A Contemporary Crisis

Arvind Narrain is a visiting faculty at the Azim Premji University and the National Law School. He is the author of most recently, India’s Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism and the politics of resistance.

Dr. Aparna Chandra is an Associate Professor of Law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Her areas of teaching and research are constitutional law, human rights, legal theory, gender and the law, and judicial process reform. Her on-going research includes a collaboration with the Israel Democracy Institute on a European Research Council funded multi-nation study titled Proportionality and Public Policy; a University of Chicago funded research project titled Empirical Analysis of Indian Supreme Court decisions; and a collaboration with the Centre for Reproductive Rights, New York on a book on Reproductive Justice in India.

Apart from her academic research and writings, Aparna has been involved in various law reform efforts and has undertaken government advisory work, especially on issues of human rights and civil liberties.

Aparna graduated from the B.A. LL.B (Hons.) program at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU) in 2006, and secured the first rank in the University.

Aparna received her LL.M and JSD degrees from Yale Law School in 2007 and 2013, respectively. She was a Lillian Goldman Scholar at Yale Law School from 2010-2012. Her doctoral dissertation (under the supervision of Judith Resnik and guidance of Bruce Ackerman and Alec Stone Sweet) examined the role of international law in domestic constitutional adjudication, with a primary focus on the Indian Supreme Court.

Leo F. Saldanha is full-time Coordinator and also Trustee of Environmental Support Group (ESG). He has gained wide-ranging experience in the areas of Environmental Law and Policy, Decentralisation, Urban Planning and a variety of Human Rights and Development related issues, working across many sectors for over a decade. He is a keen campaigner on critical environmental and social justice issues and has guided several campaigns demanding evolution of progressive laws and effective action. He has creatively supported various distressed communities to secure justice through public interest litigations and advocacy efforts, arguing as party in person several public interest litigations, many of which have resulted in remarkable judgments. He has a background in Environmental Science.

He assists various Government agencies in evolving law and policy relating to environmental justice. In recognition of his contribution to environmental and social justice efforts, Association for India’s Development, USA, made him their first AID Saathi.

In 2007, he co-authored Green Tapism: A Review of the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification-2006 (2007) with team members at ESG. He has since co-authored Tearing through the Water Landscape: Evaluating the envionmental and social consequences of POSCO project in Odisha, India (2011), Forfeiting our Commons: A Case for Protecting and Conserving Challakere’s Amrit Mahal Kavals as Livelihoods-Supporting, Biodiversity-Rich and Ecologically-Sensitive Grassland Ecosystems (2013), and a comprehensive review report of Environmental Decision Making in Karnataka State, in particular the State Environmental Clearance Committee (2014), amongst others.

Aishwarya Ravikumar is trained in Communication Studies in Bangalore, and in this capacity, has worked in different contexts to make short documentary films and learn about governance and community perspectives on land & forest rights, right to employment, fair wages and information and food sovereignty in Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Gujarat with rural and indigenous communities. She is now working in Bangalore as a Communication Coordinator, to develop an understanding of urban governance and laws concerning the lives of vulnerable communities and the urban poor.