News Type: Event

The DPIIT IPR Chair, National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is organising a special lecture to be delivered by Prof. William W. Fisher, WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Harvard Law School, on September 27, 2024. The talk is titled ‘Fostering Innovation, Production and Access to Pharmaceutical Products in Developing Countries’.

About the Speaker

Prof. William Fisher received his undergraduate degree (in American Studies) from Amherst College and his graduate degrees (J.D. and Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization) from Harvard University. Between 1982 and 1984, he served as a law clerk, first to Judge Harry T. Edwards of the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the US Supreme Court.  Since 1984, he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he is now the Wilmer Hale Professor of Intellectual Property Law.  In 2013, he created the CopyrightX online course, which is now offered annually to approximately 1000 students worldwide.  In 2021 he and Professor Ruth Okediji created a similar course on Patent Law and Global Public Health, which is now offered semiannually in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization.  He is currently the director of Global Access in Action, a non-profit organization, based at Harvard Law School, whose primary mission is improving public health in low and middle-income countries.

About the Lecture

Access to affordable, high-quality pharmaceutical products remains a critical challenge worldwide, particularly in the Global South. In this lecture, Prof. William Fisher will explore this pressing global health issue through historical insights, including responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. He will discuss potential initiatives that can foster local pharmaceutical innovation and production without requiring changes to the existing international intellectual property obligations. Through a set of legal and economic suggestions, the talk will explore ways to build sustainable infrastructure for local pharmaceutical industries in the Global South, while also addressing some of the key concerns of both proponents as well as critics of intellectual property rights.

Watch the lecture here:  

 

About the Speaker

Sanjay Jain is a Professor of Law at the National Law School of India, Bengaluru University and was formerly Principal of the Indian Law Society’s Law College, Pune. He is a leading constitutional law expert, and is shortly to publish a two-volume commentary on the Indian Constitution. Professor Jain is also well-known in India and internationally for his work on Disability Law, both for his academic work and for his activism and engagement with the judiciary and government. He has  intervened and been cited in some of the prominent cases in High courts and the Supreme Court and is currently carrying out research on the role of Judges in upholding the rights of Disabled people in pervasively Ablest  legal systems. He has led the Indian element of the Inclusive Public Space research project (based at the University of Leeds) and has recently been awarded a fellowship by the University of New South Wales and the University of Humboldt.

About the Seminar

This seminar will explore the potential for judges, operating in legal systems underpinned by ableism, to uphold and develop law  which achieves ‘enabling’ outcomes for disabled people. Professor Jain sets this discussion against the backdrop of ablist dimensions of the Constitution of India. He draws attention  to the potential for judges, within that system, to highlight the  exclusion experienced by disabled people and to evolve strategies for recognising and protecting their human rights and fundamental freedoms. Critical to the fulfilment of such potential, he argues, is judicial engagement with ideas developed by disabled people’s organisations and Disability Studies scholarship – as well as with international standards set out in instruments such as the  UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Please sign up here if you wish to attend.

For questions about the link or practical arrangements, please contact Grace Rogers (). 

This week’s faculty seminar will include two presentations by two of our faculty members. The first presentation will be by Darshana Mitra, followed by a joint presentation by Pranav Verma and Amrashaa Singh.

• Paper 1 | Darshana Mitra | An Uneven Land: Territorialised Citizenship in India
• Paper 2 | Pranav Verma and Amrashaa Singh | National Survey of Extra-Judicial Deaths: Draft Interim Report

 

This week’s faculty seminar will include two presentations by three of our faculty members on August 28, 2024 from 3:00 – 4:30 pm.  The first presentation will be by Kunal Ambasta, followed by a joint paper by Diya Deviah and Ammel Sharon.

• Paper 1 | Kunal Ambasta – “Burdens of Proof and Standards of Conviction: The Mechanics of the Presumption of Innocence through Indian Evidence Law”
• Paper 2 | Diya Deviah and Ammel Sharon – “Continuity without Cultivation? The Student, Writing Pedagogy, and the University in India”

Abstract of the second paper: 

The student in India has been cast as a political figure whose interests are tied in with social justice or the state. This paper rethinks the history of the student through archives of writing pedagogy in India.  We examine syllabi, answer scripts, composition manuals and reports on legal education reform to construct a history of writing and meaning making in English since the nineteenth century. Based on debates in the field of Writing and Composition Studies, we discuss contract grading and the role of silence in the classroom as avenues to develop student voice, and decentre classroom authority. Addressing challenges of the large and diverse university classroom, this paper resists the prefiguration of the student in socio-political terms, and argues for the classroom as a conceptual site in higher education in India.

The University is organising a screening of the film ‘Kesari’ on Friday, August 23, 2024. It will be screened after dinner from 8:30 pm to 11:00 pm at NAB 101. This will be followed by a guest lecture on the morning of August 24 by Mr. Syed Nizammuddin Pasha (NLS BA LLB 2007), Advocate, Supreme Court of India.

About the speaker

Mr. Syed Nizammuddin Pasha graduated from NLSIU in 2007. He worked as a Senior Associate in Amarchand Mangaldas, Shroff & Co, Delhi, and later as an Advocate with the Attorney General of India. Presently, he’s a disputes lawyer litigating in the courts in Delhi. He has previously taught a seminar course on Securities Law at NLS for a term in the year 2010 as a visiting faculty. Having appeared in court both for filmmakers and PIL litigants seeking alternative enforcement of the right to freedom of expression and restrictions thereon, he wishes to bring that perspective to the classroom to a discussion on historical records versus creative license.

About the talk 

The talk will be delivered on Saturday, August 24, 2024 from 10 am to 1:30 pm at OAB 101.
The talk will be within the broad theme of “The Practise of Writing and Rewriting History”. The objective is to show that history isn’t simply what is written in history books. The most powerful way of telling history is through films. Narrations of history through films shape popular discourse and find their way into our collective consciousness, with a claim to being “inspired by true events” and no obligation to adhere to any version of historical facts.

Those interested to attend the talk are requested to watch the film to ensure a meaningful discussion.

 

In our upcoming public lecture on August 28, 2024, NLSIU will host a book discussion with Prof. A. R. Venkatachalapathy, Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. The discussion is on his book titled ‘Swadeshi Steam: V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire’. NLS faculty member Dr. Samyak Ghosh will be the discussant.

About the Speaker

A. R. Venkatachalapathy (1967), Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, completed his PhD in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has taught at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, the University of Madras and the University of Chicago, and has held research assignments in Paris, Cambridge, London, and Harvard. He was the ICCR Chair in Indian Studies at the National University of Singapore (2011–12). He has been awarded the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize (History, 2007); Vilakku Pudumaippithan Award (lifetime contribution to Tamil, 2018); Bharati Award (2021) and Iyal Virudhu (lifetime contribution to Tamil, 2021).

Chalapathy has published widely on the social, cultural and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu. Apart from his scholarly writings in English he has written/edited over thirty books in Tamil. His publications in English include – Swadeshi Steam: V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire (Penguin Allen Lane); The Brief History of a Very Big Book: The Making of the Tamil Encyclopaedia; Tamil Characters: Personalities, Politics, Culture; Who Owns That Song?: The Battle for Subramania Bharati’s Copyright; The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu, and In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History.

Abstract

In 1906, Britain’s grip on the world was unassailable. Its navy ruled the seas, and its trade empire spanned the globe. But in the small port town of Tuticorin, a lawyer named V.O. Chidambaram Pillai (VOC) had a novel idea that challenged the might of the empire itself. Influenced by economic nationalist ideas in the wake of the Swadeshi movement originating in Bengal he decided to launch the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, a venture that would compete head-on with the British India Steam Navigation Company, the shipping giant that controlled coastal trade, passenger traffic and mail contracts. Rallying native traders and patriotic citizens, he raised the capital needed to launch this enterprise. British mercantile interests and the imperial state both backed its competitor. Based on his recently published book, Swadeshi Steam: V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire, A.R. Venkatachalapathy situates rivalry in the context of the Swadeshi movement and the first phase of mass nationalism in India. The book has been longlisted for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2024.

 

The National Law school of India University (NLSIU), ILS Law College Pune and the University of Leeds, UK, are organizing a Workshop for Pedestrians on Street Accessibility, “Pedestrians with Disabilities: From Barriers to Awareness” under the Inclusive Public Space Project, in Pune.

This event will be conducted by a team of the Inclusive Public Space (IPS) Research Project to present emerging findings from the Inclusive Public Space, to generate feedback and for raising awareness amongst Pedestrians about the Accessibility. Learn more from the project website.

Prof. Anna Lawson, from the University of Leeds is the principal investigator of this project. NLS Faculty, Prof. Sanjay Jain, is the country advisor for the project. NLSIU is the collaborating partner in India, along with the University of Leeds, UK. ILS Law School Pune, is a former partner on this project and is co-organizing this workshop along with NLSIU and the University of Leeds.

This workshop is being organized on Saturday, August 17, 2024, at 11:00 p.m.

Please note: Only the online session from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm is open to the public. The link to join the session is available here.

About the Inclusive Public Space (IPS) Project

The Inclusive Public Space project investigates the social justice problems caused by city streets which exclude some pedestrians – particularly pedestrians whose circumstances mean that they do not meet general expectations about mobility or ability. The Project aims to deepen understanding of what aspects of streets are experienced as exclusionary and by whom, how these problems affect the lives of the people concerned, and how effectively law and politics are responding to problems caused by inaccessible or difficult streets. It also aims to increase shared concern about these social justice problems and to raise awareness of how law and politics can be used to challenge them.

Geographical Focus

The problems with which the Inclusive Public Space project is concerned are relevant to all countries. The particular focus however will be on five countries – India, Kenya, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. In each of these countries, there will be case studies of two cities – in the UK, Leeds and Glasgow; in India, Delhi and Pune; in Kenya, Nairobi and Mombasa; in the US, Syracuse (New York) and Atlanta (Georgia) and in the Netherlands, Utrecht and Almere.

In all the afore mentioned countries, the field work has been completed. In India, Pune is one of the cities covered under this project, therefore this workshop is being organised to engage with pedestrians and stakeholders.

Methods

The project takes a transdisciplinary, comparative and participatory action research approach. For the first phase of fieldwork (up to end of 2021) no research participant will need to leave their home in order to take part – although they will be able to choose to assist with or feature in filming of difficult streets. The methods include interviews, focus groups, story-telling, films of street journeys selected by participants, and surveys. Find out more about how the team will work with pedestrians, stakeholders and the public here.

 

NLSIU’s HUPA Chair on Urban Poor and the Law is organising a talk titled ‘Notes Toward a City without Sorrow’, being delivered by Rahee Punyashloka.

About the talk

The question of a city that is free from the shackles of caste lines is an integral aspect of anti-caste creative expression at least since the work of Ravidas, who imagined Begumpura, literally, the city without sorrows, as an artistic response to the strictures of the caste system in the 15th century. Drawing from this framework laid down by him, my multidisciplinary, research-based project, fieldnotes from begumpura, tries to speculate what such a city may look like in the current (and future) modernity. Drawing on this project, as well as the work of several anti-caste artists, my talk tries to delineate how modern cities continue to carry systemic, casteist legacies laid down by Brahminism, and the brief glimpses of resistance from oppressed caste communities against them.

About the speaker

Rahee Punyashloka (b. 1993, Bhubaneswar) (they/he) is an artist, writer, researcher, and experimental filmmaker based out of Bhubaneswar and New Delhi. Working across disciplines, he seeks to illuminate the vastly unrepresented/underrepresented artistic history of the anti-caste struggle and the Dalit identity. His works have been exhibited in numerous venues including Pulp Society (New Delhi), Latitude 28 (New Delhi); International Film Festival Rotterdam; Athens Video Art Festival; Tribeca Film Festival (New York); ARKIPEL (Jakarta); Ishara Art Foundation (Dubai); KHOJ (New Delhi); Museum of Art and Photography (Bangalore); Arts House (Melbourne), among others.