Legal and Policy Framework for Promoting Equitable Access to Documentary Heritage

The National Mission for Manuscripts of India, in association with UNESCO, completed a research study to assist in the development of legal and policy framework and protocols for promoting equitable access to documentary heritage, relevant to India and other South Asian countries. This study report seeks to accurately identify and critically examine the legal and policy framework for promoting equitable access to our documentary heritage. The National Mission for Manuscripts is the most important institution in India creating bibliographic databases of manuscripts and engaged in the conservation and preservation of valuable manuscripts. This report engages with the legal and policy framework which envelops the lifecycle of the Mission’s work: the process of access to manuscripts, digitization of manuscripts and the creation of databases. By critically examining the legal rules in the practical context of the Mission’s work, the research team has put together the first such review of any such initiative in the protection of traditional knowledge in the country. The conclusions of the report are in the form of draft legal agreements and policy recommendations located in the discussion on various parts of the Mission’s work. While this report does not set out to be the final word on these significant policy initiatives, the report definitely makes significant progress in the policy debate and legal literature in this field. This report illustrates working patterns of the Mission within the legal and policy framework in the Country. This report will be a valuable sourcebook for understanding South Asian legal and policy framework for accessing documentary heritage collections. The draft legal agreements and policy recommendations, presented in this report, will also be valuable intervention tools for South Asian countries that share similar legal and policy framework within the sub-region

Healthcare law in the US and the RTE in India: steps towards universal provision of social goods

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of India upheld the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 and the Supreme Court of the United States likewise upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 2010. The two pieces of legislation attempt to expand, to a greater or lesser degree, the provision of education and health services, respectively. This article attempts to understand and evaluate the policy debates and legal decisions around the two Acts as attempts by two constitutional liberal democracies to clarify the relationship between the state and private sector, and their respective roles and responsibilities to secure social welfare

Commercial courts in India : three puzzles for legal system reform

Are commercial courts in India effective? This paper attempts to answer the question by reviewing the performance of the commercial courts set up under the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 using quantitative and qualitative methods, nearly four years after the 2015 Act was introduced. When we re-evaluate the utility of the commercial courts in terms of whether they have lived up to their expectations, using the Delhi High Court as a live example and through court observations of the commercial court in Bengaluru, we note with concern that the objective of speedy and effective justice for commercial matters has not been achieved. On the contrary, we show that justice delivery for commercial matters has slowed down since the 2015 Act came into force

Lokpal bill : lessons from the Karnataka Lokayukta's performance

The debate on the design of the Lokpal has been premised on the questionable assumption that what is needed to combat corruption is a powerful national institution to prosecute and convict the corrupt, but the debate has not drawn on the experience with the existing institutional models, namely the Lokayuktas in the states. An empirical analysis of the performance of the Lokayukta in Karnataka between 1995 and 2011 suggests that any anti-corruption agency, no matter how powerful, that is oriented towards criminal conviction is bound to fail in the absence of judicial reforms

Urban-rural incidence of rape in India myths and social science evidence

We are grateful to Aashish Singh, Abhayraj Naik, Vikas Kumar and Vishnupad for their valuable inputs on various drafts of this paper, and Ravi Srinivas Eruku for his help with visual representation of the data. The gangrape of a Delhi physiotherapy student in December 2012 has sparked a national debate on the incidence and causes of rape and other sexual offences in India. One strand of this debate is the assertion that acts of rape and sexual violence occur with greater frequency and intensity in urban rather than rural India

The local bill: what can we learn from the Karnataka lokayukta’s performance

Parliament will consider the Lokpal1 Bill this week. The debate on policy choices and the institutional design for a new anti-corruption agency at the Union and State levels has pervaded every public fora. The ubiquitous debate is characterized by passionate disagreement between familiar opponents who never tire of restating and rehashing their adopted positions informed by their moral or political commitments. Even by the standards of India’s loud and noisy democracy the anti-corruption debate has been characterized by rancour and extra-ordinary brinkmanship that threatens to derail India’s everyday practice of politics

Legal and judicial reform in India: a call for systemic and empirical approaches

Judicial delays and high pendency is a serious problem that has rule of law and fundamental rights implications. Law and judicial reform in India aimed at reducing judicial delays and pendency have met with limited success since they have been almost solely focused on increasing the number of courts and such other supplydriven mechanisms without ascertaining the causes of delay. This paper argues for re-orienting law and judicial reform by engaging in empirical methods. In so arguing, this paper also exposes the difficulties in using empirical methods in India owing to the unavailability of crucial data. It also suggests some nonconventional solutions for more effective and efficient civil and criminal justice systems

Politics and society between elections

The problems of India’s development and governance are routinely linked to the logic of India’s electoral democracy. As a result, a great deal is known about elections, but paradoxically our knowledge of politics and society between elections is relatively underdeveloped. As much as anything else, development and governance outcomes are shaped by how the government functions between elections; including how it relates to citizens on a regular basis, how it provides routine public services to them, and how public order is maintained. Further, governance processes are nested in the social and political relationships between citizens and government functionaries

An investigation into the age and origin of Suranga in the foothills of the Western Ghats of India

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version. The final publication is available at Springer via: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-015-0125-yThis paper presents the evidence for determining the age and origin of suranga irrigation found mainly in southern Karnataka and northern Kerala in the foothills of the Western Ghats of south India. It draws on on-going research that has attempted to use an interdisciplinary approach to date the system using Indian Archives, British and Portuguese colonial archives, etymology, oral testimony archaeology, phenology and palaeo dating techniques. The results from this study put the origins of the system at around 1900–1940 CE. These results are compared with the current academic discourse that supports the view that the system originates from ancient Persia and qanat technology, because of the long established trade links with Persia and the Arabian Peninsula in the Malabar region. We argue that a new ‘origin discourse’ should be framed around these much more recent dates. The methodological constraints behind both theories are discussed throughout to enable the reader to appreciate the limitations of both arguments.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio