The NLS Forum curates pioneering research and current developments in the fields of law, public policy, social sciences and humanities.
Our work bridges academic scholarship, legal practice and
civil society discourse.
We present the University blog and five student journal blogs, where leading scholarship from around the world is edited by our faculty, researchers and students. To submit your work, please refer to the submission guidelines provided for each blog.
Regulating the Gig Economy: Is It a State Failure to Address the Market Failure?
March 27, 2026
The article argues that India’s gig economy exhibits clear features of market failure—such as information asymmetry, monopsony power, and lack of social protection—leading to inefficient and inequitable outcomes for workers. It critiques existing regulatory frameworks, especially labour codes, for treating gig workers as part of the unorganised sector and limiting protections largely to welfare schemes. The author concludes that meaningful reform requires clearer employment classification, enforceable labour rights, and stronger institutional protections rather than minimal social security measures.
The Copyright Play: AI, Section 52, and the Acts of Fair Dealing
March 15, 2026
Written as a five-act drama, this paper analyzes AI training under Section 52. It argues for recognizing tokenization as transformative research. It focuses on training process, that is distinct from generated output, and argues that it is a non-infringing necessity to encourage innovation.
Divergent Stewardship in India: A Regulatory Blind Spot
March 30, 2026
India’s SEBI Stewardship Code mandates institutional investors, such as Asset Management
Companies and Alternative Investment Funds, to actively monitor and engage with investee
companies to promote long-term value creation and corporate governance. However, the Code’s
silence on threshold limits for triggering stewardship responsibilities has created significant
regulatory ambiguity. This article presents original empirical findings from an analysis of
stewardship policies of 27 major AMCs in India as of September 2025, revealing a wide
divergence in threshold-based engagement practices. AMCs have adopted quantitative,
qualitative, and hybrid approaches, with thresholds ranging from 2 to 5 percent of AUM or paid-
up capital, effectively limiting active oversight of several investee companies. This divergence
constitutes regulatory arbitrage, weakening minority shareholder protection and diluting the
Code’s intent. The article recommends that SEBI standardize stewardship thresholds, mandate
transparent disclosure, and issue clear regulatory directives to ensure uniform and meaningful
institutional engagement across the industry.
Poking the Tiger: The Supreme Court Rewrites India’s Treaty Entitlement Rules
March 11, 2026
The author examines the Supreme Court of India's 2026 decision in Tiger Global and its implications for the interaction between treaty entitlements and India's General Anti-Avoidance Rule. The judgment, it is argued, marks a decisive doctrinal shift from formal treaty compliance to a substance-over-form approach, reframing the 2016 Protocol's grandfathering clause from an inviolable guarantee to a rebuttable presumption subject to anti-avoidance scrutiny. By embedding GAAR principles into treaty interpretation, the Court subordinates legitimate expectations to domestic anti-abuse frameworks, ultimately conditioning treaty benefits on demonstrable commercial substance over mere formal compliance.