The recent controversy about the bike-taxi platforms in Bengaluru, particularly the case of Rapido, reveals a deeper conflict between technological innovation, giving autonomy to individuals seeking flexible work, v/s the interests of a few individuals who are unwilling to share the market. This issue reached the Karnataka High Court after Rapido challenged earlier restrictions placed on its operations, prompting the Court to examine whether bike-taxis were permissible under existing transport law. During the hearings, the Karnataka government informed the Court that it had not notified any rules under Section 93 of the Motor Vehicles Act that would allow bike-taxis to operate as a contract-carriage service. In the absence of such a policy, the Court held that aggregators could not legally run motorcycle-based taxi services and ordered all operators to halt bike-taxi operations within six weeks. What began as a petition seeking regulatory clarity, ultimately highlighted the deeper tensions between livelihood freedom and regulatory measures.

The political-economic context behind this issue is crucial to understand the situation. Karnataka’s auto-rickshaw and taxi unions had consistently pressured the government to prevent bike taxis from entering the market, arguing that they represented unfair competition and would erode the earnings of traditional transport workers. This dynamic reflects a pattern that Adam Smith had identified centuries earlier: established commercial interests routinely use political influence to restrict competition and protect their own privileges at the public’s expense. Smith warned that proposals from such groups should be treated with “great precaution,” arguing that merchants and manufacturers possess an interest that is “never exactly the same with that of the public” and that they habitually seek monopoly protections to the detriment of consumers and new market entrants (Smith, 1776/2005, Book I, Ch. XI, pp. 213–214). 

The pressure exerted by Karnataka’s transport unions on the state government to keep bike taxis out of the market is a direct example of this. This dynamic appears in Bengaluru, where political demand to regulate bike taxis was shaped less by evidence and more by fear of organised unions capable of exerting voting pressure. The outcome is an uneven regulatory landscape where new, low-cost forms of mobility/movement remain trapped in legal ambiguity while older transport lobbies maintain their monopolistic stability.

The core issue, however, is not merely administrative delay or sectoral politics, it is the question of individual freedom. Bike-taxi riders are not large corporations; they are overwhelmingly lower-income workers who own a motorcycle and seek to monetise it in a flexible manner. Preventing a person from using their own legally purchased asset to earn a livelihood reflects what Hernando de Soto (2000) identified as a foundational barrier faced by the poor in developing economies: they possess real assets but are excluded from the formal legal frameworks that would allow those assets to function as productive capital, leaving their wealth effectively “dead” and inaccessible to the wider market (de Soto, 2000, pp. 29–35). 

In Bengaluru, the human cost of the ban was immediate and severe. Over 1.2 lakh gig workers who had built their livelihoods around bike-taxi platforms lost their primary source of income, with riders reporting daily earnings of ₹800–1,000 that were suddenly reduced to nothing (BangaloreBeat, 2025). Many were forced into parcel delivery work, where they earned roughly half their previous wages amid intensified competition and fewer opportunities (NewsBytesApp, 2025). When livelihood choices are restricted through policy non-decisions, the state limits not just income but economic agency.

Framing the bike-taxi debate as one about freedom rather than transport policy highlights how regulations shape human capability. Amartya Sen (1999) conceptualised development as the expansion of freedoms, including the freedom to participate in economic activity. When the state, intentionally or through action, eliminates an accessible pathway for work, it reduces individuals’ capabilities to pursue lives they value. For many riders, bike taxis are not a side hustle but a mechanism for financial independence. Likewise, consumers, particularly students, low-income commuters, and women seeking affordable point-to-point transport, lose meaningful choices when the state restricts innovation in mobility services. The concern, therefore, extends beyond gig workers to the broader public, whose everyday freedom to choose efficient and affordable mobility options becomes constrained.

The Bengaluru case demonstrates how modern regulatory debates are often struggles over the distribution of freedom. Innovation introduces new possibilities, incumbents resist those possibilities, and the state’s role becomes arbitrating whose freedom takes precedence. When policy delays function as de facto bans, the freedom that is compromised is that of the least powerful actors: small entrepreneurs, gig workers, and ordinary consumers. A democratic society should aspire to regulations that enable participation, competition, and safety without foreclosing livelihood opportunities. The bike-taxi controversy offers a timely reminder that economic freedom is not an abstract principle but a lived experience shaped by everyday access to work, mobility, and choice.

About Abhinav Bhatia

Abhinav holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Development Studies, and brings experience in research, policy communication, and stakeholder engagement. His interests span sustainability, social entrepreneurship, and social sciences. He currently works at CCS as an Associate in the Academy.

Draconian gun controls make guns whisper, not recoil. They turn firearm possession into a privilege rather than a liberty. Scholars have debated the empirical effects of civilian firearm access, not least in the United States. But statistics aside, we must look at a deeper question: does the state have the moral authority to disarm competent law-abiding citizens?

Beginning from first principles will help. A free society rests on the idea that individuals own themselves. The maxim of self-ownership endows individuals with the rights to possessions acquired voluntarily. Property rights flow from this premise. A gun is a type of property. It is dangerous, yes, but tools do not lose moral protection because they are dangerous. What holds for knives and hockey sticks must hold for guns.

Property rights, of course, are not unlimited. No one claims that individuals should be allowed to own nuclear weapons. But that concession is not a case against firearms. The distinction between such extraordinary weapons and guns lies in proportionality and discriminability. Nuclear bombs cannot be used without indiscriminate destruction. Their deployment violates innocent lives. Guns by contrast can be used for defense in ways that are consistent with the rights of others. Robert Nozick did not view gun ownership as infringing the boundaries of others’ rights.

The moral foundation of this position becomes clearer when we turn to the right of self-preservation. Imagine walking home to find a burly attacker lunging at you. John Locke held that an aggressor, by initiating violence, forfeits all claims to not be resisted. You may strike back in self-defense. The right of self-defense is not granted by the state. It precedes political authority and licensing.

Yet a right without a means to exercise it is hollow. A state that makes it difficult for citizens to own guns leaves them unable to defend against lethal violence. Guns are thus an effective means of self-defense.

But why just guns? One could in theory defend using swords and knives. Suppose you’re weak and are faced off against that burly man in close combat. In practice, bodily strength would determine the outcome. A firearm remedies that imbalance. Guns are great equalizers allowing the elderly, women, and physically vulnerable to defend themselves.

Restrictionists respond by redefining the right to self-defense. For them, self-defense is a mere means to enhanced safety— a reduced probability of being harmed. If banning guns lowers aggregate violence, they contend rights are best safeguarded. Accepting this premise would indicate that a few unlucky individuals who might have otherwise defended themselves die, but society gains overall security. But as philosopher Lester Hunt argues, this view drains self-defence of its intuitive meaning. Such an understanding leaves no room for people to defend themselves when faced against an aggressor.

The restrictionist camp offers a secondary argument for limiting gun ownership. Philosopher David DeGrazia suggests that a needs-based policy should restrict guns to people who are vulnerable. This argument too fails since people cannot predict when they will be victimized. Putting a burden of clairvoyance on potential victims is unsound.

Security based accounts of gun controls overlook another moral dimension. Philosopher Deane-Peter Baker argues that firearms help assert dignity. How often do we admire those who resist aggression? Resistance affirms people’s status as ‘persons,’ not as tools at the hands of their aggressors.

This is the moral core of the matter. Should citizens be self-authors of their own preservation, or passive wards who must await the protection of centralized authority? In a free society, self-ownership, and dignity are paramount. When anchored on such a moral order, prohibitions on firearm ownership become difficult to defend. The burden of justification then lies not with those who wish to protect themselves, but with those who would disarm them.

About Anshu Chowdhury

Anshu Chowdhury is Junior Associate at CCS Academy. He studies political science at Hindu College, University of Delhi.

Indian libertarians have been losing the war of ideas. Is this because libertarianism is a weak philosophy? I think not. In fact, libertarianism is very coherent as a philosophy, unlike its three cousins: the closest one liberalism, the farthest communism and conservatism. Unlike its distant relatives it enjoys the support of few around the globe— perhaps one of the reasons why it’s not as diluted. Its consistency is reflected in its three core philosophical commitments: moral primacy of the individual, a focus on non-coercion and the right to maintain private property.

No, this is not an essay about why libertarian philosophy works. It is not my burden to prove, for serious academics have tussled with such problems long. My intention is to point fingers at a glaring aperture in how libertarian ideas are advocated in India.

The way contemporary libertarianism is articulated in India is consequentialist. Consequentialism is a moral philosophy that justifies its actions by its end outcomes. Adopt X policy, and this will lead to Y outcomes. Such arguments, often economic in nature, are maintained by economists, policy wonks, and businesspeople. A libertarian consequentialist argument would be this: markets reduce poverty faster than state planning, and therefore adoption of libertarian rules by a society will lead to increased welfare. There’s nothing bad about such consequentialist arguments. They make the case for libertarian ideas stronger. But are they enough?

I contend not. Over-reliance on consequentialist frameworks has led Indian libertarianism to its own demise. It overlooks the importance of maintaining a coherent doctrine. What’s worse is it lacks rhetorical quality.

Consider the case for Marxism. Its appeal lies not in its economic models. Few Indian Marxists could claim mastery over its heterodox economics and yet this hardly matters. Marxism’s communicative power lies elsewhere. It matters more that Marxism offers a theory of history, a theory of power, and a theory of exploitation. You are unemployed? Your life feels constrained? Is there too much inequality? You’re concerned with your caste position? Marxism offers appealing answers to you. It makes the world legible for you, almost in a cookie cutter format. BJP’s civilizational conservatism has a strong appeal factor as well. It offers a story of civilizational decay, and belonging. Religious humiliation bears more action than data.

Contrast this with libertarian arguments that often appear as a set of technical preferences. Cutting taxes, freer trade and fewer regulations are good rational ideas in themselves. But they do not offer easy answers to existential questions such as the ones posed above. Their explanatory power falters.

Now why do people not see through the rational arguments that libertarian consequentialists promote? Are people stupid?

Looking at social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s work ‘The Righteous Mind’ (2012) will help. Haidt contends that people make moral judgements intuitively. They adopt ideologies to which they already feel aligned to without much reasoning.  

He uses a metaphor of a ‘rider’ and an ‘elephant’ to describe this. The rider represents our reasoning, and the elephant represents our intuitions. We like to think the rider is in control, but in reality, it is the elephant that decides where to go. The rider just follows and then justifies the direction afterward. This means that reasoning is often not about discovering the truth, but about defending what we already feel.  So, if you try to change someone’s moral commitments by appealing only to reason i.e. by speaking only to the rider, you will fail because their intuitions or the elephant will resist you.

What this means for Indian libertarianism is this: our arguments thus far are rider styled. They are rational, and good reasoning proves them. They are sound economic principles after all. But these don’t always translate to good political communication. We have yet to address the elephant— the intuition. We have been bad at this. The appeal of Marxism and Conservatism is because they target the elephant. Libertarian consequentialist thought relies more on overriding intuitions. Hence the unpopularity.

Indian libertarianism however need not remain anemic in its intuitive richness. Libertarian philosophy has more to offer than its Indian articulation suggests. Consequentialism is but one road to an open society. The answer I believe lies elsewhere. Indian libertarians must pay attention to other foundations of libertarian political thought that are more accessible. 

One promising alternative deserves attention: natural rights. Natural rights can best be understood as a baseline moral right that comes with being a person. All persons possess the same natural rights. For e.g. all people have a natural right to not be enslaved. Such natural rights could be grounded in both theological and secular foundations.

A libertarian natural rights framework argues that liberty is owed to all individuals. Coercion here is not framed as ‘inefficient,’ but as a wrong in itself. Domination is framed as a moral injury. Such arguments could be made to speak to matters of dignity and violation, and extended to the logic of caste and inequality. For instance, when a Dalit entrepreneur must seek permission at every step to start a small enterprise, the injustice could be framed not just as economic inefficiency but the moral injury of being treated as someone whose freedom requires authorization. What matters is that such arguments have a far more intuitive language than the consequentialist vocabulary that dominates libertarian discourse in India. They are more resonant.

To develop this sensibility, we need Indian libertarian scholarship in areas of philosophy, and political thought. It is only through such work that libertarianism will resonate with the Indian intuition. We must learn to speak to the elephant and not just the rider. Libertarian thought must be made intelligible not only to economists but to the everyday moral experience of the Indian. Until then, libertarianism will remain confined to the fringes. Respectable but irrelevant to India’s political culture. 

About Anshu Chowdhury

Anshu Chowdhury is Junior Associate at CCS Academy. He studies political science at Hindu College, University of Delhi.

The Truman Show, a 1998 classic starring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, follows the life of Truman Burbank, an ordinary man living in Seahaven, who slowly discovers that his entire existence is an elaborately constructed television show broadcast to millions. Every aspect of Truman’s life, from his intimate relationships to his job and even the physical surroundings, such as his town, is a set and system in place to monitor and track his movements. He, without realising it, is under constant surveillance. The film shows how events in his life are staged, and his actions are manipulated without him realising it. 

While The Truman Show is a satirical film, we may not have realised how closely Truman’s life mirrors our everyday reality. Our daily activities, as small as taking the Delhi metro from Green Park station to Dilli Haat INA, buying everyday essentials such as groceries (using UPI o bank transactions), and even the doom-scrolling that we do on Instagram, are all under some form of surveillance, both physically and digitally. Unlike Truman, we have no single Christof who monitors or tracks our movements. We live in a world where multiple institutions and systems are in place that keep a constant eye on our movements. Every time we tap “Allow”, we trade privacy for convenience; we continue the same bargain Truman never consented to, except we do it willingly. This surveillance has become so internalised that, like Truman, we have also started behaving in a certain way, where our actions and behaviours are manipulated because of this surveillance.

Long before smartphones, Michel Foucault warned that the most effective form of power is one that makes people police themselves. He introduced panopticism, a theory that talks about how individuals start self-regulating their behaviour because they sense that they are always being watched. He came up with this idea based on the Panopticon, a prison system designed by Jeremy Bentham that essentially has one watchtower, and the prison cells are arranged around it such that every prisoner can be monitored from the watchtower. However, the prisoners cannot see when someone is watching over them from the tower. This leads to them thinking they are under constant surveillance, and therefore they self-regulate their behaviour. 

Now, in our everyday life, the world in itself has become a panopticon. Individuals shape their behaviour in a certain way because they feel they are always visible to someone. This idea of always being in someone’s sight has led to internalising self-regulation. 

What makes contemporary surveillance different from the panopticon Foucault described is that it no longer feels like confinement. It presents itself as a choice. The watchtowers now are the apps, platforms, and policies that promise efficiency, safety, and connection. We are not forced to remain visible; we are “encouraged” to be. Visibility is rewarded with convenience, validation, and access, while opting out often comes at a social or economic cost. In this world, surveillance does not operate through overt coercion but through subtle incentives, making self-regulation not an act of fear but a habit of everyday life.

Unlike Truman, whose moment of realisation led to an exit, our surveillance has no clear walls and no single door that will save us, because an overwhelming number of us will always prioritise convenience over privacy. The systems that watch us are normalised and embedded into everyday convenience. There is no dramatic escape, only quiet compliance. In this sense, the tragedy of our reality is not that we are watched, but that we have accepted watching as the cost of convenience.

About Samyuktha Rajesh

Samyuktha Rajesh is a Junior Associate in the Learning and Development (L&D) team at the Centre for Civil Society. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a strong interest in public policy, with a focus on understanding how ideas translate into effective institutions and governance outcomes.

Our education system is one of the most centrally planned sectors of society. From the textbook curriculum to evaluation systems, the learning environment is heavily institutionalised and follows a one-size-fits-all approach. From the very beginning, children are taught ‘what to think,’ moulding them all to follow a certain narrative instead of carving out individual identities. An education system like this kills independent thinking and curiosity, stifles creativity, and leaves students stuck in a cycle of passive learning. Despite such strong central control over the education system, the learning outcomes of students have shown little to no improvement. 

What if the education system were reimagined? What if the education system were allowed to flourish without centralised top-down planning? What if there were more freedom and choice for students and parents? 

First of all, it is imperative that no central authority can ever design a foolproof system that can understand the preferences, needs, and contexts of millions of individuals. It is important to understand that each young mind is unique, each teacher has a different teaching style, and in a diverse country like India, the local contexts are very different. Therefore, to implement a centralised system in such diversity means to force a sense of uniformity when there is none to begin with. Now, if we rethink the learning environment as an ecosystem where students, teachers, and schools have the liberty to function, adapt, and flourish according to their own local needs and contexts, all stakeholders in the learning process gain the freedom to decide what and how to be taught. 

A spontaneous learning order means that a system is allowed to emerge bottom-up instead of designing a new system top-down.

A system that has a centralised textbook curriculum will end up holding examinations that focus on the retention of textbook content. In a spontaneous learning environment, there will be diverse pedagogical approaches that can co-exist, such as online learning, project-based sessions, etc. Successful practices would spread organically, not because they were mandated, but because learners and parents would freely choose what works best. A system of trust-based learning will take over.

This, however, does not mean that there is complete abandonment of the state. Here, the role of the state will shift from being a provider of education to acting as a facilitator, by ensuring access to quality education to all and enabling diverse models of learning to exist. In India, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is a step towards flexibility in the education system. However, there is still a lot of regulatory power that remains with the state that can be further scaled back. In order to build a trust-based learning environment,  there needs to be freedom for schools, teachers, and students to innovate learning strategies without much bureaucratic control. 

In conclusion, a reimagined spontaneous learning environment can benefit all stakeholders, meet the requirements and needs of each student. It will not be a one-size-fits-all policy, allowing each student the care and attention they deserve. This will nurture curious minds by allowing them to learn in a manner that best suits their ability. 

About Samyuktha Rajesh

Samyuktha Rajesh is a Junior Associate in the Learning and Development (L&D) team at the Centre for Civil Society. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a strong interest in public policy, with a focus on understanding how ideas translate into effective institutions and governance outcomes.

Note: This article is generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and is intended as an analytical interpretation of the referenced dialogue. It reflects the author’s understanding of the discussion and does not claim to be a verbatim transcript or an official statement by the speakers. Views expressed are personal.

As the consultation exercise has begun for the upcoming general budget, it is a good time to take stock of the outcomes and capture the learning from the experience captured in the last 15 years  of the implementation of the Right to Education Act. It becomes further more critical as the National Education Policy is being implemented. The Right to Education Act (RTE) of 2009 was introduced with the lofty promise of transforming India’s education system by making elementary education a fundamental right for every child between the ages of 6 and 14. Over a decade later, the Act’s legacy is not one of unmitigated progress, but rather a story of symbolism, implementation gaps, and unintended consequences. While the law was hailed as a milestone, a critical review reveals that it has fallen short of its core objectives and, in many ways, has exposed the systemic flaws in India’s approach to education reform. 

Gesture Over Substantive Change

The RTE Act was not merely a policy decision. It was as much about electoral capital as about social transformation. The Act’s provisions, such as the 25% reservation for disadvantaged children in private schools and the strict norms for school infrastructure, were ambitious but often disconnected from the realities of India’s diverse educational landscape. Many schools, especially in rural and under-resourced areas, found it impossible to comply with these norms, leading to enforcement harassment and corruption rather than genuine improvement. The law became a tool for political posturing, with little focus on the practical challenges of implementation.

Enrollment Versus Learning: A False Promise

One of the most celebrated achievements of the RTE Act is the increase in school enrollment rates. Data shows a significant rise in the number of children attending school, particularly in previously underserved regions. However, this rise in enrollment has not translated into better learning outcomes. National assessments like ASER have consistently shown low learning in basic literacy and numeracy levels among students. The Act’s focus on inputs, such as infrastructure and teacher numbers, has often come at the expense of actual learning, leaving students with certificates but little real knowledge.

The Paradox of Government Schools

Government schools, which were expected to be the main beneficiaries of the RTE Act, have faced a paradoxical decline. Many schools have seen reduced enrollment as students migrate to private institutions, while others have closed due to an inability to meet the Act’s norms. The Act’s emphasis on infrastructure and teacher qualifications has often favored larger, better-resourced schools, further marginalizing those most in need. 

Private Schools and the 25% Quota

The requirement for private schools to reserve 25% of seats for disadvantaged children has been both praised and criticized. While it has increased access for underprivileged children, it has also led to accusations of discrimination and social segregation within schools. Many private schools have found ways to circumvent the law, and the reimbursement process has been fraught with delays and bureaucratic hurdles. The Act has not fundamentally changed the dynamics of private education, which continues to cater largely to the affluent.

Teacher Quality and Accountability

The RTE Act set new standards for teacher qualifications, but the impact on teacher quality has been limited. Many newly recruited teachers lack adequate training, and the Act’s provisions have not been enforced consistently. Teacher absenteeism, lack of accountability, and corruption remain persistent problems in both government schools. The Act’s focus on inputs, such as infrastructure and teacher numbers, has often come at the expense of outcomes, such as learning achievement and student well-being.

The Way Forward

The RTE Act’s journey over the past decade reveals a fundamental truth: laws alone cannot transform education. Real change requires sustained investment, robust governance, and a commitment to equity and quality. The Act has succeeded in increasing access, but it has failed to ensure that every child receives a meaningful education. Moving forward, policymakers must focus on improving the quality of teaching, strengthening accountability mechanisms, and ensuring that the Act’s provisions are implemented in ways that truly benefit the most vulnerable children.

Conclusion

The RTE Act remains a landmark in India’s educational history, but its legacy is one of unfulfilled potential. While it has brought millions of children into the classroom, it has yet to deliver on the promise of quality education for all. The challenge now is not just to amend the law, but to create a system that values learning, equity, and inclusion above all else. The RTE Act was a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done to ensure that every child in India receives the education they deserve.

About Amit Chandra

The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 promised the street vendors of India legal recognition, designated vending zones, and participatory governance through Town Vending Committees. Certificates of Vending have been issued. Committees have been formed. Rules have been framed. Yet a decade later, vendors across Indian cities continue to operate in a state of precarious uncertainty, where legal documents offer little protection against arbitrary removal, political capture, and systemic exclusion. The law exists. The space, in practice, does not. This is not simply a failure of implementation, but a deeper disconnect between what is written and what is lived, between recognition on paper and security on the street. 

The Certificate That Protects Nothing

At Yashwant Place market in Delhi, vendors – who wish to remain anonymous – showed their certificates of vending with a mixture of pride and resignation. ‘Iska kya fayeda sir…Certificate waalo ko bhi waese hata te hai jaese bina certificate waale…’(There is no benefit to this sir… They evict us as if we don’t have the certificates…). These were official documents, stamped and signed, theoretically guaranteeing their right to occupy designated spaces. Yet these same vendors described being arbitrarily removed from their spots, excluded from renewal surveys meant to update their records, and sidelined from decision-making processes despite some even serving as members of the Town Vending Committee. Here was the paradox at its clearest: legal recognition without the realisation of recognised rights, spatial security and participation without power, rights without enforcement. 

Spatial security extends beyond the mere allocation of physical space and encompasses the conditions under which marginalised populations can claim and secure their right to place within the city in lieu of Article 19(1)(g). In the context of street vending, it addresses the fundamental question of, ‘what does it mean for the state to recognise a vendor’s right to practise their profession if that recognition cannot be translated into actual, secure occupancy of urban space?’ The Street Vendors Act, 2014 attempted to answer this by establishing a framework for spatial allocation through certificates of vending, town vending committees and designated vending among others. 

Yet spatial security requires more than legal designation. It demands that the right to place be enforceable, that once designated, a vendor’s spatial claim cannot be undermined by administrative whim or political convenience. It requires that the institutions meant to protect spatial claims remain independent from those who might violate them. When these conditions are absent, as the evidence from Delhi suggests, spatial security becomes a concept that exists only on paper. The vendor possesses a Certificate but not security. They have a designated location but no guarantee of access to it. They occupy a legal category but cannot inhabit the space that category supposedly protects. 

The certificate is supposed to be proof of legitimacy. But legitimacy, it turns out, depends less on what the law says and more on who controls the space where vendors operate.

Jaipur: Between Court Orders and Political Capture

The Centre for Civil Society has worked with street vendors in Jaipur since 2011, and launched the Jeevika App in the city in 2024 to provide legal awareness and free legal aid to vendors navigating an increasingly complex regulatory environment. What we collectively realised was a system caught between formal progress and practical stagnation.

Banwari Ji, a dosa and pav bhaji vendor near Collector Circle, serving as the leader of Heritage City Thadi Thela Union, Jaipur has emerged  as a a leader in Jaipur’s vending community. Over tea at his stall, he walked us through the systemic failures that define vendor life in the city. Major vending areas remain without officially notified zones, more than a decade after the national law mandated their designation. Vendors hold identity cards issued by the Jaipur Nagar Nigam, but not the certificates of vending that would give them legal standing. Survey timings remain unfixed. Officers transfer frequently, disrupting any continuity in implementation.

But the deeper problem Banwari Ji described goes beyond bureaucratic inertia. Certain groups, he explained, leverage political connections and relationships with municipal officers to forcibly occupy prime vending spaces. They then rent these spaces out to vendors, creating an informal rental market that operates entirely outside the law and undermines the Town Vending Committee’s authority. The 2014 Act envisioned democratic governance and spatial justice. What has emerged instead is a system where access to urban space depends not on legal entitlement but on patronage, payments, and proximity to power. Even after the countless legal redressals undertaken by Banwari ji, his notable wins remain partial. The broader implementation remains hollow, the rules on paper disconnected from the reality vendors navigate every day.

The Politics of Space

What these experiences reveal is a fundamental tension in how we approach urban governance. Street vending regulation is often framed as a technical problem requiring better policies, clearer procedures, more efficient administration. But at its core, it is a question of power. Who controls urban space? Whose claims to the city are recognized as legitimate? When vendors are removed despite holding valid certificates, when zones remain unnotified despite legal mandates, when political actors capture spaces meant for collective use, the issue is not implementation failure. It is the reassertion of older hierarchies that never accepted vendors as rightful claimants to public space.

The 2014 Act represented genuine progress. It acknowledged street vending as a legitimate livelihood, not a nuisance to be eliminated. It created mechanisms for vendor participation and spatial justice. These were  significant changes. Yet the persistence of arbitrary evictions, survey exclusions, and rent-seeking arrangements suggests that formal legal change is only one dimension of a much larger struggle.

Rights without enforcement become symbolic gestures. Participation without decision-making power becomes performative inclusion. Certificates without spatial security are reduced to mere pieces of paper. 

What Changes, What Remains

As we reflect on conversations with Banwari Ji, the vendors at Yashwant Place, and others across these cities, what strikes me is the gap between regulatory intent and lived experience where the fundamental insecurity persists. Vendors still wake up uncertain whether their spot will be available tomorrow. They still navigate informal power structures to secure space. They still face removal without due process, despite the protections the law supposedly guarantees.

The vendors we met do not need better policies. They need the ones that already exist to actually work. They need vending zones to be notified, not promised. They need Town Vending Committees with real authority, not advisory bodies easily bypassed. They need certificates that protect them from arbitrary eviction, not documents that sit in their pockets while political actors decide who can sell where.

Perhaps the real lesson is that changing regulations is necessary but never sufficient. Without genuine enforcement, meaningful participation, and a political commitment to recognizing vendors as legitimate urban actors entitled to space and dignity, laws remain aspirational documents rather than tools for transformation. 

About Chaitanya Kapoor

Chaitanya Kapoor, a lawyer by training and public policy researcher by profession, is dedicated to dismantling implementation barriers in pursuit of social justice. His work emphasizes ecocentrism, constitutionalism, human rights, and equitable societal frameworks, aiming to foster a more just and sustainable world. He is presently a Legal Associate at the Centre for Civil Society.

The territory of mainland India spans a longitude of approximately 30 degrees and covers an area of approximately 3.28 million square kilometres. Whereas, Tennessee, which is merely the 36th-largest state in the United States by area has a longitudinal spread of approximately 9 degrees and covers about 110,000 square kilometres. These facts when presented in isolation do not denote anything extraordinary, but their significance will become apparent once one understands what longitudes represent. 

Longitude measures how far a place is east or west on the Earth. Because the Earth rotates 360 degrees in 24 hours, every 15 degrees of longitude corresponds to one hour of time difference. In other words, a shift of 1 degree in longitude equals roughly 4 minutes of solar time.

India’s 30-degree spread thus translates to a natural 2-hour difference in solar time between its easternmost and westernmost regions, and Tennessee’s 9-degree spread amounts to about 36 minutes of natural time difference across the state. This means that even though India functions under a single official time zone, different parts of the country experience sunrise, sunset and daylight patterns that can be up to two hours apart.

Herein lies the irony:

Tennessee, a region with only one-third of the landmass of India, operates with 2 time zones “(UTC -5/-4)” and “(UTC-6/-5)”. Whereas, India operates under a single time zone “UTC+05:30“. In the northeastern states, such as Assam, the sun rises as early as 4:30 AM during summer, yet typical office hours begin only at 9 or 10 AM. As a result, these regions lose four to five hours of usable daylight. This mismatch creates a myriad of new problems including increased electricity consumption, higher stress levels because humans are naturally inclined to work during daylight and rest after sunset, and additional safety concerns for individuals commuting alone in the dark.

The reasons cited by the Indian government for the continuation of this inefficient singular time zone use are as follows:

1. Multiple time zones may lead to logistical confusion and accidents in railways – A weak argument considering the fact that larger countries such as Australia, Canada, Russia, United States of America, operating multiple time zones run perfectly functional complex train networks. The fear that “railways will break” is pure bureaucratic myth

2. Political desire of uniformity, i.e, “One nation, one time zone” – When a reason such as this is presented, one must pause to ask the following questions:

1. At what cost must such uniformity be achieved? Productivity and well-being of people across the country, increasing electricity and energy consumption?

2. To what end is uniformity necessary?

3. Administrative rigidity in adopting new systems – This is the closest to a legitimate reason, but a weak reason nonetheless. It points to deeper, systemic issues in how the government operates and its persistent inability to keep pace with change.

Whereas, here is the rationale for why dual time zones would be advantageous for   India:

1. Better alignment with natural daylight – A second time zone allows people to wake, work, and sleep in sync with the sun. This, in turn, has the potential to increase productivity, better health, among a few biological benefits.

2. Drastic reduction of electricity consumption – Regions far to the east, to keep up with a single time zone, are forced to waste morning daylight and overuse luminous electricity consuming devices after sunset.  According to economist Maulik Jagnani, India may be incurring annual human-capital costs of approximately USD 4.1 billion (around ₹29,000 crore), or about 0.2% of nominal GDP, simply due to the way time-zone boundaries are currently regulated. A 2018 paper titled “Necessity of two time zones: IST-I (UTC +5:30 h) and IST-II (UTC +6: 30 h) in India and its implementation” presents an argument that a separate time zone for the Northeast (and some eastern/Andaman regions) has the potential to improve productivity and reduce power consumption. The same study suggests that aligning clock-time with local sunrise and sunset will synchronise daily school/work hours with the presence of daylight, better matching people’s biological clocks and improving “efficiency of populace”.

3. Historically, organisations such as Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) in 1994, argued that multiple time zones in India would help stagger national energy demand and reduce peak pressures by spreading the load of the energy consumed. This practice, according to the study, would lead to a drop in energy consumption by 5.7 percent, resulting in an annual saving of 400 crores (INR).

In conclusion, the potential gains such as higher productivity, reduced power consumption, and overall improvement of national health far outweigh the modest adjustment required for adopting two time zones. With successful models abroad and credible support from Indian scientific bodies, it is reasonable to remain optimistic about achieving the anticipated benefits of implementing a dual time zone system in India.

About Chetna Sabarigreesan

Chetna Sabarigreesan is a law graduate deeply influenced by the principles of free markets and classical liberalism. She draws inspiration from Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. In her downtime, she enjoys rock climbing and reading. Chetna is a Next-Gen Fellow with CCS Academy.

The morning air in Delhi feels dense this season. An acrid smell lingers long after Diwali night fireworks fade. With the recent lifting of the ban on firecrackers, the city once again woke up to a wall of smog. Schools delayed classes, and flights were diverted as the air quality index crossed 450 in parts of the NCR in late October this year. Inside homes and offices, air purifiers continue to hum through the day. 

The haze is no longer a seasonal surprise, but a continuous feature of urban life in India. Delhi’s monthly average PM2.5 (particulate matter below 2.5 microns in diameter; used to monitor pollution levels worldwide) level in January 2025 stood at 165 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). That is over 30 times the WHO’s recommended limit. CREA estimated that health and productivity losses due to air pollution now costs the Indian economy nearly 1.3 percent of its GDP annually (roughly Rs. 4.5 lakh crore). To put that into perspective, this amount could fund the entire rural employment guarantee programme for three years or lift approximately 40 million Indians above the poverty line.

Naturally, the brunt of this crisis is not evenly shared. For Delhi’s middle class, protection is a product, bought through sealed windows, N95 masks, and high-end air filters. For the city’s informal workers, protection is out of reach. Studies by the Indian Institute of Public Health show that street vendors, daily wage labourers, and traffic police register respiratory illness rates almost twice as high as office workers in the same neighbourhoods. Many live near industrial clusters or highways, where particulate matter levels can be 40 percent higher than city averages. The right to clean air, in practice, is stratified by income.

The pattern now extends itself across the subcontinent. Of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 13 lie in South Asia, spanning India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Climate and geography make this subcontinent prone to stagnant air and temperature inversions (any civil service aspirant slogging away in Delhi can spell this out for you), but the crisis is largely man-made and industries remain at the heart of it. They individualise profits and socialise costs. Steel, cement, power, and chemical manufacturing continue to externalise their pollution onto the public, which is an outcome that microeconomics has long recognised as a negative externality. When firms do not bear the full cost of production, society does. The result is a classic case of market failure, where public goods such as clean air are degraded because their value cannot be priced in private transactions.

India’s legal framework offers limited recourse. In theory, tort law, which allows citizens to seek compensation for harm caused by another’s actions, should apply to industries that damage public health through emissions. But air pollution diffuses responsibility as no single polluter can be easily identified or prosecuted. And without a robust liability mechanism, industries have little incentive to internalise environmental costs. Public goods, like breathable air, remain unguarded. Private goods, like air purifiers, flourish.

Governments have responded, but often in ways that look and feel temporary. Cloud-seeding experiments, “green” crackers, and odd-even traffic schemes dominate the headlines each winter. Yet long-term measures such as enforcing emission caps on thermal plants, market-based disincentives for polluters, or providing farmers alternatives to stubble burning progress slowly, if at all. These gestures are the equivalent of purifiers on a national scale: cosmetic and evasive. A recent review in The Lancet Planetary Health found that while India’s air-quality monitoring network has expanded, regulatory enforcement and public health preparedness remain weak. The country now records the world’s highest number of premature deaths linked to particulate pollution at nearly 2 million a year. So much for our demographic dividend!

Our countryside mirrors the same story. Each winter, stubble burning in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh adds a thick layer of smoke to the northern plains. The government’s attempt to subsidise machinery and pay farmers not to burn fields created a perverse incentive where farmers waited for compensation (often burning stubble so as to avail subsidies for stopping) rather than investing in residue management. Perhaps a shift in our perspective, allowing private buyers to purchase paddy stubble for use in biomass energy, packaging, or paper production, could turn stubble into a tradable good, and give rise to a sustainable agritech industry developing alongside.

Recent protests in Delhi have captured this frustration. Earlier this month, citizens gathered at India Gate demanding immediate action and calling air pollution a “public health emergency, not a weather event.” Their message was straightforward: the burden of inaction falls hardest on those who cannot shield themselves. As a paper in Environmental Research Letters (2024) warned, prolonged exposure to PM2.5 can reduce cognitive function and labour productivity, eroding the very economic advantage that a youthful population is supposed to deliver.

We have reached a stage where the air crisis has evolved beyond only an environmental or health issue. It is a question of how we define progress. If ease of living is meant to capture the quality of urban life, then breathable air should be its most basic indicator. The 2022 Ease of Living Index included environmental quality as a parameter, yet most large Indian cities had a poor score, suggesting that the country’s rapid urban expansion is outpacing its capacity to provide safe living conditions. Clean air, like clean water or electricity, is a foundational service. It underpins human capital, public trust, and social cohesion.

The haze that hangs over Delhi each winter remains a symptom of governance that treats pollution as episodic rather than systemic. The question is simple: how long can a nation chase prosperity while its citizens struggle for breath?

About Lavanya Mitra

Lavanya Mitra works with the Centre for Civil Society in strategy and governance. She holds a postgraduate in Politics and International Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University and has previously worked in disability advocacy and legislative research. Her interests span climate change, gender, inclusion and governance, with a focus on building accessible and equitable policy frameworks.

“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.” – Nelson Mandela

What if you had no say in who governs your country? What if speaking your mind meant risking punishment? Imagine living in a place where peaceful protests lead to arrests or violence, where your vote doesn’t count, and leaders act without any responsibility. 

These are freedoms many people take for granted every day, freedoms rooted in human rights and democracy. They allow us to live with dignity, make decisions about our lives, and expect equal treatment. Without these rights, life becomes uncertain, unfair, and unsafe.

Human rights are the foundation of individual freedom, the freedom to live with dignity, exercise choice, and shape one’s own life. These rights protect every person’s equality and ensure no one is subjected to oppression or injustice. Democracy is the system that empowers individuals to choose their leaders freely and hold them accountable, making it essential for preserving human rights. When democratic institutions crumble, the inherent freedoms they protect often vanish, replaced by authoritarianism and repression.

Venezuela, a sovereign nation rich in natural resources and cultural heritage, is currently facing a severe crisis that strikes at the core of individual liberty. The country has shifted toward authoritarianism, with political freedoms severely restricted, electoral processes manipulated, and opposition voices silenced through intimidation, censorship, and imprisonment. This repression denies Venezuelans not only political choice but also their fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

In July 2024, following a disputed presidential election, thousands of Venezuelans peacefully protested to demand transparency and fairness. The government’s harsh response included arresting over 2,400 people and killing at least 22 protesters. This brutal crackdown highlights the grave challenges to democracy and human rights in Venezuela today.

The consequences for ordinary citizens have been devastating. Economic collapse, scarcity of essential goods, and a humanitarian emergency have forced millions to flee their homeland in search of livelihood and safety. Despite its sovereignty, Venezuela’s democratic institutions, the very structures designed to protect rights and freedoms have been hollowed out, undermining the essence of individual choice and freedom.

In this challenging landscape, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to María Corina Machado is a powerful beacon of hope and resilience. Machado, a courageous leader within Venezuela’s pro-democracy movement, has stood unwavering against repression. Her tireless advocacy for transparent governance, rule of law, and democratic restoration embodies the ongoing fight of Venezuelans striving to reclaim their rights and rebuild a society rooted in justice and freedom.

This Nobel recognition sends a clear message: sovereignty alone does not ensure democracy or human rights. Genuine democratic governance demands vigilant defense by citizens and leaders who value liberty, especially when authoritarianism seeks to silence the people’s voice and erode their dignity. Machado’s prize serves as an inspiration for all who defend freedom, demonstrating that the spirit of democracy endures even under the harshest repression.

For advocates of democratic liberal governance, Venezuela stands as a cautionary example of the harms that arise when democratic institutions weaken and the rule of law is dismantled. Societies that uphold individual rights and freedoms create fertile ground for cooperation, innovation, and prosperity. On the contrary, authoritarianism stifles these possibilities, leading to social stagnation and decline.

María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize transcends personal honor. It is a global call to support democracy and human rights defenders everywhere. Venezuela’s story is a reminder that democracy, centered on individual freedom and choice, is precious and must be actively preserved to achieve lasting peace, justice, and human dignity for all.

About Jini Susan Thomas

Jini Susan holds a Master’s in Public Policy and works as a Program Associate at the Centre for Civil Society. She is passionate about gender policy issues, and enjoys exploring new ideas that connect society and governance.

Why do many community problems persist despite widespread awareness?

This question touches on a core issue in governance and civic engagement: why, even when people know about problems, they don’t take initiative and often wait for others to act.

Through a famous experiment, psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley explored how people respond in situations requiring action. As part of the experiment, participants were placed in a room to fill out a survey. While they were doing this, harmless smoke started to fill the room. When people were alone, almost everyone noticed the smoke quickly and reported it. However, when the number of people in the room increased and others acted like everything was fine, most participants ignored the smoke, even as it grew thicker. This showed a common effect called diffusion of responsibility, where people feel less personal duty to act when others are present.

I recently experienced this on the Delhi Metro on a hot summer evening. The air conditioning in a crowded coach was barely working, making the air uncomfortable. Passengers whispered quietly but no one took action. Maybe they assumed the driver already knew or thought others would speak up. Finally, one passenger pressed the emergency button and the air cooled. This shows how, in groups, people often wait for someone else to lead, even when action is clearly needed.

Diffusion of responsibility affects more than just emergencies. It shapes how citizens respond to government policies or community problems. Many public infrastructure issues, like broken streetlights, potholes, or waste collection, persist precisely because individuals assume that others – neighbors, civil society groups, or local officials will respond. This assumption results in everyone waiting for someone else to take responsibility. As a result, fewer citizens engage directly, which weakens accountability and slows change. 

One cause of this is social conformity. People naturally look to others for cues on how to behave. If no one else seems concerned, we hesitate to speak up. While social conformity usually helps maintain harmony and order, it can become paralyzing when action is needed. This hesitation leads to many community problems being ignored or left unresolved.

One of the examples is the delivery of basic urban amenities like water supply. In many cities, problems such as irregular water distribution persist because responsibility is diffused among multiple agencies such as the Jal Board, municipal authorities, and the Ministry of Water, and often there is no clear responsibility or accountability assigned within any single agency. Each assumes that others will address the issue or that it falls under another department’s jurisdiction. As a result, no single entity feels fully accountable, and citizens, aware of the problem, wait for someone else to intervene. The underlying problem is that everyone’s responsibility becomes no one’s responsibility, which prevents timely action and effective resolution. This diffusion of responsibility causes delays in service delivery, frustrating residents and worsening public trust in governance.

This also leads us to a critical point about accountability. It is not sufficient to passively hope that those in power will fix problems. Citizens must actively demand answers and action, rather than waiting. Governments and officials sometimes delay or neglect responsibilities, expecting citizens not to question them. This unequal distribution of responsibility can be challenged only by an engaged citizenry willing to speak up. Silence or apathy contributes to policy inertia and poor governance.

In New York City in 1964, perhaps the most famous case of social apathy was the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was fatally stabbed while numerous neighbors reportedly heard or witnessed parts of the attack but did not intervene or call for help immediately. This tragic death exposed the problem of bystander indifference, eventually leading to the creation of the 911 emergency system in the United States. 

The recent suicide of Haryana IPS officer Y Puran Kumar exposes how diffusion of responsibility quietly seeps into governance. Despite enduring prolonged mental harassment and caste-based discrimination from several senior officers, no single individual took ownership to stop or address the abuse. This case clearly illustrates how when multiple senior officials share responsibility for addressing harassment, the lack of clear individual accountability can allow toxic behaviors to persist, resulting in tragic outcomes. This diffusion of responsibility within the system contributed to his tragic death. But the broader lesson is timeless and global. Strong communities and good governance rest on individuals willing to act, not just on laws or systems.

The lesson is not that people don’t care, rather responsibility gets diluted in groups. We want to help, but we hesitate when we think others will act. The solution is simple but requires courage.

Only when individuals consistently step forward to take responsibility and insist on action and answers will communities become healthier, more responsive, and more prosperous. In conclusion, many community problems persist not because people don’t know about them, but because diffusion of responsibility and a lack of accountability mindset prevent action.

About Jini Susan Thomas

Jini Susan holds a Master’s in Public Policy and works as a Program Associate at the Centre for Civil Society. She is passionate about gender policy issues, and enjoys exploring new ideas that connect society and governance.

The informal sector offers several appealing features. Entry barriers are low since both start-up capital and skill requirements are minimal. Though some workers acquire vocational training, most entrepreneurs gain experience through informal apprenticeships. Another key attraction is the flexibility provided to individuals who need to balance household responsibilities with income-generating activities. Informal sector employment allows them to adjust their working hours as needed. Additionally, the small scale of these enterprises enables them to deliver personalised services that larger firms often cannot match.

Regulatory framework governing street vending makes it a complex activity. Instead of protecting their right to livelihood, the law is often used to penalise or restrict vendors through fines, confiscations, or eviction drives. This reflects what Frédéric Bastiat described as the “perversion of law” in the famous pamphlet “The Law” published in 1850. In this essay Bastiat points out how the law can cease to safeguard life, liberty, and property, and instead become a tool of exclusion or control. Rather than securing justice for vulnerable groups, regulatory frameworks sometimes criminalise their strategies for survival. 

These laws affect a sizable number of people. There are varying estimates on the scale of street vending in Indian cities. Under the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, the number of vendors is capped at 2.5% of a city’s population. Based on the 2011 Census, India’s urban population stood at 377 million, and if we assume it has now grown to around 430 million, this would translate into roughly 10 million hawkers. This figure also aligns with the estimate put forward in the National Policy for Urban Street Vendors (2009).

A few months ago in Chandigarh, fines for small mistakes like placing your cart a few feet outside the assigned spot were hiked. This fine was more than a week’s income for street vendors. The city also restricted vendors to their geo-tagged spots, even if foot traffic shifted elsewhere during the day. Vendors lost flexibility. When customers moved, they couldn’t. Street vendors were being zoned. Zoning is a way of regulating land use where governments divide land into zones and set rules on how that land may be used. 

Believe it or not, businesses have a strategy to zone themselves. This was observed by Harrold Hotelling. The Hotelling Model suggests that when two similar vendors in the city compete among themselves and consumers pay for transportation costs, it is likely that both vendors will place their stalls near the middle of the population of the consumers. It’s worth asking why this happens? Consumers choose to buy from the stall offering the lowest total cost (price of the good + travel cost). Since price is almost the same due to homogeneity in goods, the only differentiation that exists is in travel cost. So, each stall wants to locate where it can capture the maximum share of consumers. This creates a strategic incentive where neither vendor wants to leave “too much space” in the center, because the rival could capture those consumers. The end result of this interaction makes the middle location the Nash Equilibrium – a condition where none of the players have a scope for unilateral deviation. An interesting Ted-ed video also narrates how this phenomena takes place. 

This is something we can also observe in our daily commutes. To capture maximum consumers, street vendors tend to cluster around metro stations, office hubs, and bus stops creating vibrant markets of their own. Zoning not only disrupts the livelihood of millions of people but it can also make our streets lifeless. An idea that urbanist Jane Jacobs calls the “sidewalk ballet” in her popular book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”. The ballet is Jacobs’ metaphor for the daily choreography of city life on sidewalks. Each person who is a part of the city contributes to the vitality of its streets. These small interactions affect our daily lives. When street vendors disappear from busy spots, it becomes difficult to find the little things: fruits, snacks, a pen, or a comb. The two-minute walk now becomes a twenty-minute hunt which not just makes it less convenient but results in a loss of time which could have been used productively elsewhere. 

Zoning is the opposite of mixed-use neighbourhoods. When housing, shops, workplaces, restaurants, schools, and street vendors coexist, they make streets lively and extend the time of their use from just the daytime extending into the night. Zoning does the exact opposite. It takes out life and makes streets unsafe. When more people live, work and interact in close proximity, they fuel street life, safety, and economic vibrancy. Safety doesn’t only come from the police or surveillance, but also from continuous presence of people in public spaces. Anyone in these busy spaces can become the “eye of the street”, including street vendors.

This is not to say that all the laws concerning street vending are bad but certain laws require revision, maybe some require more thought and deliberation. Cities are not machines to be engineered. Urban design should support local communities instead of replacing them with abstract notions.

About Rimmon Dass

Capital punishment or the legal authorisation of killing of a person as punishment for a crime is a practice followed by many countries  throughout the world, in some cases, it is even a glorified measure of bringing justice to the victim.

It is understandable that, in cases of profound violation, a victim or their loved ones might hope a perpetrator’s death will offer some reprieve. Yet many first-hand accounts show that executions often do not bring the closure that they hoped for. In numerous cases, the victims and their families report that the death of the perpetrator does little to ease their pain or repair the harm, possibly because the death of the perpetrator does not undo their loss, and perhaps only accentuates violence with more violence.

This leads one to question whether there is any societal good that might result from capital punishment when it does not even serve the welfare of those affected by the crime.

It is worth considering the notion that capital punishment serves nobody. It is not helpful to the victims who have suffered the most, it is a burden upon the tax payer, whom the execution of capital punishment is beared by and also has an unsatisfactory effect on deterrence of crimes. A common assumption regarding capital punishment is that it saves public money since the state is spared the cost of long-term imprisonment, healthcare and related expenses. However, in practice, the opposite is true: implementing the death penalty is far more expensive than sentencing an offender to life imprisonment without parole.

The higher cost arises because death penalty cases in India often involve prolonged and complex trials in Sessions Courts, followed by multiple rounds of appeals in High Courts and the Supreme Court. The stakes being a person’s life demand additional safeguards, which require more lawyers, expert witnesses, and judicial time. Mercy petitions to the President or Governors further extend the process. As a result, convicts often end up serving life terms, but only after the state has spent far more resources on extensive litigation. 

Beyond the large sums of public money spent, one must consider the opportunity cost of litigating death penalty cases whose likelihood of ending up in a life sentence verdict is very high, numerous other cases which could be of equally serious consequences remain unheard. While it is difficult to exactly quantify the losses incurred through the non hearing or delayed hearing of those disputes, it is reasonable to imagine the severe costs of such delayed hearings. Unlike death penalty litigation, where outcomes are more predictable, these other cases could go in many different directions, making timely adjudication all the more critical. In fact, as violence continues to decrease worldwide with social and economic development, the disproportionate attention given to death penalty litigation seems increasingly out of step with the direction in which modern societies are moving.

Even with the deliberately long, multi-tier safeguards that accompany a death sentence in India, the system is still very susceptible to errors. There have been several cases of repeated acquittals, commutations and full exonerations, showing that innocent people can and do get pulled into capital cases. In just the first seven months of 2025, the Supreme Court of India heard 14 death penalty cases and either acquitted or commuted sentences in 11 of them. That means the overwhelming majority of people sent to the gallows by lower courts were eventually found undeserving of the punishment. Modern digital evidence adds a whole new dimension of evidence tampering: with manipulated media and deepfakes getting harder to detect, courts and forensic capacity are under strain, which increases the chance of evidentiary error.

Taken together, these realities make clear that capital punishment serves no meaningful purpose. It neither brings solace to victims, nor lightens the financial or administrative burden on the state, nor reliably deters crime. Instead, it prolongs trials, drains public resources, and carries the irreversible risk of executing the innocent. A justice system committed to fairness and efficiency cannot afford such a costly and fallible mode of punishment.

About Chetna Sabarigreesan

Chetna Sabarigreesan is a law graduate deeply influenced by the principles of free markets and classical liberalism. She draws inspiration from Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. In her downtime, she enjoys rock climbing and reading. Chetna is a Next-Gen Fellow with CCS Academy.

In his commentary on the work of famous British novelist Charles Dickens, George Orwell remarked, “All art is propaganda, on the other hand, not all propaganda is art”. The larger point he sought to convey was that every creator is driven by a set of beliefs and values which becomes embedded in their work. There is however an exception to this norm: when a message is propagated about the actions of the state. Though crafted by individuals, such messages remain no longer the expression of personal beliefs alone. 

To start off, it is helpful to distinguish propaganda from other forms of persuasion like advertisements. Propaganda is purposefully biased or false. Once produced, it is ripe to promote a political cause. The spread of propaganda is bad for those on the receiving end, as the propagandist’s message limits the receiver’s ability to make informed judgements.  Advertisements also use persuasive techniques, but they do not restrict people’s ability to make informed judgements, even if their intent comes from commercial incentives of profit. Instead they make consumers aware of available options and thereby enhance their capacity to choose. This distinction should sharpen our concern about the reach and prevalence of propaganda in society.

This is an important distinction made by economists Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall in their book: Manufacturing Militarism. They also argue that the state possesses strong incentives to deploy propaganda as a means to achieve a specific end. Political legitimacy is that end, and movies become the means. The Indian case reflects this dynamic too. 

Established literature from Public Choice theory makes a strong case that the primary motivation of politicians is to get re-elected. To be re-elected, support from interest groups plays an indispensable role in shaping electoral strategies. Propaganda can help to frame the demands of narrow interest groups as legitimate and to make them politically feasible, even if these policies impose large costs on citizens overall.

Propaganda’s messaging can be of four types. The first looks to appeal to an authority. The second looks to appeal to patriotism that demands vigorous support of state action. The third, and a dangerous one, is an appeal to see events from an “us vs them” perspective, so that there are in-groups who are allies, and out-groups who are enemies. The fourth, is more sophisticated. It embeds slogans and imagery that is emotional with a high recall value. Many of these elements can be seen in Indian movies. 

The movie Uri (2019), for example, banked on an  appeal to military heroism. In its opening minutes the call out for “based on facts” and the larger-than-life portrayal of the Indian government lend appeal to authority. This messaging got another shot in the arm on authority when the Prime Minister praised the film himself. The “us vs them” narrative is also at play, where the terrorists and well trained soldiers are always in sharp contrasts, with no shared commonalities. Memorable slogans with high recall value are peppered across the movie such as, “Yeh naya Hindustan hai, yeh ghar mein ghusega bhi, aur marega bhi!” (This is a new Hindustan, it will enter your house too, and beat you up too). This phrase became popular reflecting the government’s aggressive stance on national security, making it much easier to gain legitimacy for similar strikes in the future. 

Another example is from the movie Tejas (2023). It was screened at the Lok Bhawan after the state cabinet meeting. An important narrative of the movie focuses on Tejas, the combat aircraft, designed and manufactured indigenously in India. The movie’s jingoism is apparent when it is contrasted with actual hurdles faced in the production and delays in the production of the aircraft. The aircraft carries several issues on delays in delivery, its maintainability and a prolonged development time taken of up to 40 years in the making. The reality is one of bureaucratic red-tape. None of this was featured in the movie. The pro-Tejas narrative is harmful when objectivity is lost and the dominant messaging amplifies the aircraft’s reliability and performance. What’s worse is that plot lines contained the sensitive matter of Ram Mandir, ahead of the General elections of 2024.

Governments also have an active incentive to expedite and promote such movies, through tools like tax breaks. Operating in a high-risk industry compels movie production houses to take that as a signal to alter their productions and script narratives.

This trend however is not new. This has persisted since the formation of the Indian state. Haqeeqat (1964) and Upkar (1967) are two such movies that rank high in the list of propaganda movies. Haqeeqat as a war-time movie was meant to soothe the losses of the 1962 Sino-India war, and the Upkar contained a direct reflection on then Prime Minister’s slogan “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan.” 

India’s long history of such films illustrates how propaganda serves as a low-cost, high-yield tool for politicians to secure legitimacy. Its downsides are that it imposes costs onto an uninformed electorate. Propaganda in cinema is a calculated political instrument that can bypass democratic accountability. 

About Anshu Chowdhury

A trip is on the horizon. A familiar ritual for millions in India would be to open a travel website, enter a string of city names, and start tracking a list of flight prices. Most fares are high beyond explanation, with any reasonable option being a red-eye flight, leaving the consumer disheartened.

India is the world’s third-largest aviation market. But this market is turbulent, unreliable, and plagued by distortions. For any story of growth there are balancing tales of shutdowns of large, and seemingly capable airlines like Kingfisher, Jet Airways, and Go First. How is this discrepancy explained?

The answer may lie in a complex web of problems. The root cause being: operation costs are high and a large component of it is imposed by the government.  

The single biggest cost component eating into airline profits is Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF). It is about 40-50% of an airline’s total operating costs in India. ATF in India is subject to a complex and overlapping tax structure that is often onerous for airlines and extractive in nature.This system is distortionary and a large burden is borne by passengers.

ATF is taxed twice. Central excise duty by the central government, and state VAT by state governments. ATF has been excluded from The Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime that was supposed to streamline such tax codes. 

Airline ticket prices do not consist of just the ATF tax component, but also an additional layer of tax, the GST. GST is levied on the total ticket price, 5% for economy, and 12% for business class. 

Before the advent of GST, airlines could set off the central excise duty paid on ATF, against the service tax that was owed on ticket sales. Following the enforcement of GST, that option is no longer available. So, there are at least three levels of taxes for airlines in India at present. 

It is also surprising that domestic fares are becoming comparable to international fares. Flying to Bangkok from Delhi can sometimes be cheaper than flying to Bengaluru. There are three main reasons behind this. 

First, for the aircrafts flying abroad, ATF is not taxed. For flights departing India, the ATF loaded is treated as a “deemed export“, and is completely exempt from both central excise duty and state VAT. This means an airline pays significantly less for the same fuel when flying to Dubai or Bangkok, when compared to flying to any domestic airport like Bengaluru or Vizag. This is the primary burden that domestic passengers bear. 

The second reason is the Route Dispersal Guidelines (RDG). This is a regulatory burden imposed only on domestic operations. It requires airlines to operate a certain percentage of flights on routes connecting remote regions to ensure national connectivity. Many of these routes lack commercial viability and operate at a loss. To compensate for these losses, airlines engage in cross-subsidisation, charging slightly higher fares on high-demand routes like Delhi-Mumbai. In essence, a small portion of a ticket price on a busy domestic route also carries a hidden subsidy that helps pay for a flight to a remote town. There are no RDG burdens for  international flights to comply with. 

Prices also depend on the state of competition in the overall market. This is the third important reason behind high domestic fares. International routes that connect with hubs like Dubai and Singapore are battlegrounds fought over by numerous foreign and Indian carriers. This competition pushes fares down. The Indian domestic market, in contrast, is getting concentrated into a duopoly dominated by IndiGo and the Air India group, especially after the collapse of major carriers like Jet Airways and Go First, reducing the competitiveness that brings down prices.

Air travel has always been a difficult market to operate in given its high dependence on global supply chains. Domestic carriers in India are confronted with a huge capacity constraint. Close to 150 aircrafts in India are grounded for poor engine maintenance and lack of spare part availability. 

Together these factors have led to a 40% fare increase in fares on major routes in the last six quarters, post-pandemic.

The challenges of Indian aviation are complex but solvable. The most impactful reform would be to bring ATF under the GST system. This would allow airlines to claim Input Tax Credit on fuel taxes, breaking a “tax on tax” cycle. Projections show this could reduce airline fuel costs by 7-9%, a relief that could stabilise the industry and lower fares. But the main hurdle is achieving political consensus among states in the GST Council, where states would have to cede their power to levy VAT.

Indian aviation is in desperate need of a holistic approach. Policies must encourage competition to prevent a duopoly from harming passengers. Any social goals of RDG must be at least met through transparent, direct subsidies, rather than market-distorting cross-subsidisation. 

By rationalising fuel taxes, ensuring robust competition, and modernising subsidy transfers, India can create a future where flying is both affordable for its citizens and profitable for the airlines that carry them.

About Tapasya Srivastava

Tapasya Srivastava is an Electronics and Communication Engineer who transitioned from civil services preparation to a purpose-driven career in public policy. She recently completed the Researching Reality 2025 residential research program at the Centre for Civil Society and has now begun her journey as an SBI Youth for India Fellow (August 2025 cohort).

The State exists as a result of a social contract between individuals and their communities. Citizens empower the state, as an institution, with a monopoly over the use of violence. In exchange the state must provide them with protection and stability. The relationship between citizens and the state is that of a principal-agent. Where citizens are the principle and the state accountable to them as their agent. If the state is authorised to use force, it is only under particular conditions.

These conditions may vary in different situations but there are at least three consistent principles that the state must follow. 

First, an individual can be punished only if their actions cause harm to others. The use of force is illegitimate and out of proportion when the harm committed to the community is a minor inconvenience.

Second, the punishment must never be disproportional to the crime. The state is also the agent of the person accused of the crime, and it owes them this responsibility. 

Finally, if there is a way to resolve the issue without using force, it should be the first priority. The use of force must be the last resort. 

Modern-day governments often fall short on these conditions, and are behaving in a way that leads to the path of overcriminalisation. 

A useful example is that of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 in the state of Punjab. This law deals with the harm caused by drug addiction. Under section 27 of the Act, consumption of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances is deemed to be a criminal offence. 

The problem with this law is that it fails to understand the problem of addiction from an individual’s view. Someone addicted to drugs cannot instantly change their proclivity to drugs the minute a law is passed, even if the person wishes to do so. Instead of helping individuals overcome their problems, the law intensifies their misery. The person being criminally punished is inflicting harm on themselves from the addiction, not society at large. The punishment is not proportional and does not take into consideration other reasonable alternatives like rehabilitation that can substitute the use of force. This law is a result of the state’s instinct for overcriminalising legal provisions.

The state’s instinct for overcriminalisation can become egregious through blanket provisions of criminalisation. One such instance is section 108 of the Mental Health Act, 2017. The generality of its phrasing is problematic: Any person violating any provision of the act, or any rule, or any regulation, made to implement the act, will be imprisoned for a term of six months, in the first instance, and be imprisoned for two years, in the second instance. 

The criminal generality of this law makes an error in record keeping to be at the par with performing a brain surgery without consent. Arbitrary blanket provisions are dangerous. They are worse than outrightly unjust laws, given their blanket criminal provisions are in the fine print, giving them the impression of laws that are for a legitimate reason. But they are vehicles for injustice in the name of collective good.

Unfortunately, there is much popular support for harsher punishments for inflicting harm in our society. Draconian punishments are often justified through the arguments for establishing deterrence. Disproportionate punishments imposed on individual offenders, it is believed, will prevent that particular offender from committing crimes again, and pass a larger general message to deter others in the society.

Except, harsher punishments in the laws don’t deter crimes at all. It is the certainty of being caught that enforces deterrence, not the punishment imposed. When the United States imposed prohibition on alcohol in the 1920s, the law penalised offences like moonshining with life imprisonment. Despite this, the compliance with this law was so low that the alcohol centred party culture of the decade earned it the nickname of “the roaring twenties”. The Bureau of Prohibition had just 15,000 agents for the entire country. With the low chance of being caught, no punishment could deter defaulters.

But through overcriminalisation there is a larger duty that the state also fails at. It is the agent’s duty towards its principle, the individual citizen who is on the receiving end of criminal punishments. When the state as the principle reacts with brutality it increases recidivism, which is the tendency of the criminal to reoffend.      

Research by the scholar Ilyana Kuziemko has shown that removing the opportunity for shortening a prison sentence through parole reviews, increased reoffending rates by about 10%.  When the state as the agent abandons thinking from the principle’s perspective, prisoners lose hope, engage less in rehabilitation, and behave worse out of cynical frustration. 

Overcriminalisation violates the foundational principles of the social contract, making the state’s legitimacy over violence questionable. Decriminalisation is not a favour bestowed upon citizens due to the kindness of the state and its leaders, but rather a return to the ethical core of why these leaders are given power, in the first instance. The citizen is not a subject of the state but rather its master. Reforming the legal system in accordance with this principle is an important reform path to take ahead.

About Animesh Sabat

Animesh Sabat is a student of economics at Hindu College, University of Delhi. He aspires to become a policy maker in near-future. He is also a Research Reality Scholar 2025.

On 17 May 2025, something routine and brutal played out in Sarojini Nagar. About 200 stalls were torn down under the cover of night. No notice, no consultation, no pause.

This wasn’t atypical. For decades, this market, despite being Delhi’s busiest informal retail space, has lived under the threat of collapse. Since the 1990s, there have been a dozen demolitions in this market. Every few years, the same cycle repeats: a justification is found, the state proceeds to destroy, and livelihoods are left to dust and splinters.

There are legal precedents that can be used to stop this, but they don’t work. In Olga Tellis vs. Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985), the Supreme Court said that eviction without due process violates the right to safe livelihood, and reiterates this right to be a right at par with other constitutional rights.

The significance of the May 2025 demolition lay in when it occurred. Just a few days earlier, vendors from Sarojini Nagar had approached the Delhi High Court seeking protection. They were not breaking the law, they were trying to use it to seek protection. The state offered a response: demolition.

The state doesn’t call its actions as punishing people. It instead cites “obstruction,” “nuisance,” or “clearing unauthorised use” as its primary motivators. These vague tools in the hands of municipal power are easy to invoke and hard to challenge.

The Delhi Municipal Corporation Act practices selective enforcement, where one vendor may face eviction, another is allowed to remain. Opaque laws  preserve discretionary power in the hands of the state. This is not urban planning in any meaningful sense. It is a performative exercise at best. The law, in this context, functions less as a framework for justice, and more as a tool of administrative convenience, invoked to legitimise decisions that were made already by someone behind a powerful desk.

It’s worth asking, is Sarojini Nagar really as illegitimate as the state finds it to be every now and then? 

Sarojini Nagar, like many neighbourhoods in Delhi, didn’t follow a blueprint. It grew out of a settlement of individuals, who followed a routine in pursuit of a livelihood and survival. It was first part of Vinay Nagar, a housing scheme for government workers in the 1950s. Later on in the 1970s, it got renamed after the political activist and poet Sarojini Naidu. Since then it has evolved into a dense network of export surplus stalls, family-run shops, tailors, and street kitchens.

The vendors of Sarojini Nagar are not lawbreakers. They’re just visible. Their work doesn’t fit into the paperwork, so they’re called “illegal.” But what they do is no different from what most small traders do: find a way to survive in a city that gives them almost no space but takes their labour anyway. When they are hurt, and their livelihoods are destroyed, they get alienated from their fair stake in the economy, and are penalised despite their honest labour.

Many of these shops and establishments are run by women, who support households with additional labour that is unpaid and invisible.

To walk through Sarojini is to walk through a street-level economy built on risk, skill, and hustle. It’s a version of the city that the state refuses to admit into its plans. This economy is huge and its strength of numbers, unknown. By the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s estimates there are more than 400,000 vendors, most of them operating without formal recognition but well within the everyday economy of the city. The Street Vendors Act (2014) aims to cap their numbers at 2.5% of a city’s population. With Delhi’s estimated population of 35 million persons, from the state’s view there must be at least 875,000 street vendors. But none of these numbers come close to reality. Sarojini is just one of the many growing flea markets of Delhi.   

A researcher, Shweta Sharma, in her 2015 study on Urban Street Hawkers, classifies street vendors operating in Delhi. There are those who are Stationary Hawkers who form the dominant size of all street vendors. There are also Semi-stationary Hawkers, who move in interstices. Mobile Hawkers, the third kind, are always on the move, throughout the day. The Street Vendors Act, 2014 acknowledges these vendors and offers them protection and grievance redressal by instituting Town Vending Committees. But in Sarojini, these legal protections are null and void. 

A disheartened vendor, Rashid said, “what’s the point of salvaging a few broken trinkets under this debris?”. When asked how he’ll cope with the destruction, he responded to say, “I’ve grown up here. These things don’t affect me anymore”. He then paused, and offered wisdom on how to be a street vendor in India, “If you don’t have a banner, no one will notice you”. Or in other words, stay invisible. 

Lawful cities are not made with brute machinery. They are formed through trust and care. If the state wishes to govern with legitimacy, it must learn to respect and not destroy what it did not build.

About Neehra Sharma

Neehra Sharma is a third-year student of Political Science at Ramjas College. She is aiming to work in International Development, and looking to explore intersections of gender with climate change and security. She is also a Researching Reality Scholar 2025.

Can there be a market within a market? In the case of railway platform shops, there is. 

In the larger railway stations operated by the Indian Railways, each platform has its own market of retail shops catering to the needs of travellers. Even if the character of these small markets embedded within the larger ecosystem of usual markets is different, their challenges are similar and worth examining.

The market for retail stalls on a railway platform has high barriers to entry, much less competition, and is much more challenging to run and make a profit in. From the standard textbook economics view, it is a non-homogenous, monopolistic competitive market. Products are hard to distinguish, and there are fewer sellers. To enter this market, a seller must bid for a license through a railway run tendering system, and a buyer must obtain a platform ticket or a train reservation.   

Like traditional markets, buyers and sellers in the platform market too, arrive at prices through a process of bargaining. An equilibrium for price and quality is struck somewhere in between buyers seeking quality goods at affordable prices and sellers aiming for healthy margins by sourcing cheap inventory. This equilibrium keeps shifting, just like in any other market. But there are several challenges that a shop on a railway platform encounter.

The first challenge is the choice of location. The exact spot of location has to be bid for. And unlike mobile vendors, once locked-in, it’s not easy to move even if there are strategic gains to be made from changing the shop’s location. The space and availability of locations is highly scarce too when compared to the markets outside. 

The second challenge is that these business setups can never have the advantage of insuring themselves. Even if they rented their shop space from a legitimate entity like the government run Indian railways, they still don’t qualify as “pakka” enough, which is a prerequisite for securing insurance. Any inventory loss due to theft, damage, or natural events is borne entirely by the shop owner or leaseholder.

A third and important challenge is for a small and nimble business to have to deal with an exclusive platform regulator: Divisional Railway Manager along with the railway police. Like many other small regulators and street level bureaucracy, platform shops owe them protection money or risk action taken against them on false pretence.

These challenges lead to several negative consequences where buyers, sellers, and regulators get locked into a game of rock-paper-scissors. For any player to win, another must lose. Unlike a positive sum game, where everyone wins. 

The regulator can uproot the seller at any point of time. And the barriers and challenges of the sellers make them want to squeeze out consumers, who can often be in a rush. But the rock-paper-scissor analogy breaks in the relationship between the regulator on one side and the consumers and sellers, on the other side. The dominant player in this game is always the rock or the regulator, winning at the cost of sellers and consumers, both. 

To push the analogy further, the regulator as the rock can go really heavy on the sellers, by increasing tenancy costs, provoking fake inspections, or threatening to cancel licenses. These costs reduce the incentive for the seller to offer high quality goods at lower prices for the large customer base of railway commuters. 

It’s also worth examining how bribes between the regulator and the seller are arrived at. In this transaction, in many instances there can be another third party—the contractor—involved too.

These contractors who win tenders are not the actual shopkeepers but individuals or firms who lease out shop space to other sellers. In some Tier-1 city railway stations, these rents are high and charged to sellers weekly or even daily. It could be that some sellers renting at major stations do earn higher profits and are able to afford high rents. However, many of them face the trouble of inconsistent incomes which makes it difficult to sustain the daily rent and operations. 

Another big challenge is what platform sellers consider “illegal vending”. Outside hawkers may just manage to sell goods without incurring the costs that platform businesses incur, making their livelihoods tougher. In some instances these illegal outside vendors can be hand-in-glove with the regulatory bodies too, like in the case of Shahjahanpur railway station, as found out in 2016. About two hundred vendors paid a small fee to the platform regulators to sell goods without incurring the tenancy cost imposed on platform sellers. 

There is no recourse to such mistreatments, either. Effective grievance redressal mechanisms are missing. While customers may find it easy to file complaints—whether or not they are resolved is another matter—inspectors exhibit personal biases and interests. In this process, they tend to forget that shopkeepers are also members of the public, entitled to fairness and protection. 

But just like in any other market, all these factors affect the level of equilibrium and behaviours of customers, sellers, and regulators. The outcome is sub-optimal for both the buyers and sellers. 

About Shubhangi Yadav

Shubhangi Yadav is a Researching Reality Scholar 2025 and a student of economics at Hindu College, University of Delhi. She is enthusiastic and keen to understand ideas and principles of Public Policy.

Street busking musicians are more help than nuisance to the police.

It takes just one police constable to yank a few cords, cancel expression and remove vitality. Karnataka police recently prevented musician Ed Sheeran from busking on Bengaluru’s Church street. This incident is a reflection on how what is legal may not be legitimate, and how the use of force can make a city, its streets, pedestrians, and musicians worse off.  

Ed Sheeran after the incident pointed out the arbitrariness of Karnataka police. He went on to establish that his team procured the license required to perform in the street. But how law enforcers behave, and what motivates them, can turn something legal into something illegitimate. Buskers and street performers based out of India, know perfectly well that to comply with law is necessary but not sufficient. They can be removed and prevented from performing just because the police on the street feel that it is the right thing to do. Police officers are motivated and expected to behave based on the norms established within the larger law enforcement institution. Karnataka police like several other police forces in India operate by norms that are brutish and unsophisticated. This is common knowledge among anyone who earns their livelihoods on India’s city streets.

The incident is also a revelation of how our law enforcers view streets as public spaces. A street, another way to look at it, is an urban common. Its governance, and who gets to use it and how, evolves and adapts in a participatory way, constantly. Our view of streets in India misses this crucial understanding. It’s worth looking at two noteworthy observations urbanist Richard Sennett makes on streets and performances in his book, The Performer. First, a time travel to piece together the origin of streets in our cities. Second, to observe streets as an open stage where multiple performances take place everyday.

One way to look at streets as public places is to observe their origin and connection with the ancient agora in Greece. An agora contained a stoa, which was a large structure where citizens from all walks of life gathered. The stoa opened to a huge open space for everyone to gather. A small flight of steps led to a spacious corridor that was an ideal space to discuss, gossip, and chat with friends. The corridor opened to many freely accessible chambers, where anyone could enter and exit based on their preference. The front ends of the rooms were open and their rear ends walled. Agoras in modern cities expanded and were weaved into the city’s fabric. Stoa rooms became store fronts that customers could visit and large yards became squares and pavements where individuals could gather.

The heart of a city’s vitality was the agora where performances of multiple kinds took place. Individuals looking to buy goods, and a merchant looking to make a sale, made the great performance of haggling. Customers pretend to be interested, but just enough, sellers keen to sell, but just enough, till they could arrive at a price. But more obvious performers were the lute players offering lyrical compositions, the juggler, fire breather, and acrobat their own masteries. Even Greek athletes could exercise and exhibit their chiseled bodies to onlookers. 

An important takeaway from this vision of a street is that it is a place. A place to be in, interact with, and perform in. When we make this effort to think about streets this way, a musician busking is as natural as a restaurant or bookshop being part of a street. 

Streets are also larger open stages that bring people together. And when they fail to, they are lifeless, unsafe spaces, that are neither private nor public. This outcome has consequences for the law enforcer, who must step up to become vigilant. To use force to prevent a crime, tackle wrong doers, and police for safety. Their burden increases the more lifeless a street becomes. 
Strangely enough, Ed Sheeran is doing Karnataka police a service by putting life into the street. His skill with just a mic, and six strings on the guitar can turn the desolate and lifeless into a vibrant and safe space. Unfortunately, this perception and understanding of a street is missing with Karnataka police. And to be fair, the police officer is held by the norms and practices of the institution he is part of.

What is true for busking is true for theatre, and street vendors. When we look at a street as a common place, we have the opportunity to think about its governance in a participatory way. Streets and the quality of life in a city are interlinked.

Here’s also a remarkable composition by the greatest busker, Woody Guthrie to capture the sentiment:

About Saurabh Modi

Saurabh participated in the Colloquium on the Dilemma of an Indian Liberal organised at the Centre for Civil Society on 26 May 2024. He is an urban policy researcher and Senior Associate with CCS Academy.

Buildings, like humans, evolve and change; laws and codes shouldn’t restrict them

Buildings just like their users, have a life. Buildings react, adapt, grow, transform, evolve, and die. But we don’t hear anyone advocate for buildings to have the same right to express, or freedom to choose, that persons do. Maybe buildings deserve such an advocacy. 

On buildings, writer and thinker Stewart Brand made an important observation that buildings learn. And humanity is better off only when they do. In some sense the force of buildings to learn and adapt is unstoppable. But prescriptions and proscriptions can impose hurdles in their learning. 

Stewart Brand in the book, How Buildings Learn, fleshes out the anatomy of a building. Buildings contain layers. The first layer is the chosen site, the second is its structure made of bricks, steel, and concrete. This structure has the third layer, its skin to protect it from the weather. The fourth layer, the layer for services contains plumbing, cabling, and other services a building may need. But what happens within the building in its fifth and sixth layers, or the layers that offer space, is always changing based on the user’s tastes and preferences. A building that can adapt itself well to the vision of its users, is a building that stays relevant for long.

Successful buildings are spaces that provoke and promote orders of different kinds to emerge. Over the years, I have spotted three such instances around me. 

To house an office  

My first brush with the Centre for Civil Society in 2013 led to a coat of confusion. Google maps guided me to arrive at a residential block in Hauz Khas. I had imagined an office building with a glass facade and a large staircase. But I spotted a beige coloured three-story building, that looked like someone’s residence, instead. Inside the building, the space plan of a home had evolved brilliantly into an office that had a reception, a waiting area, department offices, a large conference room, a lively pantry, senior management chambers, and sunlit balconies. The primary furniture that would form the innermost layer of the building had transformed to make way for desks, work chairs and bookshelves. The building evolved from a space for a family to an organisation of researchers.

A similar evolution of buildings is ongoing across many neighbourhoods of Delhi. Like in Hauz Khas, buildings in Greater Kailash have evolved to accept lawyers and their chambers. Where lawyers thrive, accountants do too. Doctor clinics aren’t too far. Buildings made to be living quarters learnt to become commercial offices. 

These buildings, known as builder floors in Delhi, also offer young founders to take advantage of cheaper rents, and nimble units that can become spaces for productive and collaborative work. Productive workers, in exchange, offer vibrancy to neighbourhoods from their constant footfalls and restless activity during breaks. In fact, I had the chance to meet a young founder of a branding agency who took the third level of the residential building to start his agency. The agency founder did not hesitate to make use of the kitchen to cook meals for his entire team.

All of this became possible not through design, but through decisions made by house owners and firm owners renting the place. In some sense, buildings also question the role of architects who lock them into a certain use.

While builder floors can learn to offer space to firms, bungalows of South Delhi elites can learn to become institutions of learning. 

Indian School of Public Policy (ISPP) has the advantage of being in the vicinity of some of India’s premier institutions like IIT, NIFT, JNU, and School of Planning and Architecture. Students pursuing a master’s in public policy have access to lecture theatres, a vibrant canteen, a badminton court, and other facilities they can expect from a university building. Except, the policy school isn’t based out of a university building. It is based out of a bungalow.

The campus challenges the notion of what could have been someone’s living quarters. Every room can be packed with several fifty students or so, with a space to conduct four parallel lectures across the policy school. The chances that the first architect designer and the original resident of the building would have ever thought the bungalow could change into a college campus are slim. But it did.

To be sure, buildings don’t have consciousness. Their users do. Their ingenuity can transform and the freedom to be able to do so shouldn’t ever have to be challenged. Unfortunately, this is not the norm.

The city of Delhi is governed by several state agencies, and Delhi Development Authority (DDA) instituted under the central government is at the helm. DDA is also Delhi’s urban planning agency. It has the powers conferred on it by the Parliament of India to fix the use of an area in the city, and by extension the use of a building in any area, can be put to. Buildings in Delhi do not have the freedom to learn. The office of Centre for Civil Society and the ISPP campus could come into being only when the requisite permissions from the state aligned. In some instances that the buildings have changed their use could be an area in grey, and the conversion is an exception, not the norm, reserved for few organisations and purposes only.    

It’s worth questioning that when buildings do change their use, why do they always transform from residences into commercial spaces, but not the other way round? For instance, Qutub Institutional Area in South of Delhi is one large neighbourhood that is assigned a use for institutions only. In the neighbourhood are large commercial buildings that are on an excellent site for a person to want to stay in. Their structures are strong, and the building layer for services is similar to what would be for a traditional apartment in a city. But spaces within these buildings are abandoned and empty. Not because there aren’t enough institutions who seek commercial spaces in the city. It’s because institutions would rather be based in a neighbourhood with vibrancy than an institutional zone. Buildings in such areas are craving to learn. Any builder would take the opportunity of turning these buildings into affordable apartments. If they are turned into housing, thousands of persons who travel to work, can move into these units. But the law prohibits these buildings from learning and evolving. 

It’s futile to assign a building a use or to prohibit it from changing how it’s being used. The cost imposed is similar to what it would be for a person who is assigned an occupation, but could never change it. 

About Saurabh Modi

Saurabh participated in the Colloquium on the Dilemma of an Indian Liberal organised at the Centre for Civil Society on 26 May 2024. He is an urban policy researcher and Senior Associate with CCS Academy.