3. Second Azim Premji University International Conference
on Law, Governance and Development
Right to Welfare: Education, Food and Work
Agenda | Day 1 | 2 August 2013
Opening Remarks
9:30am - 9:45am!! ! Anurag Behar, Vice- Chancellor, Azim Premji University
9:45am - 10:00am ! ! Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Azim Premji University
Session I: Law and Development in India
10:00 am - 12.30 pm ! ! Speakers
Beth Goldblatt, University New South Wales, Rights, politics and welfare –
examining attempts to broaden South Africa’s social security system
Katharina Pistor, Columbia University, Law, State and Power: Towards a
Political Economy of Law & Development
Sudhir Krishnaswamy & Ashish Singh, Azim Premji University
Rethinking Law as a Development Indicator
Moderator
Abhayraj Naik, Azim Premji University
Respondent
Nigam Nuggehalli, BPP School of Law
Student Rapporteur
Aditi Srivastava, National Law Institute University
12:30pm – 1:30pm! ! Lunch
Session II: Statutory Rights-based Approach to Welfare
1.30 - 3.00 pm! ! ! Speakers
Akhil Gupta, University College Los Angeles, Structural Violence and
Welfare
Niraja Gopal Jayal, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Paradoxes Of Social
Citizenship In India
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4. Sanjay Ruparelia, The New School, India's new rights agenda: genesis,
promises, risks
Moderator
Chandan Gowda, Azim Premji University
Respondent
Diego Maiorano, University of Liege
Student Rapporteur
Ria Singh Sawhney, University of Delhi
3:00 - 3.30 pm! ! ! Tea
Session III- Rights and Obligations
3.30 - 5.30 pm! ! ! Speakers
Archana Mehendale, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bringing multiple
duty bearers within Right to Education Act in India: context, tensions and
implications
Madhura Swaminathan, Indian Statistical Institute, The National Food
Security Ordinanace in India: does it provide the right to food?
Reetika Khera, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Democratic Politics
and Legal Rights: Employment Guarantee and Food Security in India
Moderator
Beth Goldblatt, University of New South Wales
Respondent
Abhayraj Naik, Azim Premji University
Student Rapporteurs
Ajita Banerjie & Inayat Singh Kakar, Tata Institute of Social Studies
Darshan Datar, Jindal Global Law School
Public Lecture
6:00pm -7:30pm!! ! Speaker
Siri Gloppen, University of Bergen
Can courts bring social justice? Rights based welfare policy in a comparative
perspective
Anchor
Vishnupad Misra, Azim Premji University
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5. Agenda | Day 2 | 3 August 2013
Session IV- Role of Courts: Recognition of Rights
9.30am – 12:30 pm! ! Speakers
Olivier De Schutter University of Louvain, Adjudication of Social Rights in
a Comparative Perspective
Pritam Baruah, University College London, Adjudicating Welfare Rights:
The Limits of Judicial Restraint
Sudhir Krishnaswamy & Dolashree Mysoor, Azim Premji University,
Securing Universal Education: Directive Principles, Fundamental Rights and
Statutory Rights
Moderator
Katharina Pistor, Columbia University
Respondent
Madhav Khosla, Harvard University
Student Rapporteur
Shiva Santosh Yelamanchili, National Law School
12:30pm- 1:30pm! ! Lunch
Session V- Role of Courts: Enforcement of Rights
1:30pm- 3:00pm!! ! Speakers
Alyssa Brierley, York University, Hunger and Justice: Examining the Impact
of PUCL v. Union of India
Arun Thiruvengadam, National University Singapore, The Role of the
Indian Judiciary in enforcing welfare rights: Historical and Comparative
perspectives
Jayna Kothari, Centre for Law and Policy Research, What makes a school?
Challenges to Enforcement of and Standards in Schools by the Courts under the
RTE Act
Moderator
Siri Gloppen, University of Bergen
Respondent
Vinay Sitapati, Princeton University
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6. Student Rapporteurs
Shantanu Dey, NALSAR University of Law
Shreya Kundu, National Law School
3:00pm- 3:30pm ! ! Tea
Session VI - Implementation of Rights
3:30 pm - 6:00pm! ! Speakers
Anirudh Krishna, Duke University, Making it in India: Examining social
mobility in three walks of life
Nafis Hasan and Narayana A., Azim Premi University, Governance
Reforms and Welfare: A study of Karnataka Guarantee of Services to Citizens
Act 2011
Steven Durlauf, University of Wisconsin, Operationalizing Rights to
Welfare and Well being
Yamini Aiyar, Accountability Initiative, Rights, participation and
accountability: A case study of social audits in MGNREGA
Moderator
Olivier De Schutter University of Louvain
Respondents
Himanshu Upadhyay, Azim Premji University
Mihika Tewari, Azim Premji University
Student Rapporteurs
Priyanka Chakravarty, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Rahul Anthwal & Sonakshi Anand, Azim Premji University
Closing Remarks
6:00pm!! ! ! Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Azim Premji University
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7. Panel Discussion and Speaker Abstracts
Day 1
Session I: Law and Development in India
The adoption of a statutory rights-based entitlement model to welfare compels us to revisit the existing
intellectual frameworks in the field of law and development to better understand the place of law in the
development process in India. The field of law and development has historically been concerned with the
capacity of the rule of law to promote and sustain economic development. The debate on the common
law or civil law legal origin of a country’s legal system as a key determinant of economic development is
an example of this instrumental approach to judging legal capacity. There has been a significant debate on
the relevance of formal law and legal institutions to economic development in north and south-east Asia.
It is suggested that a strong state supported by informal social, economic and political arrangements may
deliver a significant economic development outcomes despite the absence of formal legal institutions. The
relationship between law and development in India is not satisfactorily explained by the existing rubrics
in the law and development literature. An uncritical embrace of the rule of law perspective widely
perceived as a market led strategy to further dispossess and disempower marginalised groups. The State
is commonly perceived as inefficient, kleptocratic and incapable of leading or supporting a State-led
development model. Hence, a preliminary intellectual challenge is to re-imagine the relationship between
law and development in India.
Beth Goldblatt | Rights, politics and welfare – examining attempts to broaden South Africa’s social
security system
South Africa’s social security system, initially shaped by the British colonial example, developed as a
racially unequal benefit system under Apartheid. The social assistance focus targeted poverty amongst
the aged, people with disabilities, single mothers and children. Targeting through means testing rather
than universal provision was and remains central to the system. The end of Apartheid in 1994 saw the
introduction of a Bill of Rights with a justiciable right to social security. Deracialisation and some
reformulation of the system through legislation followed soon after under the policy label of
‘developmental social welfare’. The post-Apartheid period has seen a significant expansion of social
assistance from three million beneficiaries in 1995 to sixteen million people in 2013. This expansion has
resulted following contestation both within government and outside of it. Within government, the
contests have involved tensions between neo-liberal economic efforts to control social spending and
pressure to address widespread poverty. Outside of government, civil society has used a combination of
strategies including litigation and advocacy campaigns to widen social provisions. The paper examines
the variety of strategies and pressures in an attempt to identify the causes of improvements to the system
alongside failures to shift the policy terrain.
Katharina Pistor | Law, State and Power: Towards a Political Economy of Law & Development
Legal systems are central to the operation of modern states, economies and societies. This is often taken to
mean that law might be used as an instrument for promoting economic development; this view however,
misses law’s role in relation to power and the states. Its inextricable relation to the state makes law a
distinct form of social ordering. This implies that understanding the nature of a state is critical for
understanding the role of law in a society: that state’s actual control over and use of coercive means of
power, the organization of power within and in relation to it, and the sources of legitimacy that lend
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8. authority to law and the state in that society. Neither the state nor law is static. Both need to be
reconstituted and re-legitimated in the process of social transformation to retain their status as
authoritative forms of social ordering in competition with alternative institutions and centers of power.
Property rights, a critical institution at the intersection of state, law and power, will serve to illustrate
these claims in the Indian context.
Ashish Singh & Sudhir Krishnaswamy (and Thiagu Ranganathan) | The Rule of Law as a Development
Indicator
The debates around the post-2015 Development Agenda have made a strong push to precisely identify
the link between the rule of law and sustainable development by learning from empirical evidence across
the world. The two existing efforts to directly indicate the impact of law on development outcomes are
the Rule of Law Index developed by the World Justice Project and the Worldwide Governance Indicators
developed by the World Bank. Further, the Human Development Index developed by the United Nations
Development Index indirectly incorporates some effects of a rule of law in this composite measure of
development in a country. In this paper, using South Asian nations and Indian states as examples, we
show the inadequacy of Human Development Index (HDI) on the one hand and ‘rule of law’ and
‘governance indices’ on the other, in measuring human development—measured using traditional
developmental outcomes or law and order. We argue that the effort to develop a rule of law development
indicator must first begin by revising our normative understanding of the relationship between law and
development and engaging empirically with the role of law in securing development outcomes in the
developing world.
Session II: Statutory Rights-Based Approach to Welfare
The adoption of statutory rights-based regime to resolve welfare problems is a new legal strategy for
development in India. The motivation for and the feasibility of this new strategy has been the subject of
some intellectual disagreement. Some argue that these new statutory welfare rights are essential due to
the sharp inequalities generated by the market-based approach to development put in place by the new
economic policy in 1991. Others point out the continuity of the current statutory rights-based entitlements
with earlier constitutional rights and the Supreme Court’s emphasis on economic, social and cultural
rights and the availability of fiscal resources made possible by economic reforms. This debate about the
motivation for new statutory rights-based entitlements often ignores the political and social history of
social movements who have mobilised around such rights-based claims and exerted political pressure to
translate these claims into legal entitlements. This panel will re-examine the legal, social, political and
economic history that has led to the creation of these new statutory rights and present a revised account
of the origins of welfare rights in India. In particular we ask if the new rights to welfare are best
understood as capabilities or as an attempt at undoing the mal-redistribution of the new economic
regime.
Akhil Gupta | Structural Violence and Welfare
This paper explores the difference between systematic versus arbitrary forms of structural violence.
Systematic forms of violence occur along familiar lines of caste, class, and gender whereas arbitrary
violence results from the gap between projects of governmentality and their application. Why do such
gaps exist? Will the rise of new technosocial mechanisms like UID (Aadhar) help close such gaps? Finally,
the paper will address how the consequences of rights-based entitlements like the Right to Education and
the Right to Food are made radically unpredictable by laws such as the Right to Information and the UID.
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9. The articulation of RTI and UID with the Right to Education and the Right to Food is likely to produce
not legal closure and certainty, but openness and uncertainty.
Niraja Gopal Jayal | Paradoxes Of Social Citizenship In India
This paper essays a critical historical account of the evolution of social citizenship in India, from its
beginnings in nationalist discourse in the colonial period, through its articulation as charity in the
dirigiste regime of the early post-independence period, to its accomplishment in the form in which it is
currently celebrated, that of social rights to welfare.
The paper makes a case for a discursive disaggregation of the project of social citizenship by relating it to
its conceptual cousins, in particular social justice and social policy. Through these, it seeks to address the
paradox of social citizenship gaining apparent salience in a neo-liberal ideological climate. It identifies
two additional paradoxes in the afterlife of social rights legislation, both of which suggest the hollowing
out of rights: first, the detachment of social provisioning from the status of citizenship; and second, the
contrast between the increasingly pervasive use of rights language in law and policy, on the one hand,
and the diffusion of responsibility for social provisioning beyond the state, on the other.
Sanjay Ruparelia | India's new rights agenda: genesis, promises, risks
Since 2004, India has introduced a series of progressive national bills that enact a right to new civic
entitlements, ranging from information, work and education to forest conservation, food and basic public
services. What explains the emergence of these laws? How are the rights conceived by these acts
conceptualized, operationalized and pursued? What are the promises, challenges and risks—legal,
political and economic—of enshrining socio-economic entitlements as formal statutory rights? This paper
engages these questions. In part 1, I argue that three slow-burning processes since the 1980s, distinct yet
related, catalyzed India’s new rights agenda: high socio-legal activism, rapid uneven development and
the expanding popular foundations of its federal parliamentary democracy.
Significantly, all three processes exposed the growing nexus between political corruption and
socioeconomic inequality. Equally, however, each raised popular expectations for greater social justice
that were only partly met. Part 2 of the paper evaluates India’s new rights agenda. The promise of these
new laws is threefold: they breach the traditional division of civil, political and socioeconomic rights,
devise innovative governance mechanisms that enable citizens to see the state, and provide fresh
incentives for new political coalitions to emerge across state and society. Several risks exist, however.
Official political resistance from above and below, the limited capacities of judicial actors, state
bureaucracies and social forces, and the relatively narrow base of many of these new movements
endanger the potential of these reforms. The paper concludes by considering several imperatives that
India’s evolving rights movement must confront to realize its ambition.
Session III- Rights and Obligations
The demand for statutory entitlements to welfare goods arose out of the perceived failure of the
programmatic mode of welfare delivery. For example; the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act,
2005 (NREG Act) responds to the weaknesses of Nation Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, the
National Food Security Bill, 2011 attempts to address flaws in the Public Distribution System. The Right
of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) crystallises a specific enforceable
statutory right that was previously implemented through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
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10. Statutory recognition gives rise to several new concerns. First, there is a concern that statutory recognition
limits the scope of the right. New rights-based statutes often circumscribe and modify the scope of pre-
existing modes of constitutional protection of welfare rights. Article 21 A and the RTE Act limit the right
to education to children between the ages 6 and 14 years, thereby excluding both pre-school and high
school education. The NREG Act guarantees employment, however, this is restricted to a minimum of
one hundred days of work to every rural household at a minimum wage rate. Notwithstanding the
provisions of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the minimum wage rate prescribed by the state
governments cannot be lower than Rs 60 a day. The National Food Security Bill, 2011 guarantees a
minimum of seven kilograms of food grains per month to every person from a priority household and
three kilograms of food grains per person per month to general households at subsidized rates through
the Public Distribution System. Prior to the Bill, the Public Distribution System assured food grains at
heavily subsidized rates to all families which were below the poverty line and Antyodaya families (the
poorest families in the below poverty line category). However, the National Food Security Bill, 2011 limits
the right to receive food grains by fixing percentages of poor families who will benefit from the scheme
across categories, this restriction which did not exist under the Public Distribution System.
In addition to conferring rights to individuals, these enactments also cast obligations on the state and
certain stakeholders. Both the NREG Act and the National Food Security Bill, 2011 impose obligations on
the State to enforce the right. However, in the case of the RTE Act obligations are imposed on four
different stakeholders- the State, schools, parents and teachers. The RTE Act imposes horizontal
obligations on private actors to provide free and compulsory education to children from disadvantaged
backgrounds. In this session we critically examine the new architecture of rights and obligations created
by these statutes to identify and resolve common concerns across these domains.
Archana Mehendale | Bringing multiple duty bearers within Right to Education Act in India: context,
tensions and implications
The enjoyment of the Fundamental Right (Article 21A) to free and compulsory education of children
between 6 and 14 years is determined by the statutory provisions of The Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education Act, 2009. In doing so, it is argued that the state has widened the scope of the
right from what was originally intended by extending its application horizontally and including certain
non-specific and imprecise entitlements. Emerging in the context of a rapidly privatizing education sector
in India, the formulation of this right also highlights the tensions in the imagination of two ideas: right to
free and compulsory education and right to educational freedom, both embedded in the legal framework.
The paper tries to comment on the challenges in negotiating an institutional framework that can
effectively address both these ideas. By plotting the statutory provisions in a matrix, the paper attempts to
analyse the nature of this right as expressed in the Constitution and the statute as well as the multiple
layers of obligations created therein while comparing it with the international normative framework. It
critically questions the gaps in the conceptualization of this right and discusses its implications on
shaping the contours of implementation. This analysis is located within a review of the key governance
activities of the state, namely provisioning, regulation and funding. Finally, the paper raises questions for
further research in relation to juridification of the welfare role of the state.
Madhura Swaminathan | The National Food Security Bill/Ordinance in India: does it provide the right
to food?
The presentation will deal with the features of the present ordinance, earlier introduced in Parliament as a
bill, and compare it to the requirements of a genuine right to food. One of the key limitations of the
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11. ordinance is the automatic exclusion of a significant proportion of the population from the proposed right
to food.
Reetika Khera | Democratic Politics and Legal Rights:Employment Guarantee and Food Security in
India
This paper focuses on two Indian laws that seek to guarantee socio-economic rights: the National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act, an important example of India's recent history of legislation of social and
economic rights, and the proposed National Food Security Act that is currently in Parliament. Various
means of democratic politics, including a ten-year old public interest litigation in the Supreme Court and
public mobilization through the "Right to Food Campaign", contributed to the emergence of socio-
economic rights (in this case the right to food and work), on the agenda of mainstream politics. It
attempts to shed some light on how the concerns of marginalized groups can find space in mainstream
politics, even in an overall political environment that is not particularly conducive. The paper also
analyses the parallels and contrasts in the passage of the employment guarantee act and the debates
around the food security bill. The successful enactment of the employment guarantee act within two
years is contrasted with the promise of a food security act that was only tabled in Parliament in the third
year. The developments around the food security law show that a favourable outcome cannot be taken for
granted even though it may be perceived as a "populist" measure.
Public Lecture
Siri Gloppen | Can courts bring social justice? Rights based welfare policy in comparative perspective
The Indian Supreme Court pioneered judicial enforcement of welfare rights by interpreting the right to
life to entail obligations on the state to provide services needed for upholding life with dignity. Later
other countries have followed similar paths, while others have developed different understandings of the
role of rights and legal institutions in relation to welfare provision. In light of diverse experiences over the
last two decades, this talk asks: What difference does it make that social policy is rights-based? Does it
make courtrooms central sites of welfare policy - and if so, how do judges deal with these deeply political
issues, and to what effect? And does it matter whether welfare rights are provided constitutional
protection or just laid down in ordinary legislation? By examining experiences from different parts of the
world with regard to legal protection of welfare rights, the talk provides perspectives on the potential and
limits of court based enforcement, as well as out-of-court rights-based strategies. Indian developments
will be compared with experiences from Latin America, South Africa and Scandinavia.
Day 2
Session IV- Role of Courts: Recognition of Rights
The Supreme Court and High Courts play an important role in the recognition of welfare rights and in
their responses to the challenges to the constitutional validity of new welfare statutes. The court
declaration of the right to food in People’s Union for Civil Liberties v/s Union of India [(2011) 8 SCALE
15] has strengthened and influenced the political will to legislate on statutory entitlements. The Supreme
Court’s assertion of the directive principle under Article 45 as a fundamental right to education under
Article 21 has contributed to the public debate on compulsory education that culminated in the RTE Act
[Mohini Jain v State of Karnataka (1992) 3 SCC 666 and Unnikrishnan v State of Andhra Pradesh (1993) 1
SCC 645]. However, the NREG Act is not preceded by any particular court declaration of the right to
work.
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12. More recently, the Supreme Court has had to decide on the constitutional validity of the RTE Act, while
the right to work has not been challenged, the National Food Security Bill, 2011 may be subject to future
challenges. While the courts have expanded constitutional rights to welfare and sustained the
constitutionality of the RTE Act, they have inflicted serious collateral damage on the structure and
interpretation of the constitution. In this panel we will critically examine the Supreme Court and High
Courts approach to the protection of welfare rights and identify approaches to welfare rights that offer a
more coherent interpretation of the constitution.
Olivier De Schutter | The adjudication of social rights in comparative perspective
The paper will link three factors that, combined, define the ability of courts to protect social rights and the
effectiveness of their intervention. These are (i) access to courts, (ii) substantive doctrines concerning
"progressive realization", and (iii) remedies. Only by combining these dimensions can we assess the
contribution of courts to the protection and enhancement of welfare rights.
Pritam Baruah | Adjudicating Welfare Rights: The Limits of Judicial Restraint
My paper will explore the contribution of contemporary theories of judicial restraint that have influenced
thinking about welfare rights adjudication. In human rights literature, it is no longer controversial
whether social or welfare rights are human rights. Controversy however abounds on how their content
and limits are to be determined, and consequently, on how they should be adjudicated. In particular,
contemporary debates in law often centre around the question of whether existing constitutional courts
are legitimate and competent forums for welfare rights adjudication? Is their institutional structure, and
modes of reasoning, suited for deciding issues of the kind that welfare rights throw up? The paper will
first identify the nature of such issues, which are the breeding ground for scepticism about the judicial
determination of welfare rights. Such grounds include those of polycentricity, expertise, democratic
legitimacy, and a need for flexibility. The paper will then examine two contemporary views that propose
judicial restraint on such issues. The first proposal is that of incrementalism, which has received recent
detailed treatment by scholars like Jeff King. The second is Cass Sunstein’s views on judicial restraint
including that of ‘Incompletely Theorized Agreements’. Both views root themselves in concerns about the
institutional competence of judiciaries when deciding matters of welfare rights, with Sunstein’s view
additionally making a case for restricting theorization by judges generally. I will argue that though both
views hold a kernel of truth about the limitation of existing constitutional courts, they do not do enough
to answer the questions that welfare rights adjudication raises in particular, and human rights
adjudication raises in general. Proposing judicial restraint might have immense strategic significance in
the context of many jurisdictions; that however does not answer questions of who is justified in
adjudicating welfare rights issues and why. By critically evaluating both views, the paper will aim to
prepare the ground towards fresh thinking about the parameters on which the legitimacy of decision-
making institutions is to be assessed in the context of welfare rights.
Dolashree Mysoor and Sudhir Krishnaswamy|Securing Universal Education: Directive Principles,
Fundamental Rights and Statutory Rights
The constitutional and legal environment that governs primary and secondary education has gone
through three distinct phases. In the first phase universal education was not guaranteed by the
Constitution of India, 1950 as a fundamental right. Instead, Article 45 directed the state to provide
universal education to all children up to the age of 14 years within a period of 10 years. As Article 45 was
a Directive Principle of State Policy in Part IV of the constitution it was not judicially enforceable. At this
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13. point, the States had competence to legislate and act on the subject of primary and secondary education
and invariably passed enabling legislation to regulate this field. While performance in securing universal
education varied from State to State, on the whole India had dismal educational outcomes. The second
phase began in 1992 when the Supreme Court declared the right to education as a fundamental right in
Mohini Jain v State of Karnataka by reading the directive principle under Article 45 into the fundamental
right to life in Article 21 of the constitution. The Mohini Jain case was primarily concerned with medical
college admissions and there was no substantial litigation enforcing the right to primary education.
The third and present phase began with the Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002 introduced Article
21 A into the Indian Constitution to guarantee free and compulsory elementary education to all children
between six and fourteen years. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE
Act) was enacted to fulfill the mandate of Article 21 A by binding both the state and private actors to
provide free and compulsory education to children. While the RTE Act imposes various obligations upon
the State, it specifically imposes regulatory standards and reservation and non-discrimination obligations
upon schools. These obligations vary according to the manner of organization of a school and the extent
of state aid. The constitutional validity of the Act was challenged by private schools before the Supreme
Court in Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan v Union of India in 2012. The core of the
challenge was that the reservation and non-discrimination obligations and regulatory standards imposed
upon private schools conflict with the rights enjoyed by private schools to practice any profession, trade
or business and the special educational rights of the minorities.
In this paper we raise and explore three issues that arise in each of these phases of securing universal
education: First, which constitutional and legal arrangement is most conducive to securing universal
education? Secondly, under what circumstances does the imposition of obligations on private actors
appear to be justified? Thirdly, does the translation of a directive principle into a fundamental right
eliminate all normative conflicts and ensure unimpeded implementation of education policy? This paper
responds to these questions by mapping the legal and constitutional environment for securing education
in India and pays careful attention to the role of the courts in recognizing and constraining the scope of
education rights.
Session V- Role of Courts: Enforcement of Rights
Courts are also central to the enforcement of rights. While litigation may be used to declare rights, it may
also be used to ensure state accountability and fulfilment of policy and implementation gaps. The writ
remedy under Articles 32 and 226 of the Constitution of India is often the first choice of litigants to
enforce rights. The use of litigation as a strategy from implementation is evident from the NREG Act and
the RTE Act experience through the demand for enforcement of statutory rights. A cursory survey of
litigation on the RTE Act reveals that petitioners have sought to enforce reservations and adherence to
regulatory standards or providing clarifications under the RTE Act [Jatin Singh v/s Kendriya Vidyalay
Sanghatan W. P. 4914/2011 (Delhi) and Environment and Consumer Protection Foundation v/s Delhi
Administration and Ors. 2012(9) SCALE 692]. Similarly, litigation on the NREG Act seeks proper
formulation of schemes of employment and sufficient budgetary allocation [Centre for Environment and
Food Security v/s Union of India W.P. No 645 of 2007]. However the impact of litigation on social welfare
reforms is unknown. This session seeks to inquire into the impact of social welfare litigation and explore
litigation strategies that go beyond the writ remedy to better implement the new welfare strategies.
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14. Alyssa Brierley | Hunger and Justice: Examining the Impact of PUCL v. Union of India
There are two ways to look at the impact of social welfare litigation: first, whether the litigants were
successful in obtaining a favourable judgment and second, whether the favourable judgment resulted in
the outcomes that the litigants were ultimately seeking by turning to the court.
This paper will address the latter aspect of impact assessment by analyzing governmental compliance
with orders of the Supreme Court in PUCL v. Union of India (the Right to Food case), both with respect to
policy change and policy implementation. It will conclude with a broader discussion of the potential of
social welfare litigation to influence state action in the area of social and economic rights.
Arun Thiruvengadam |The Role of the Indian Judiciary in enforcing welfare rights: Historical and
Comparative perspectives
This conference focuses on the statutory rights-based approach to welfare issues. My presentation will,
taking a cue from the conference programme, focus on the approach of courts towards enforcement of
welfare rights. My starting point will be the role that courts in India have historically adopted towards
enforcement of rights generally, and the welfare rights that are the focus of this conference more
specifically. I will seek to identify the issues that typically cause problems and that require the attention
of activists and judges who seek to enforce the new statutory rights to welfare. One area that will need
particular attention arises from India’s federal constitutional structure. Problems of federalism have
typically been neglected in evolving comprehensive policy approaches, and my presentation will seek to
identify specific federal challenges in the contemporary period. I will also draw from comparative
contexts – specifically the US and South Africa – in trying to understand how courts in India can learn
from comparative trends, both historical and contemporary.
Jayna Kothari | What makes a school? Challenges to Enforcement of Norms and Standards in Schools
by the Courts under the RTE Act
After the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the RTE Act[1], there has been a wave of
enforcement efforts to ensure that private schools implement the Section 12 provision of free education to
25% of children from disadvantaged and economically weaker backgrounds. On-going litigation all over
the country around the RTE Act since 2011 has only focused on enforcement of Section 12.
The heart of the legislation however seems to be forgotten which is to ensure that every school has
fulfilled the basic norms and standards detailed in the Schedule. A school to be recognized as a school
needs to have the minimum number of teachers, a playground, a library, toilets for girls, drinking water
and mid-day meals and disability access, among other basic requirements.
The government has failed to provide adequate infrastructure standards for a majority of its schools even
after 4 years of the Act being passed, a problem that most harshly affects the poorest schools in the
country by perpetuating systemic school infrastructural problems and gross educational inequalities.
Studies show that learners and teachers have been left in unsafe environments that are not conducive to
learning, and which have undermined the ability of the learners to achieve in the classroom and fully
realise their rights to an adequate education, equality and dignity.
In my paper I argue that the right to a basic education includes the unqualified right to adequate school
facilities - facilities that are conducive to effective teaching and learning and are required for the health,
safety and dignity of learners and teachers.
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15. This paper reviews the on-going litigation to examine why courts have not taken up this issue? There has
been no enforcement of norms and standards in government schools nor has there been any litigation for
such enforcement.
Drawing upon recent litigation around norms and standards in South Africa and other jurisdictions, I
argue that unless basic norms for adequate school facilities are enforced in government schools, the right
to education would be meaningless. The paper then moves on to explore some of the possibilities and
challenges that might arise in the judicial enforcement of this right. In conclusion, I argue that the success
of the RTE Act would really be in the implementation of school norms in government schools, and the
question is whether our courts are ready to play a part in this enforcement.
Session VI - Implementation of Rights
The use of new statutory entitlements requires a renewed emphasis on the institutional mechanisms for
enforcement. The RTE Act, NREG Act and the National Food Security Bill, 2011 identify authorities for
monitoring and implementation of the statutory rights. The statutory frameworks institute new forms of
institutions to monitor rights. The monitoring mechanisms under these statutes are both internal, i.e.,
officers within the concerned department; and external- separate state and national level commissions.
While local authorities are entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the enactments at the local
level, the state and national level commissions are responsible for monitoring implementation. In the
context of the RTE Act, the commissions are established under the Commissions for Protection of Child
Rights Act, 2005. However, in the NREG Act and the National Food Security Bill, 2011, the commissions
are established under the respective laws.
The statutes and the proposed legislation outline the different models of implementation and institutional
mechanisms for implementation by integrating the grievance redressal system within the implementation
mechanism. The local authorities (at the first level) and the state and national commissions (at an
appellate level) are entrusted with functions of grievance redressal. In the case of the RTE Act the function
of grievance redressal is also time-bound. Neither the NREG Act nor the National Food Security Bill, 2011
make such provisions. Further, the NREG Act is an exception in this case because while the state and
national councils are entrusted with the function of monitoring grievance redressal, the actual function of
grievance redressal rests with the local authority. The UID has been introduced as a key administrative
tool to develop a new model of welfare delivery across all these sectors. The UID coupled with citizens’
guarantee of services legislations like the Sakaala programme in Karnataka (The Karnataka Guarantee of
Services to Citizens Act, 2011) promise to redesign, enhance state capacity to deliver welfare under these
statutory regimes.
This panel will carefully examine the performance of these institutions, the principles of design of these
institutions and issues pertaining to implementation of statutory entitlements.
Anirudh Krishna | Making it in India: Examining social mobility in three walks of life
Inequality has increased in India alongside economic growth. There are fears that an elite group might be
entrenching itself by seizing opportunities in different walks of life. It is important, therefore, to
investigate: who are the kinds of people that are making it into especially desirable colleges and higher-
status occupations. By looking at new entrants to three desirable locations – engineering colleges,
business schools, and civil services – and within each of these categories, by looking at higher-ranked and
lower-ranked institutions, this examination of factors associated with successful entry responds to an
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16. important contemporary policy need. Four factors stand out as significant barriers to entry: rural
upbringing, relative poverty, parents’ lack of education, and the nature of parents’ occupations. Multiple
overlapping liabilities make the path to upward mobility especially tenuous. Overcoming these obstacles
has to a considerable extent been assisted by the provision of career advice and information, still largely
obtained in India by word-of-mouth. Making information available more broadly through institutions,
such as career centers, or via means of mass communication, such as TV, will substantially reduce the
barriers to upward mobility that a large percentage of young Indians currently face.
Nafis Hasan & Narayana A. | Governance Reforms and Welfare: A study of Karnataka Guarantee of
Services to Citizens Act 2011
The State is not only a provider of welfare but also a site on which welfare, in its material form is
delivered. This delivery of welfare depends upon bureaucratic modalities which, however, have been
empirically as well as theoretically shown to be arbitrary (Akhil Gutpa, 2012), indifferent (Michael
Herzfeld, 1995), or not backed by adequate resources (Michael Lipsky, 1980). As a result, there is an
associated element of uncertainty with outcomes or benefits meant for a citizen-beneficiary.
In India, as has been the case elsewhere, a number of efforts have been made to reform the government
which include incorporation of private sector management principles (New Public Management),
allowing greater monitoring by ombudspersons and citizens groups, and the use of information and
communication technology to restructure the governance mechanisms (e-governance). However, most
cutting edge innovations in governance reforms when taken to the ground, get re-articulated, re-
imagined and stripped off their original aims. The failure of reforms is generally attributed to the narrow
technocratic approach of the reforms and their inability to change the underlying power relations and
bureaucratic resistance. As an attempt to overcome these problems, several state governments of late have
passed laws to provide guarantee of services to citizens and to make the bureaucracy liable to pay a
penalty in case they fail to deliver either the service or an explanation for rejection within the specified
time. Sixteen states have passed Guarantee of Services to Citizens Act in the past three years.
Initial reports have claimed enormous success of this scheme across the states. This gives rise to a
question as to how a mere shift from the administrative accountability to the legal accountability put in
place by the new right to guarantee of services has addressed some of the issues which hampered earlier
attempts at reforming governance, including rigid power relations, legacy issues and archaic
administrative culture. This paper is an attempt to answer this question based on preliminary findings
from an ongoing study of the implementation of the Guarantee of Services to Citizens Act-2011 in the
State of Karnataka. The Government of Karnataka has claimed a very high rate of success as indicated by
the timely disposal of nearly 90-95 per cent of applications made by citizens for various services.
This paper focuses on the processes and practices associated with the delivery of one service – a caste and
income certificate – which is a crucial document required to prove one’s eligibility for most of the welfare
benefits. The study is being carried out in two districts of Karnataka.
Qualitative evidence gathered from the initial phase of fieldwork suggests that there is a vast gulf
between the claimed success of the reform as indicated by the computer-generated statistics and the
actual experience of citizens in obtaining the service from the local bureaucracy. Government transactions
at the grassroots remain highly informal. This informality sustained by the fuzziness of laws and heavy
pressure of work on the system seems to be preferred by both citizens and the local bureaucracy over the
standardized practices that the techno-legal reforms attempt to bring about. This paper will provide a
description of such informal practices around the key nodes of delivery of caste and income certificates,
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17. pointing to the strategies underlying bureaucratic labour at the grassroots. In conclusion, the paper will
posit that when viewed against the phenomenon of proliferating social welfare schemes of the states and
the centre, the inability of the higher level bureaucracy to grapple with the difficulties involved in
reforming the architecture of delivery, portends a crisis.
Steven Durlauf |Operationalizing Rights to Welfare and Well being
This presentation will explore a range of methodological questions that revolve around the
operationalization of legally mandated welfare rights. Ideas from the economics of inequality and from
political economy will be employed to illustrate how implementation of such rights can be facilitated.
Yamini Aiyar | Rights, participation and accountability: A case study of social audits in MGNREGA
How does a top down, hierarchical State respond to efforts to open it up to scrutiny and be held directly
accountable by citizens? This paper attempts to answer this question by interrogating India’s experience
with implementing social audits in the MGNREGA in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Social audits trace
their roots back to the right to information movement when the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan began
conducting jansunwai’s or public hearings where citizens could directly engage, scrutinize and question
the state. In 2005, when the MGNREGA was passed, social audits were given a legal mandate – the Act
requires that social audits be conducted in the gram sabha every six months. Social audits are an integral
part of the overarching objective of the rights agenda of deepening citizenship and strengthening
accountability. They are an effort to build spaces through which citizens can realize their entitlements by
questioning, participating and directly confronting the state and thus offer a window through which to
analyze the rights agenda. Social audits in MGNREGA are conceptualized as a ‘continuous process
through which potential beneficiaries and other stakeholders of an activity or project are involved at
every stage: from planning to the implementation, monitoring and evaluation.’
Although mandated as a critical part of the MGNREGA, Andhra Pradesh is the only state government to
have seriously attempted to implement social audits. Since 2006, over 2000 social audits have been
conducted by a government led team of social auditors. Beneficiaries of MGNREGA have responded
enthusiastically to the process and attendance at social audit public hearings has ranged anywhere
between 200-800 people. The A.P. experiment thus provides an opportunity to examine the process of
conducting social audits at scale and to evaluate the effects of these audits on deepening citizenship and
strengthening state accountability to citizens.
This study draws on qualitative fieldwork undertaken in 8 villages in one district in Andhra Pradesh, to
analyse the social audit process from the perspective of citizens’ response to the audit and how the audit
interacts with the state, particularly the local bureaucracy and political elites, to meet its objectives. The
specific question we ask are:
• Do social audits provide people with a platform to meet agents of the state? More specifically, do
social audits adequately capture people’s concerns vis a vis the state?
• How does the state respond to the social audit process? More specifically, is the state responsive
to concerns articulated through the social audit process?
• How does the social audit process interact with the local corruption market?
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18. Speakers’ Biographies
Aiyar, Yamini
Yamini Aiyar is the Director of the Accountability Initiative (AI) at the Centre for
Policy Research, New Delhi. AI is a research group that focusses on tracking
government planning, budgeting and decision-making systems in key social sector
programs with a view to strengthening public debate on issues of governance,
institutions and accountability for public services. AI draws on this research to
bridge the gap between evidence and action by seeking to engage citizens in
conducting tracking exercises, developing structured capacity building courses on
public administration and accountability and seeking partnerships with government
to develop models for strengthening public expenditure management and local planning. Prior to joining
the Centre for Policy Research Yamini worked at the World Bank and the Ford Foundation. She has
extensive research and implementation experience on issues related to strengthening citizen participation
in public services. Yamini has an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and
received an M.A. degree in Social and Political Sciences at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge University,
UK. She also holds a BA degree in Philosophy from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University.
Baruah, Pritam
Pritam Baruah is a PhD Candidate on the Commonwealth Scholarship, and
Teaching Fellow at University College London. He is also Assistant
Professor of Law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical
Sciences, Kolkata. Pritam's primary research and teaching interests lie in
the area of legal and political philosophy. In particular he is interested in
the role of moral concepts as justifications in adjudication, the notions of
authority and legitimacy, the nature of concepts, and issues in constitutional
theory. Pritam has taught comparative constitutional law at the University of Ottawa as a January Term
Professor. Previously he practiced law at the Supreme Court of India from 2006-2008 and has worked
with the Central Vigilance Commission on the Public Distribution System constituted by the Supreme
Court of India. He holds a masters degree in law (BCL) from the University of Oxford (Felix Scholarship)
and an Undergraduate in Arts and Law (B.A.,B.L) from the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.
Brierley, Alyssa
Alyssa Brierley is a Canadian lawyer, policy analyst and Ph.D. Candidate
at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her dissertation, titled: "Public
Interest Litigation as a Development Strategy: An Examination of the
Campaigns for the Right to Food, Health and Housing in India" will
explore how Indian social activists have utilized litigation to advance
social and economic rights and the extent to which this has been effective.
Alyssa completed her Juris Doctor at Osgoode Hall Law School with a
specialization in International, Transnational and Comparative Law and
was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2010. Prior to attending law
school,Alyssa completed a Masters degree in Political Science at York and
a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Political Science at the University of Waterloo. She is currently a
Visiting Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University, a
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19. Graduate Associate at the York Centre for Asian Research and a 2012 Graduate Fellow with the
Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security.
While completing her dissertation research, Alyssa is currently on leave from her position as a policy
analyst at a Canadian regulator where she is responsible for research and policy development on
governance-related matters promoting transparency and accountability. She has been active on the Board
of Directors of several community-based social service agencies in Toronto, including the Working Skills
Centre and the Family Services of Toronto, and teaches law at Ryerson University.
De Schutter, Olivier
Olivier De Schutter is professor at the University of Louvain (UCL)
and at the College of Europe. A specialist in economic and social
rights and economic globalization, he is since 2008 the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food. His publications
are on governance and human rights, European integration, and
economic and social rights.
Durlauf, Steven
Steven N. Durlauf is Vilas Research Professor and Kenneth J.
Arrow Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin at
Madison. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Research
Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Durlauf
has worked extensively on theoretical and econometric issues
involving the analysis of inequality, social determinants of
behavior, economic growth and policy evaluation. He was general
editor of the most recent edition of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and is currently Editor of
the Journal of Economic Growth. He received his BA in Economics from Harvard and his PhD in
Economics from Yale.
Gloppen, Siri
Siri Gloppen is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of
Bergen, Senior Researcher at the CMI, Dirctor of the Bergen Center on
Law and Social Transformation, and a research coordinator at the
PluriCourts Center of Excellence, University of Oslo. Her main
research focus is on the role of law and legal institutions in social and
political transformation, spanning legal mobilization; enforcement of
social rights; climate governance; constitution-making, judicial politics
and transitional justice. She has directed a number of comparative
research projects in these areas, resulting in a several books and
articles including most recently Juridification and Social Citizenship
(E.Elgar Forthcoming); Litigating Health Rights: can courts bring more
justice to health? (Harvard 2011) and Law and Power in Latin America
and Africa (Palgrave 2010).
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20. Goldblatt, Beth
Beth Goldblatt is a Visiting Fellow of the Australian Human Rights Centre in
the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney where she
is Director of the Gender and Social Security Rights Project and a co-director
of the Gender Rights and Development Project. She is an Honorary Senior
Fellow of the Faculty of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg, South Africa. Beth’s current research is aimed at developing
the international right to social security from a gender perspective. This
includes a comparative study on social security rights for women in India,
South Africa and Australia. She co-convenes an international project on
women’s rights to social security and protection with Professor Lucie
Lamarche of the University of Ottawa which includes an international
webinar, a workshop at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in
Onati, Spain and a forthcoming book arising from the workshop. Beth has been involved in litigation and
advocacy on social security issues in South Africa, and advocacy in Australia. She has worked with an
Indian NGO on a national conference on women’s right to social protection, together with the ILO, UN
Women and the Heinrich Boll Foundation. She is also involved in a consultancy project for UN Women
on ‘Gender Equality and Human Rights’ with Professor Sandra Fredman of Oxford University.
Gupta, Akhil
Akhil Gupta is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the
Center for India and South Asia (CISA) at UCLA. He
obtained his undergraduate degree in Mechanical
Engineering from Western Michigan University, his Master's
in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and his Ph.D. in
Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University. He
has taught at the University of Washington, Seattle (1987-89),
and at Stanford University (1989-2006) before coming to
UCLA. He is the author of Postcolonial Developments:
Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Duke Univ.
Press, 1998), and editor of Culture, Power, Place(with James Ferguson; Duke Univ. Press, 1997),
Anthropological Locations (with James Ferguson; Univ. of California Press, 1997), Caste and Outcast
(Stanford Univ. Press, 2002), The Anthropology of the State(with Aradhana Sharma; Blackwell, 2006), and
The State in India After Liberalization (with K. Sivaramakrishnan; Routledge, 2010). His most recent
book, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India (2012) has been published by
Orient BlackSwan and Duke University Press. Professor Gupta is currently doing a long-term field project
on call centers in Bangalore. His areas of interest are: ethnography of information technology, the state
and development, anthropology of food, environmental anthropology, animality, space and place, history
of anthropology, applied anthropology; India and South Asia.
Hasan, Nafis
Nafis has completed his Post Graduate Diploma in Cultural Studies from Centre
for the Study of Culture and Society. Prior to joining Azim Premji Foundation,
Nafis was with the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS),
Bangalore. At CSCS, Nafis coordinated a research project studying the
Government’s Unique Identification (UID) project. He led a team of researchers
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21. across India in conceptualizing the research agenda, conducting field work, organizing public
consultations and creating & publishing project reports. He was also involved in partnering with key
academic and NGO organizations in Delhi and Bangalore to create a research consortium to study the
impact of digital governance on the homeless in Delhi.
Jayal, Niraja Gopal
Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and
Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is the author of
Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History (Harvard University
Press, 2013); Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of
Public Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and Democracy and the
State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India
(Oxford University Press, 1999). She has edited/co-edited, among others,
Democracy in India (2007), Decentralisation and Beyond (2005) and The
Oxford Companion to Politics in India (2010). Jayal has served as Director,
Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study (2004-07) and Vice-President
of the American Political Science Association (2011-12)
Khera, Reetika
Reetika Khera is an assistant professor of economics at the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. She
studied at the Delhi School of Economics (MA and Ph.D.) and Institute of
Development Studies, University of Sussex (MPhil) and was a post-
doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. She has been
affiliated to GB Pant Social Science Institute (Allahabad), Delhi School of
Economics, the Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi) and the Institute of
Economic Growth (Delhi) in the past. Reetika works on social security in
India, education, health and nutrition. Since 2002, she has been involved
in many field activities including surveys, social audits and "research for
action" with university students from across the country. She has
published articles in academic journals, magazines and newspapers.
Kothari, Jayna
Jayna is one of the founder members of CLPR. She graduated from
University Law College with a B.A.L LL.B degree in 1999. She also
completed her post-graduate studies as a Bachelor in Civil Law at the
University of Oxford.
She has also taught in University Law College, Bangalore as well as
National Law School of India University, Bangalore. In 2008, Jayna was
awarded the Wrangler D.C. Pavate Fellowship in the University of
Cambridge. She is also a recipient of the National Child Rights
Fellowship, 2010 awarded by Child Rights and You (CRY).
Having practiced previouly in the Supreme Court of India in the Office of
Ms. Indira Jaising, Jayna is now a partner in Ashira Law, a law firm in
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22. Bangalore and is practicing in the High Court of Karnataka.
Her articles and other writings have been published in academic and non-academic works. Her focus
areas of interest and expertise include disability law, constitutional law, human rights and intellectual
property law.
Krishna, Anirudh
Anirudh Krishna (PhD in Government, Cornell University, 2000; Masters in
Economics, Delhi University, 1980) is Professor of Public Policy and
Political Science at Duke University. His research investigates how poor
communities and individuals in developing countries cope with the
structural and personal constraints that result in poverty and
powerlessness. Recent research projects have examined poverty dynamics
at the household level for 35,000 households in India, Kenya, Uganda, Peru,
and North Carolina, USA (www.sanford.duke.edu/krishna), examining
both how people escaped poverty – and more important, how some came
to be poor in the first place. Current research concerns include social
mobility, spatial inequality, and urban slums. Krishna’s recent publications
include One Illness Away: Why People Become Poor and How they Escape
Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Poverty, Participation and
Democracy: A Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2008). He
also has five other books and more than fifty journal articles and book chapters. Krishna received an
honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, Sweden in 2011; the Olaf Palme Visiting Professorship from
the Swedish Research Council in 2007; the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize in 2005; and the Best Article
Award of the American Political Science Association, Comparative Democratization Section in 2002.
Before returning to academia, Krishna spent 14 years with the Indian Administrative Service, managing
diverse rural and urban development initiatives.
Krishnaswamy, Sudhir
Sudhir Krishnaswamy is based out of Bangalore interested in
public law, property law and the relationship between law and
development.He teaches political philosophy, law and
governance at the Azim Premji University, Bangalore and
Indian constitutional law at the Columbia University, New
York. He published a book titled 'Democracy and
Constitutionalism in India: A study of the Basic Structure
Doctrine' with the Oxford University Press in 2009. Shorter
work has appeared in various Indian and international journals
and periodicals including the Economic and Political Weekly,
Indian Journal of Constitutional Law and the Journal of Law
and Society. He is currently working on a case book on Indian
Constitutional Law, an edited volume titled 'Empirical Baselines
and Normative Frameworks: Indian Legal System Reform' and writing a monograph on the place of
republican constitutionalism in the Indian constitution.
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23. Mehendale, Archana
Archana Mehendale is an independent researcher working in the area of
education, child labour and child rights. She is currently a Visiting
Associate Professor at the School of Education, Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai. Apart from keenly studying policy processes as they
unfold, she has also been interested in contributing to these processes at
the national and international level. She was a member of the Central
Advisory Board of Education Committee for drafting the Right to
Education Act in 2005 and subsequently on the Working Group to
review the legislation on education and child labour constituted by
National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. She recently lead a
large action-research project on human rights institutions for children at
the Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India
University, Bangalore. She is currently studying implementation of the
'25% provision' under Right to Education Act and role of state in regulating elementary education sector
in India
Mysoor, Dolashree
Dolashree completed her B.A. LLB in 2010 from University Law
College, Bangalore. She has been working with the Foundation
since January 2011, wherein she assisted the organization on in-
house legal matters and research facilitation. Last year, she also
assisted the Foundation in its intervention on the RTE Act before the
Supreme Court in Society for Unaided Private Schools in Rajasthan
v Union of India. Prior to working with the Foundation, she has
interned with several corporate and litigation law firms. Dolashree
works with the Law, Governance and Development Initiative as a graduate fellow. She has been writing
on the Law, Governance and Development Initiative’sRTE WatchBlog. She works with the RTE Hub at the
Initiative. Her areas of interest are human rights, monitoring of socio-economic rights, educational
policies and disability laws.
Narayana, A.
Narayana has a Ph.D. from the Institute of Development Studies, University of
Sussex, UK. His doctoral thesis was on 'Information and Communication
Technology for governance reforms: Land Record Computerization in Karnataka'.
He has a Graduate's degree and a Master's degree in Economics from Mangalore
University.
Narayana has taught Economics at a college in Mangalore; been a reporter in
Deccan Herald in Bangalore and has taught in the Indian Institute of Journalism
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24. and New Media, Bangalore and in the Institute of Communication at Manipal University.
Pistor, Katherina
Katharina Pistor is the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia Law
School and the Director of the School’s Center on Global Legal
Transformation, and has served as a member of Columbia University’s
Committee on Global Thought since its inception. She previously taught at the
Kennedy School of Government, and worked at the Max Planck Institute for
Foreign and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany and the
Harvard Institute for International Development. In the 1990s she worked
predominantly on transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe and
Russia, where she conducted extensive field research. Since then, her research
has expanded to other emerging markets (in East Asia) and the impact of
globalization on the transformation of law and legal institutions in the areas of
finance, property rights and transnational regulation. She is Principal
Investigator of the “Global Finance and Law Initiative,” a collaborative research project aimed at re-
conceptualizing the relation between finance and law, funded by INET. She is a member of the Board of
Directors of the European Corporate Governance Institute, a Research Associate of the Center for
Economic Policy Research and an Editor of “Economics of Transition." In 2012 she received the Max
Planck Research Award for her contributions to international financial regulation.
Recent publications include “Governing Financial Interdependence: Lessons from the Vienna
Initiative” (Journal of Globalization and Development, 2011); “Global Network Finance” (Journal of
Comparative Economics, 2009); and with Curtis Milhaupt, “Law and Capitalism: What Corporate Crises
Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development Around the World” (Chicago University Press
2008).
Ruperalia, Sanjay
Sanjay Ruparelia earned his PhD in politics from Cambridge University. He
holds a joint appointment in the bachelor’s program in The New School for
Public Engagement and in the Politics Department at The New School for
Social Research. Ruparelia’s areas of research and teaching span democratic
theory, comparative politics and political economy of development, primarily
in South Asian studies. He has a secondary interest in China. In the past, his
work has focused on Indian democratic transformations since 1989, as well as
the rise and fall of the broader Indian left vis-à-vis the Congress and Hindu
nationalist BJP. Ruparelia has also looked at the prospects and difficulties of
power sharing in federal coalition governments, and the role of institutions,
power and judgment in politics. His new research examines the recent attempt to enact a right to basic
social welfare in India through an innovative state-building project. It is part of a long-term collaborative
research initiative, which analyzes the phenomenon of prosperity amidst poverty and inequality in India
and China, and assesses its consequences domestically and for the global political economy. Ruparelia’s
research has been supported by the Commonwealth Foundation, and he has been recognized with
awards and fellowships from Cambridge, Yale, Columbia, Notre Dame, and the New School. He has
served as a consultant to international and non-governmental organizations on governance and
development, and as a media commentator on contemporary India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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25. Singh, Ashish
Ashish completed his PhD from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development
Research, Mumbai in 2012. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Electrical
and Electronics, 2002) from Regional Engineering College, Trichy and Master’s
in Business Administration (2006) from the Sri Satya Sai University. After
completing his engineering degree, he worked with Alstom Ltd. Ashish’s
research interests are in Distributive Justice, Social Exclusion, Welfare and Labor
Economics and Child Development issues.
Swaminathan, Madhura
Madhura Swaminathan is a Professor at the Economic Analysis
Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore and a member of the UN
Committee on Development Policy. She has authored Weakening Welfare: The
Public Distribution of Food in India (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2000) and co-
edited three books on agrarian studies. She is on the editorial board of the
Review of Agrarian Studies.
Thiruvengadam, Arun
Arun Thiruvengadam is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, National
University of Singapore and a Visiting Fellow at the West Bengal National
University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He holds undergraduate and
graduate degrees in law from the National Law School, Bangalore and New
York University School of Law. Between 1995-7, he served as a law clerk to
Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi at the Supreme Court of India, before practicing law
in the areas of constitutional and commercial law in the High Court of Delhi
and the Supreme Court of India.
His research and teaching interests, as well as his published work, are in the
areas of comparative constitutional law and theory, Indian constitutional and
administrative law, law and development, regulation and governance in the Global South, and legal
education. He is currently working on a book project on the Constitution of India, and its working in the
six decades since independence.
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