The 16th edition of the Harvard India Conference, is due to be held on February 16-17, 2019 at Boston. This year’s theme is ‘India at an inflection point’.
The annual conference is jointly organized by students of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. The theme taken up at the conference includes topics touching upon Indian politics, the media, the economy and the judiciary. Speakers invited for the same include those from varying fields including the legal community.
Among those invited to speak is Additional Solicitor General of India Pinky Anand, who will be part of a panel discussion on the topic Elections: Growth vs Nationalism – Voter priorities and what that means for Elections 2019. ASG Anand also happens to be an alumnus of the Harvard Law School.
Senior Advocate Gopal Subramaniam also features in the list of dignitaries invited to speak at the event.
Former Bombay High Court judge, Justice Kolse Patil has been invited to speak as part of a panel discussion involving questions of whether caste-based prejudice plagues the judiciary. Titled, Is the Judiciary in India “Brahmancial”? Does it offer Justice?, the panel discussion also features other lawyers and legal academics Rohit De, Kiruba Munusamy and Nitish Nawsagaray.
Rohit De is a lawyer and an Assistant Professor of History at Yale University. He has worked with Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan of the Supreme Court of India and been a part of constitutional reform projects in Sri Lanka and Nepal. He is currently researching the history of civil liberties lawyering in post-war Asia and Africa.
Kiruba Munusamy practices at the Supreme Court of India, and is known for her work against discrimination including caste-based and LGBTQI discrimination. Kiruba is also setting up the Legal Initiative For Equality to train young lawyers from marginalized backgrounds, and to defend the legal cause of the outcasts.
Nitish Nawsagaray is an Assistant Professor at ILS Law College Pune, specialising in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Administrative Law, and Jurisprudence.
Jaiveer Shergill, a practicing lawyer in the Supreme Court of India and a politician belonging to the Indian National Congress (INC) party, will be part of of two panel discussions; one on the Significance of Regional Political Parties in India: Game changers or King makers and another on Understanding Economic Policies of the last 5 years: Where are we heading?
Shergill is presently spokesperson for the INC. He has been recently appointed as a member of the INC Core Publicity Committee for 2019 general elections. He has also served as the young India head for the International Bar Association for a period of two years between 2008-09.
Reputed criminal lawyer Siddharth Aggarwal will be speaking on the 2G spectrum case during a discussion on the theme Anatomy of Corruption in India: The 2G Cases.
Siddharth is an alumnus of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Drawing on his extensive experience in criminal litigation, he has actively participated in criminal law reform.
Lawyer-turned-Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Harssh A Podar will be delivering a talk as part of the Inspire Series at the Conference. Podar, an Oxford-educated lawyer and Chevening scholar, left a corporate career in London to join the IPS. He is presently posted as the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Nagpur. He is the youngest awardee of the GFiles Award for good governance in 2018.
The conference will also feature talks by social activist and lawyer Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, who will be part of two sessions. The first deals with A reforms perspective on the conference theme of India at an Inflection. This apart, Dr Narayan will also be part of a moderation discussion on this central theme with journalist Barkha Dutt.
For more details regarding the conference, visit the official website here.
