’s faculty seminar Manish, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU presented his paper titled ‘Persistence of the world-class city: good governance and slum rehabilitation in contemporary Delhi’. The discussant was Dr. Sushmita Pati, Associate Professor of Social Science, NLSIU.

Abstract

This essay analyses contemporary slum rehabilitation policy in Delhi, India’s capital city—comprising the Delhi Slum and JJ Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy 2015 and its enabling statute, the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board Act 2010—using the framework of urban international law. It seeks to examine the policy framing of ‘slums’ as a problem needing the solution of ‘rehabilitation,’ and interrogate its assumptions and representations. In doing so, it shows that urban international law influences this framing through the logics of ‘good governance’ and the ‘world-class city’, and that in reproducing these logics the policy perpetuates existing inequalities experienced by the urban poor in Delhi.

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NLSIU launches a new conversation series by eminent speakers titled ‘Crafting Careers’ this week.  The inaugural session in this series features Mr. Vikram Bhat, Director of the Bangalore International Centre on November 22, 2025, from 2 pm to 3 pm at the NLS campus.

Crafting Careers

Crafting Careers is a new conversation series at the University under the NLS BA (Hons) programme, designed to help students navigate the world of work. Each session in the series brings leading professionals from fields such as media, government, public policy, business, finance, and the creative arts to campus for candid conversations about their journeys. These experts will share insights and advice from their professional experiences and offer reflections on how social science majors may relate to different career pathways. These dialogues will offer students a chance to learn from diverse experiences, gain practical insights, and reflect on how to build careers that align with their own interests, skills, and values.

About the Speaker

Vikram Bhat, presently the Director of the Bangalore International Centre, is a passionate educator who has had previous successful careers in technology and finance. In education, his areas of interest are educational equity, designing curricula for lifelong learning, and teacher training. He is particularly inspired by the potential of design thinking and an integrated Arts curriculum to transform educational systems.

Previously, Vikram worked as an advisor in the Deputy CM’s office in Delhi where he was a key member of the education task force which has transformed Delhi’s government schools. Before this, he served as the Vice Principal of an affordable private school in Central Bengaluru, prior to which he taught full-time at Parikrma, a unique NGO in Bengaluru that strives to provide high-quality education to slum children. He also held senior management positions at Dream a Dream & Teach For India, two of India’s most respected non-profits working in the education sector.

Prior to his career in education, he was the Vice-President of portfolio trading at Sanford Bernstein & Co., a pioneering equity research firm in New York, playing a key role in setting up their New York and London electronic trading operations.

He holds a B.E. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Mumbai, a Masters in Computer Science from New York University, and more recently, a Bachelor of Education from Christ University. He has also attended short-term courses at the d.school at Stanford University and Project Zero at Harvard University.

Vikram’s younger self is an avid long-distance runner having completed over 25 races and is a passionate film and theatre buff.

Watch the Session Video

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, and the Rajiv K. Luthra Foundation (RKLF) jointly organised the First Rajiv K. Luthra Memorial Lecture.

The event opened with welcome remarks by Prof. (Dr.) Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor, NLSIU.  The inaugural lecture was delivered by Professor Dev Gangjee, University of Oxford on the topic “Tools or Partners? Hybrid Human–AI Creativity and the Boundaries of Copyright.” The lecture was followed by a discussion featuring Prof. Gangjee, Eashan Ghosh, National Law University Delhi, and Dr. Arul George Scaria, Professor of Law, NLSIU. The session saw an engaging Q&A with the audience, post-which Gayatri Luthra and Ananya Gaur spoke on behalf of the foundation. The vote of thanks was delivered by Sidharth Chauhan, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU.

Abstract of the Lecture

While policymakers and courts around the world grapple with the legality of training Generative AI on copyrighted works, an equally important question remains largely unexplored: can the human-induced outputs of these Gen AI systems ever qualify as authorial works under copyright law? If we use prompts to create images, can we claim them as our property? Do detailed and iterative prompts reflect sufficient human creative direction to qualify for copyright? Or are we simply rolling the dice each time, unsure of the results onscreen? As a normative matter, should we embrace this form of democratised creativity, which allows anyone to produce art, literature or music? Or does it fundamentally erode the relational processes which underpin meaningful creative production, thereby diluting markets for creative works? Generative AI therefore holds up a mirror to copyright law. This lecture reviews why we value creativity and through comparative law, including the US, EU, UK, China and India, explores whether copyright law has appropriate legal tools and thresholds in place to meet this challenge.

About The Speaker

Dev Gangjee is Professor of Intellectual Property Law within the Law Faculty and a Law Fellow at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. Prior to joining Oxford, he was a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics (LSE). Dev is a graduate of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

About The Discussants

• Eashan Ghosh is an advocate specialising in intellectual property law, in private practice since 2011. He is In-Charge IPR Chair at National Law University (NLU) Delhi, where he also serves as the Programme Director of the WIPO Joint Masters in Intellectual Property Law & Management. Eashan, a graduate of the NLSIU (BA LLB (Hons), 2010) is the author of three book titles, the most recent of them being Imperfect Recollections: The Indian Supreme Court on Trade Mark Law (2024).
• Dr. Arul George Scaria is a Professor of Law at NLSIU. He is a legal scholar with a wealth of expertise in intellectual property and competition law. He teaches, researches, and writes on issues at the intersection of law, science, and technology.

About the Sponsors

NLSIU hosted the First Rajiv K. Luthra Memorial Lecture with the support provided by the Rajiv K. Luthra Foundation (RKLF) that is based in New Delhi. The RKLF has been established in the memory of Late Shri Rajiv K. Luthra, the Founder and Managing Partner of Luthra & Luthra Law Offices, which is one of India’s most well-known commercial law firms. The RKLF has also provided a generous grant to NLSIU for the redevelopment of one of its academic buildings. This inaugural lecture is being organised as part of an annual lecture series.

In the Press

Rajiv K Luthra Foundation And NLSIU Bangalore Jointly Organise 1st Edition Of Rajiv K Luthra Memorial Series | LiveLaw

Experts debate in Bengaluru: Can you copyright an Artificial Intelligence-generated image? | The Times of India

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The JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising an online discussion with Madhavi Singh, Deputy Director of the Thurman Arnold Project and a Resident Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School on November 24, 2025 (6 pm). The discussion will revolve around the topic, ‘Competition Issues around Google’s AI Answers in Search’.

Ms. Singh will be discussing a forthcoming paper which examines the competition risks arising from the integration of AI features in Google’s search, and the potential leveraging of dominance in search to monopolise adjacent markets such as answer engines.

Dr. Vikas Kathuria, Director of Centre on Law, Regulation & Technology (CLRT) at BML Munjal University, will be the discussant.

This discussion is part of the Centre’s series of presentations by leading scholars on novel scholarship and ongoing work.

About the Speaker

Madhavi Singh is the Deputy Director of the Thurman Arnold Project and a Resident Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale. Her research looks at antitrust regulation of digital markets, the economic and non-economic effects of monopoly power, and consolidation in the AI supply chain.

Her professional expertise lies in antitrust, encompassing enforcement cases, corporate regulations and economic policy frameworks. Madhavi read for the Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.) from the University of Oxford as a Felix Scholar and received an LL.M. from Harvard Law School as a K.C. Mahindra Scholar.

Registration

Registration for the event is mandatory. To register for the event, fill out the form here.
Registrants will receive details for the webinar link to to activate the MS Teams webinar.

 

 

 

At this week’s faculty seminar, Mahima Balaji and Kaustav Saha, Assistant Professors of Law, NLSIU, presented their paper titled, ‘Codified but Not Constrained: Recasting Proprietary Estoppel under the Indian Transfer of Property Act, 1882.’

Abstract

This article revisits the foundations of proprietary estoppel under the Indian Transfer of Property Act, 1882 (TPA), by examining Sections 41, 43, and 53A. It argues that the prevailing interpretation of these codified forms remains unduly tethered to contract law.

The article advances two core claims. First, it distinguishes between contractual invalidity – where an agreement is void under the Indian Contract Act, 1872 (ICA); and proprietary invalidity – where the interest itself is incapable of transfer under the TPA. Preserving this distinction, it is argued, is essential to maintaining the doctrinal coherence and function of proprietary estoppel in Indian property law. Second, the article reconceptualises proprietary estoppel under the TPA as generating substantive secondary rights, independent of contractual enforceability. Taken together, these claims position proprietary estoppel not as a contractual adjunct but as a distinct mechanism for the creation of proprietary interests within Indian law.

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NLSIU’s Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) is launching the Maya Sharma–Indira Pathak (MSIP) Collection Online Catalogue, featuring a talk by Maya Sharma, on November 25, 2025, 5 to 7 PM at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC).

RSVP Here

About the Collection

Maya Sharma and Indira Pathak are feminist, queer, grassroots activists based in Vadodara, Gujarat. Maya Sharma is a journalist and worked with trade unions and the autonomous women’s movement before entering the queer movement. She is the author of the seminal book “Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India” and the more recent “Footprints of a Queer History: Life-Stories from Gujarat”. Indira Pathak previously worked with labour unions, the Mahila Samakhya programme and Nari Adalats in rural Gujarat before founding Vikalp Women’s Group. Their collection, built from their personal and organisational archives, documents the lives, struggles and everyday worlds of lesbians and trans men in Gujarat. It includes personal correspondence, photographs, crisis and legal case files, newsletters, ephemera, and organisational records that document decades of grassroots queer and feminist work. This collection forms an important part of Indian queer history, and QAMRA is honored to be able to steward it.

This catalogue is QAMRA’s first searchable online catalogue. It marks the beginning of our efforts to make our archive more widely accessible online.

At this event, we will introduce the MSIP collection, talk about how it has been put together, and demonstrate how this new online catalogue can be used for research, teaching, and community work. We will also reflect on questions of access, privacy, and care in queer archival practice, in conversation with Maya Sharma about the histories, relationships, and movements reflected in the archive.

Radhika Chitkara, Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU is moderating a book discussion on Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar’s recently published book ‘[In]complete Justice? The Supreme Court at 75,’ at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) on Sunday, November 16, 2025. She will be in conversation with Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar, Former Chief Justice, High Court of Orissa; Justice N. Santosh Hegde, Former Judge, Supreme Court of India; and Dr. Aditya Sondhi, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India.

As the Supreme Court of India completes seventy-five years, how do we understand its role in shaping the country’s institutions and democratic ideals? Has it remained a counter-majoritarian voice, and how has it navigated questions of accountability, transparency and constitutional promise? The speakers will explore these questions and the intersections of law, legitimacy and justice in contemporary India.

If you are interested in attending the event, RSVP here.