Policy_Adda@BIC_Hub’ba

Alok Prasanna Kumar is Senior Resident Fellow and Team Lead, Vidhi Karnataka. His areas of research include Judicial Reforms, Constitutional law, Urban Development, and Law and Technology. He graduated with a B.A. LL.B. (Hons) from the NALSAR University in 2008 and obtained the BCL from the University of Oxford in 2009. He writes a monthly column for the Economic and Political Weekly and has published in the Indian Journal of Constitutional Law and National Law School of India Review apart from media outlets such as The Hindu, Indian Express, Scroll, Quint and Caravan. He has practiced in the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court from the chambers of Mr Mohan Parasaran, and currently also co-hosts the Ganatantra podcast on IVM Podcasts.

Malavika Prasad is an advocate and doctoral fellow at NALSAR University of Law. Her goal is to understand and help bridge the gulf between the Constitution of India and the constitution of India. To move towards this aim, she designs and runs educational activities for children and young adults on engaging as proactive citizens in Indian democracy, and writes for media-houses such as The Caravan. Previously, she has worked on both sides of the Bar, clerking for a judge of the Delhi High Court, and as an advocate in the Supreme Court of India and other courts and tribunals. She holds degrees from Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad and the University of Michigan Law School as a Grotius Fellow.

Ashwini is currently practising in the courts in Bangalore under the guidance of Senior Counsel and Former Advocate General, Karnataka, Sri. Ravivarma Kumar. She has recently started Dhwani Legal Trust, an organisation that aspires to provide legal aid to all, especially to persons from poor and marginalized communities, thereby empowering them to establish their rights.

Sudipto Mondal in an investigative journalist who reports mostly from South India on caste, communalism and corruption. He is writing a book on the death of the Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula and the 25-year history of the organisation to which he belonged, the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA).

Rahul is a partner with Trilegal and the head of its technology practice. He works on issues at the intersection of law technology and society and writes a weekly column in The Mint on these issues. His recent book, Privacy 3.0: Unlocking our Data Driven Future, explores the evolution of the concept of Privacy from early human civilisation down to the modern day and in particular dwells on how it has evolved more recently in Indian society.

Vinay is currently General Counsel and a founding team member at Setu, a fintech startup building APIs and tools to make plug-and-play financial services a reality. He previously set up and led the technology law & policy practice at Luthra & Luthra, where he advised some of the largest global internet, telecom, and tech companies, helping them navigate legal, regulatory, and policy issues as they launched innovative new products. He has also been an adviser to the Government of India on global internet governance and the IANA transition, and writes on tech and regulation for a general audience.

Schwarzman Scholar, graduating from Tsinghua University. He currently handles business development and new ventures for RK Group, dealing with Chinese firms, and is researching the implications of Chinese tech investments in India.

Manoj Kewalramani is a Fellow-China Studies at The Takshashila Institution. His research focuses on Chinese politics, foreign policy and approaches to new technologies.

Prior to joining Takshashila, Manoj spent 11 years working as a journalist in India and China, where he also helped set up digital newsrooms and train young journalists. Manoj’s work has been published by many media outlets, including NDTV, WION, Al-Jazeera, CGTN and The Diplomat.

He also curates a weekly brief, Eye on China, which tracks developments in China from an Indian perspective.

Rahul Jacob, formerly the South China (including Hong Kong) bureau chief of the Financial Times is an author and freelance journalist. He was the Travel, Food and Drinks Editor of the FT from 2003 to 2010 and their Hong Kong bureau chief between 1998 and 2003. Jacob has, in the past, covered business for Time magazine from Hong Kong and worked for Fortune in New York for several years, covering management. He grew up in Calcutta.

Meera K is a co-founder of Citizen Matters, the award winning media recognised as a pioneer of community journalism. She also helped initiate Open City, an urban data platform and Co Media Lab, a community newsroom and resource centre. Meera is an Ashoka Fellow.

Meera is passionate about cities, community media, urban issues and local governance and civic tech. She believes the combination of in depth local journalism and community engagement, helps catalyse better cities.

Meera was formerly yet another manager at an IT firm, working at large corporates as well as startups, holding varied responsibilities in the product development space. She is active in neighbourhood improvement initiatives and volunteers for projects related to transport, lake rejuvenation, organic kitchen gardening and solid waste management.

Meera is the Managing Trustee of Oorvani Foundation [2013- ]

Madan is an entrepreneur working at the intersection of transforming youth, enabling entrepreneurial journeys & empowering social changemakers. His vision is that every youth is an empowered youth, every empowered youth is an entrepreneur & job-creator and every entrepreneur is a social changemaker!
An engineer from NIE Mysore and an MBA from SPJIMR, Mumbai, Madan has worked with Wipro, Infosys and Mphasis (Japan) – before being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in 2000 when he co-founded MeritTrac as a pioneering idea in skills assessments. MeritTrac is today one of the leading Skills Assessment companies in the country – FastCompany recognized MeritTrac as the Top 10 Innovative Companies in India in 2009. MeritTrac was acquired by Manipal Global Education Services, one of India’s largest education services company. In 2011, he moved to Manipal Education to head up Strategy, Innovation and International Partnerships, and transitioned out in March 2013 – listening to his heart to embark on a journey as a changemaker.

With a vision of transforming rural youth to be entrepreneurs, he founded 1Bridge, a platform that empowers rural entrepreneurs to accelerate abundance of access, choice & convenience to rural citizens, leveraging technology. Today, 1Bridge is present in 50+ districts across South & East India and has over 3000+ rural entrepreneurs engaged in delivering services to rural consumers.
He is also the Managing Trustee of Head Held High Foundation, a non-profit that stands for human dignity. HHH focuses on initiatives for poverty eradication like Make India Capable, where a rural youth with no schooling is transformed into work-ready professionals and Global Action on Poverty (GAP) a platform that builds and supports Changemaking communities to eradicate poverty.
He is the co-founder of Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), a network that aims to catalyse large-scale job creation by bringing together Government, Businesses & Civil Society organisations to work collaboratively on igniting a mass entrepreneurship movement
Partnering with other Education leaders, Madan is also a co-founder & Director of Sylvant Advisors. Sylvant invests and supports education entrepreneurs, and has a group of 20+ ed-tech companies like Lodestar, Littlemore, PALGenie GuruG, EntLogics, KopyKitab, etc.
He is currently serves as an Strategy Advisor to UNICEF India and is helping launch a large initiative on youth empowerment called Generation Unlimited, in India.
He is a member of the FICCI National Committee on Rural Development, member of the CII National Committee on Women Empowerment, member of Governing Council of TiE Bangalore and Advisory Board Member, Youth for Seva . He had also served as a Senior Advisor to Tata Trusts between 2015-2016.

Madan is a sought-after speaker at various conferences around the world and has shared his innovative ideas & thoughts at prestigious forums like TEDxGateway, INK Conference, etc. A Bangalorean by birth & heart, he resides in the heart of the city – Basavanagudi with his wife & two children.

Ashwin is responsible for driving strategy, conceptual thinking and ideation, and research at GAME. He spends a lot of time breaking down the complex linkages that lead to mass enterprises. He is deeply passionate about social justice and tries to marry his background as a strategy consultant at Dalberg Advisor, to identify ways in which policies, programs, and markets can work better for marginalised and underprivileged groups.

Through numerous field research assignments, Ashwin observed the ability of micro-entrepreneurs to transform their own lives, families, and communities. Through GAME he wants to further enhance their potential to transform. Furthermore, he hopes to drive research and thinking that is innovative, insightful, and action oriented to galvanize the support mechanism around these entrepreneurs.

Anupama Gowda is Co-Founder of Workbench Projects, the first of its kind public laboratory for hardware innovation in Bangalore. As Managing Trustee of Yuva Chintana Foundation (YCF) works with the govt reaching nearly 5000 girls in secondary schools to encourage STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) education. As former Programme Executive-Arts Education at India Foundation for the Arts has worked extensively with Govt School teachers in exercising Arts Integrated Learning in Karnataka with the support of GI/MMB Bangalore.