Deepak Disagrees

Sidharth Chauhan believes that political representation is integral to democracy, and that redistributing political power is prior to other forms of reservations.

But what does representation even mean? What are the ethics of denying some citizens the right to contest in their own constituency? And is this a path to the annihilation of caste?

Sidharth teaches constitutional law, legal philosophy and comparative public law at the National Law School of India University. He read law at NLSIU, clerked for Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, took an LL.M. at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at NALSAR Hyderabad for eleven years.

His doctoral thesis, Juridical Engagement with Electoral Reservations in India, is the first sustained study of how Indian courts have reasoned about reserved seats in legislatures. He has also written on bicameralism, the Hindu Code Bill, and judicial transparency.

Prashant Narang believes that street vendors are not encroachers. He argues that the state has wrongly cast honest vendors as illegal, and that a vendor who sells on a footpath is simply free enterprise at work. He goes further still: a vendor who has held the same spot for years has earned a real claim to it, and the state should protect that claim rather than evict them.

But is vending a legitimate use of public land? Should we reward encroachers with property rights? And how do we decide how public land is to be used?

Prashant is a lawyer. He was a senior fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, and is now Deputy Program Director at the TrustBridge Rule of Law Foundation.

He has worked on the rights of street vendors for more than a decade, since 2013, and he writes and litigates on free markets, property, and the rule of law.

Usha Ramanathan believes that we have failed people in poverty. The state has systematically constructed them as illegal: encroachers, beggars, vagrants and defaulters, and we, the citizens, have looked away.

But should we trade liberty for the sake of the poor? Haven't liberalized markets lifted more Indians out of poverty than any welfare program ever has? And if the state is the enemy, then how can we also enlist it to protect the poor?

Usha is one of India's most respected legal scholars. She holds a PhD in law from Delhi University, is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and teaches environmental, labour, and consumer law at the Indian Law Institute. She has worked on the Bhopal gas survivors, the Narmada valley displacements, and the criminalisation of beggary, and has been the most persistent critic of India's Aadhaar programme since 2009.

Lant Pritchett believes that the post-1990 promise—that every country could converge on becoming democratic, capable, and liberal—was always more fragile than its champions admitted.

But what does the end of history actually look like? Why have some developing countries rejected western liberal ideas? And what happens to development without liberalism?

Lant is one of the most important development economists of the last few decades. He holds a PhD in economics from MIT, spent nineteen years at the World Bank, and taught at the Harvard Kennedy School for nearly twenty years. He is now Research Director at Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) and a leading voice on state capability, institutional reform, and the case for letting more people move across borders.

Bhargavi Zaveri-Shah believes animals are sentient, and that sentience, not species, is what determines who counts morally.

But why not limit moral consideration to the human species? What about pets and wild animals? And how does the mathematics of utility work?

Bhargavi is a lawyer turned researcher turned founder. She holds a PhD in law from the National University of Singapore, was Research Lead at xKDR Forum, and writes a fortnightly column on finance and governance in The Print. She is the CEO of Litanalytics, where she is building TheProfesseer, India's first litigation analytics engine.

Rahul Matthan believes intellectual property is not like real property. It's a legal fiction the state grants to protect publishers and incentivize innovation.

But if you spent years writing a novel or a lifetime developing a drug, don't you own that? And if AI can train on your life's work without asking, who does it really belong to?

Rahul is India's most prominent technology lawyer, a partner at Trilegal, and author of The Third Way. He has written the weekly column Ex Machina in the Mint since 2016, on the intersection of law, technology, and society.

Abhishek believes that federalism is a good idea. Power should devolve across political levels, and there should be multiple tiers of elected government.

But doesn't federalism make politics more dysfunctional? What kind of federal system is best? And why do states need to be part of a nation at all?

Abhishek Choutagunta is a political economist with a PhD in economics. His research examines India’s federal structure, including his work on “centripetal federalism,” the use of President’s Rule, and how institutional design shapes governance outcomes.

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Pranay believes that nationalism is not only unavoidable, but unfairly criticised by liberals and libertarians.

But what exactly is a nation? Isn't nationalism often linked with violence and exclusion? And is it fair to say that liberals aren't nationalists?

Pranay Kotasthane is the Deputy Director of the Takshashila Institution, where he also leads the High Tech Geopolitics programme.

He co-hosts the Puliyabaazi podcast, and authors the Anticipating the Unintended newsletter. He’s also co-authored several widely read books on public policy, including Missing in Action, When the Chips Are Down, and We, the Citizens.

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Ajay Shah believes that global free trade is good, and that state autarky is a bad idea. Borders, he says, should be relatively open, and there should be low levels of control on people, goods, services and capital moving across borders.

But what does openness really mean? Can controls on individual liberties ever justified? And what about bad actors like China?

Ajay is one of India's most prominent economists, the co-founder of the XKDR Forum, and co-author of the widely-acclaimed In Service of the Republic. His work spans financial markets, public finance, state capacity, and economic reform in India.

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Kumar Anand believes that more liberty is always better than less liberty. As a libertarian, he argues that many problems can be traced back to too much state power and too little individual freedom.

But what is liberty? Is it possible without coercion? And why is trading liberty for security a bad idea?

Kumar is an economist at the Centre for Civil Society, one of India’s leading market-liberal think tanks. His work spans public choice, regulatory reform, school choice, and urban governance.

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