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.
Policy Paths for a More Inclusive Platform Economy: What Can We Learn from Existing Practices?
March 10, 2026
In the first piece in NLSIR's Special Blog Series entitled Beyond the Gig, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi argue that while the platform economy is often portrayed as expanding opportunities, especially for women in the global South, it largely reproduces existing labour market inequalities and introduces new forms of precarity, surveillance, and discrimination. The article highlights three key policy areas that must be addressed with a gender-responsive lens: the digital gender gap that limits women’s access to platform work, the need to extend anti-discrimination and equal pay protections to gig workers, and the redesign of social protection systems that currently depend on formal employment. The authors contend that many existing policy frameworks can be adapted to gig work, but meaningful reform requires recognising structural gender inequalities and involving workers themselves in shaping regulation and governance.
Panel Discussion on AI Governance in the Global South : India AI Pre-Summit Event
February 19, 2026
This event was held at the NLSIU Campus on 24 January 2026, with Mr. Amlan Mohanty, Mr. Prakash Narayanan, Ms. Eunice Huang, Mr. Jaideep Reddy, Prof. Rahul De, and Prof. (Dr.) Sudhir Krishnaswam as panellists. The discussion was led by Dr. Rahul Hemrajani. This event was reported by Nethra J from the IJLT Editorial Team.
Quantitative Thresholds, Qualitative Gaps: SEBI’s HVDLE Framework in Perspective
February 23, 2026
SEBI’s new consultation paper dated 27 October,2025, proposes to raise the High Value Debt Listed Entity (HVDLE) threshold from ₹1,000 crore to ₹5,000 crore marking a significant recalibration of India’s debt-market governance framework. Framed as a step toward ease of doing business, the proposal would exclude nearly 64% of existing HVDLEs from enhanced governance norms. This piece argues that repeated reliance on a purely quantitative trigger risks regulatory arbitrariness and uneven treatment of similarly situated issuers. Drawing comparative lessons from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, it proposes a composite, risk-based framework that integrates quantitative and qualitative criteria to better align regulatory intensity with systemic risk, investor protection, and market stability.
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.