Second'Azim'Premji'University'

International'Conference'on'Law,'Governance'and'

Development

Right to Welfare: Education, Food and Work

2 & 3 August, 2013

Royal Orchid, Old Airport Road, Bangalore

Contents

Agenda! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 1

Panel discussions and Speaker Abstracts!! ! ! ! ! ! 5

Speakers’ Biographies! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 16

Help Page/ Additional Information! ! ! ! ! ! ! 24

Second Azim Premji University International Conference on Law, Governance and Development

Right to Welfare: Education, Food and Work

Agenda | Day 1 | 2 August 2013Opening 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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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!! ! SpeakerSiri Gloppen, University of BergenCan courts bring social justice? Rights based welfare policy in a comparative perspective

AnchorVishnupad Misra, Azim Premji University

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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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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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Panel Discussion and Speaker AbstractsDay 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Speakers’ BiographiesAiyar, 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 AnalysisUnit of the Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore and a member of the UNCommittee 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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