Public interest litigation (PIL) is a legal innovation of fairly recent vintage which was inspired by noble objectives. It has been seen as a useful tool in widening access to justice, especially in societies scarred by poverty, illiteracy, human exploitation, corruption and maladministration.

The concept took deep roots in India some thirty years ago and has now become an ubiquitous feature of the legal landscape. Over the years, however, Indian PIL has, in Dr Venkat Iyer's view, produced a plethora of serious negative consequences, most of them unintended (but not unforeseeable), which have the potential not only to discredit the concept itself, but to irreversibly destroy the trust that the Indian masses have placed in the judiciary – an institution which has, over the past five decades, been come to be seen, rightly or wrongly, as the last bastion of freedom and the rule of law.

The lecture is aimed at shining a critical spotlight on the state of PIL in contemporary India and to suggest that the time has come for a serious reappraisal of attitudes in this important area of law and public policy.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Venkat Iyer will be in conversation with C N Kumar. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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What does it take to keep a centuries-old craft alive in the 21st century?

Handlooms: Past, Present and Future brings together some of the most influential voices in the craft world for a vital conversation on heritage, change, and continuity. From policy and preservation to design and storytelling, this panel explores how handwoven traditions have endured through countless centuries, and the new challenges the 21st century provides.

The discussion features Laila Tyabji, founder of Dastkar and a pioneering force in India's craft revival; Ratna Krishna Kumar, patron of traditional arts; actor and advocate Nandita Das; and Chandra Jain, textile revivalist and curator of River Weaves: Brocades of Banaras. Award-winning writer and cultural commentator Shoba Narayan will moderate the conversation.

Together, they reflect on what must evolve and what must endure– especially in a time when fast fashion threatens to erase the soulful, skilled work of artisans.

This panel is part of River Weaves, an immersive exhibition that celebrates the beauty, complexity, and cultural depth of Banarasi brocade. Designed by Siddhartha Das Studio and presented by Chandra Jain, the exhibition reveals the layers of history, symbolism, and sustainability woven into each fabric.

Expect insight, honesty, and a renewed sense of why these threads still matter.

In collaboration with:

Kadambari

In this episode of BIC Talks, Laila Tyabji, Ratna Krishna Kumar, Nandita Das, Chandra Jain with will be in conversation with Shoba Narayan. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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It's here. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning.

Climate Change: The Policy, Law, and Practice is a vital intervention. A book that gathers decades of global negotiations, Indian legal battles, and emerging climate jurisprudence into one urgent and accessible narrative. From courtroom precedents to cutting-edge policy, from carbon markets to constitutional rights, it examines how law can both shape and respond to the climate emergency.

Author and legal expert Jay Cheema draws from his experience as Amicus Curiae to the Supreme Court of India in a landmark carbon emissions case. Guiding us through the evolving legal architecture of climate action and accountability, his presentation will be followed by an incisive conversation with an interlocutor to explore the tensions and hopes within the climate discourse. An open Q&A will close the session.

Reshaping landscapes, displacing lives, and challenging our very systems of governance, this crisis can no longer be sidelined. Forests burn where there was once monsoon green, rivers swell as glaciers retreat, and the ancient cycle of India's six ritus feels increasingly unfamiliar. The chaos predicted by climate scientists in the 50's is increasingly creeping into our reality.

Because the climate crisis is not only legal and political, but deeply personal.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Jatinder 'Jay' Cheema will be in conversation with Navaneeta Bhaskar. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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Insider accounts from political aides, bureaucrats, and diplomats have long illuminated the workings of power—but even more enigmatic were the lobbyists. Operating in the shadows, often invisible to public scrutiny, they were intimately privy to clandestine negotiations, back-channel discussions, and subtle bureaucratic skirmishes. In his new roman-à-clef For No Reason At All, Ramjee Chandran shines a light on this hidden world.

Chandran—well‑known in Bangalore as a journalist, publisher, and podcaster—has, until now, remained silent about his time as a lobbyist in 1980s New Delhi, a pivotal era just before major economic reforms took hold.

Drawing from real events, the novel charts the journey of a young lobbyist caught in a high-stakes conflict over silicon metal—a material deemed strategically vital. Central to the drama is Metkem Silicon, which, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, devoted 17 years to developing indigenous silicon metal technology. Yet their efforts collided with a rival scheme spearheaded by the Department of Electronics, which wanted to bypass local innovation and import U.S. technology.

What ensued was a four‑year bureaucratic war: media leaks, secret memorandums, and the covert involvement of the Soviets and other intelligence agencies—culminating in a final decision placed in the hands of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Set against the backdrop of Cold War Delhi on the cusp of liberalisation, the novel paints a vivid portrait of a nation—and capital—torn between ideologies and ambitions. The Soviet Union may have vanished, lobbyists have receded from public corridors, and few can claim first‑hand knowledge of that era.

In Confessions of a Lobbyist, Siddharth Raja—a lawyer, historian, and bibliophile—sits down with Ramjee Chandran to peel back the layers of this story, offering an insider's glimpse into a world that feels at once distant and disarmingly relevant.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Ramjee Chandran will be in conversation with Siddharth Raja. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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Are we teaching children what to think, or how to think? When our children focus on rote learning and exam-based academic progress, how do we nurture the inventive Indian who can fuel the imagination of the world with creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving? What if classrooms became labs of imagination, not factories of repetition?

These are the questions that the Agastya International Foundation set out to answer 25 years ago, by designing a curiosity-driven, experiential learning model that has transformed education across India. Today, their vision of sparking curiosity, nurturing creativity and instilling confidence and caring has impacted over 25 million schoolchildren and 300,000 teachers in government schools across 23 Indian States.

An acclaimed new book from Penguin Random House, The Moving of Mountains traces Agastya's extraordinary journey in reshaping the classroom by replacing rote learning with hands-on experiments, creative projects and interactive models in science, art and ecology.

Join us in a discussion of why this powerful vision for curiosity-driven, experiential learning is critical to the future of India, and has caught the imagination of scientists, industry leaders, educationists and policy makers alike.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Adhirath Sethi, Revathi Narayanan, K VijayRaghavan and G K Ananthsuresh will be in conversation with Vikram Bhat. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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As global power dynamics continue to shift, the Indo-Pacific sits at the heart of a rapidly evolving strategic and economic landscape. In this timely and wide-ranging session, Peter Varghese, former Australian Foreign Secretary and High Commissioner to India, offers a perspective shaped by decades of diplomacy and deep engagement with the region.

His address will explore the complex forces redefining the Indo-Pacific: from the sharpening rivalry between the US and China, to China's expanding influence and the evolving policy direction in Washington. The session will also examine how key regional players (India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia) are shaping their own responses to these pressures, and what this means for the broader security of the region.

Alongside geopolitics, the conversation will turn to trade tensions, economic nationalism, and the slowing pace of globalization; factors that now cast long shadows over our economic future. Can traditional regional institutions hold, or will more agile, interest-based minilateral groups take their place?

In this episode of BIC Talks, Peter Varghese will be in conversation with Latha Reddy, Nitin Pai, and Ranjan Mathai. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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How do we honour truths without exploitation or erasure?

This panel discussion will explore how the chapter of Partition is remembered, who holds the responsibility of preserving its stories, and what it means to give them an honest voice. Through literature, oral testimony, archives, or immersive media, each speaker has engaged with histories marked by silence, trauma, and survival. In this session, they will reflect on the choices they have made: to amplify certain voices, to tell different stories with care, and to avoid reducing complex truths into simplified narratives.

At the heart of this conversation is a shared responsibility; not only as writers, educators, or artists, but as individuals shaped by inherited memory. As Partition fades from lived memory, this panel asks how the stories we carry today might shape the understanding of future generations, and the ways they remember, question, and imagine.

In collaboration with:

Rereeti

In this episode of BIC Talks, Urvashi Butalia and Soni Wadhwa will be in conversation with Tejshvi Jain. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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Scholars of international relations, political thought, and India's diplomatic history continue to debate the meaning and relevance of non-alignment in India's foreign policy today. The origins of these debates lie in Jawaharlal Nehru's articulation of non-alignment at the height of the Cold War, a concept both resolute and ambiguous.

In this talk, Dr. Swapna Kona Nayudu will draw on her acclaimed book, The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment (Cambridge University Press UK, Juggernaut Books India), to explore how India's approach to international affairs and the United Nations now understood in summary as non-alignment. Based on meticulous archival research in multiple languages, her work uncovers India's diplomatic and peacekeeping contributions in pivotal global events such as the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, and the Congo Crisis.

Tracing the evolution of non-alignment from Nehru's time to the present, Dr. Kona Nayudu will examine its contested meaning and its influence on India's position as the only non-aligned founding member of the UN.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Dr. Kona Nayudu will be in conversation with Jahnavi Phalkey. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Jul 2025.

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Journalism. Politics. Justice.

One fateful evening in 2017, journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot outside her Bangalore home. Her death sent shockwaves across the country. But the story didn't end there.

This evening with journalist and author Rollo Romig, as he explores in his powerful new book, I Am on the Hit List, offers new insights into the life and assassination of Gauri Lankesh. In conversation with artist Pushpamala N and writer-activist Shivsundar, Romig shares the years of reporting and investigating that led him deep into the world Gauri inhabited.

Through hidden archives, political undercurrents, and voices from the ground, Romig uncovers a chilling rise in hate and extremism. From Bangalore's storied publishing lanes to secretive religious enclaves, this conversation offers a rare and moving look at India's shifting democratic landscape.

Pull up a chair. Because remembering is resistance, and this is a story that needs to be heard.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Rollo Romig and Shivasundar will be in conversation with Pushpamala N. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Jul 2025.

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Mumbai in the seventies and eighties was a city of sharp contrasts: glamour and gang wars, chaos and control. At the heart of it all was Assistant Commissioner of Police (Retd) Madhukar B. Zende, a sharp-minded officer with a knack for catching the city's most elusive criminals.

Best known for arresting the infamous serial killer Charles Sobhraj, aka the Serpent, Zende's career spanned decades of high-stakes policing. His new book, Mumbai's Most Wanted, is a rich and gritty chronicle of life on the force.

From the mysterious murder of Shanta Devi to the capture of criminal kingpins like Arun Gawli, Karim Lala, Haji Mastan and Babu Reshim, his stories unfold like scenes from a noir thriller (except every word is true). There are riots, manhunts, and moments of doubt as well as unexpected grace.

This conversation is a rare look into a city in flux and a man who walked its fault lines, chasing justice in a time of smoke-filled bars, typewriters, and quick decisions.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Madhukar Zende will be in conversation with Raghu Karnad. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Jul 2025.

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