MPP Dissertations

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    Smart, Safe, And Shrivelled: Exploring the Relationship Between Safety, The Smart City, And the Surveillant Assemblage
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-02) Ishika Ray Chaudhuri
    This dissertation explores how narratives of women’s safety in Delhi are constructed and operationalised through the frameworks of neoliberal urbanism and surveillance technology. The research examines how contemporary policy initiative - particularly the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) and Delhi’s Master Plans - reinforce a paternalistic and technocratic approach to safety that centres surveillance over inclusivity. The central thesis argues that the discourse on women’s safety is weaponised to justify the expansion of surveillance infrastructures, such as CCTV cameras and Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs), creating a “surveillant assemblage” that disciplines public spaces without addressing the structural causes of insecurity. This assemblage disproportionately targets marginalised communities and reinforces existing caste and class inequalities, while offering little substantive safety to women - especially those outside the dominant socio-economic categories. The study employs a constructivist, qualitative methodology. It triangulates data from three key sources: critical analysis of urban policy documents, feminist and post-colonial urban theory, and semi-structured interviews with 20 women from diverse caste, class, and religious backgrounds who actively navigate Delhi’s public spaces. Through this method, the research juxtaposes top-down policy narratives with bottom-up lived experiences. The findings reveal a significant dissonance between policy rhetoric and the realities of urban life for women. While policy documents frame safety as a problem solvable through surveillance and urban aesthetics, interviewees highlight a complex terrain shaped by fear, gendered mobility, class disparity, and infrastructural exclusion. Surveillance often exacerbates feelings of unsafety by enabling social control rather than promoting real security. The dissertation concludes that Delhi’s current urban safety paradigm is inadequate and exclusionary. It recommends a radical reimagining of safety that prioritises accessibility, intersectional justice, and the right to loiter. True safety, the research contends, emerges not from watching women, but from cantering their voices in urban design and policy, challenging the surveillance-first ethos of smart city governance.
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    Designing A Policy Ecosystem Solution to Address Regulatory Challenges of Social Entrepreneurship in India
    (National Law School of India University, 2025) Vishwas Jha
    Social entrepreneurship is many things to different people. At its core, it is about addressing social issues via usinesses that seek to innovate and experiment with processes, and in the journey, create value for their local communities and ecologies. This dissertation is an exploration of this journey from a regulatory perspective. It asks why someone chooses to become a social entrepreneur, how they operate their business, ow they measure their impact, and what regulatory challenges they experience as part of these processes. In India and across the world, there is no regulatory framework for social entrepreneurship at a national level. Curiously, primary research has not been deployed to identify the challenges that emerge from this regulatory gap. This is where this dissertation differs. It starts by exploring what social entrepreneurship and social impact are. By centering this analysis on the concepts of social value creation and organisation identity, this research shows that social entrepreneurship addresses systemic challenges via business models. The next section, using literature review, primary data (interviews), and case-studies based on primary data, identifies, analyses, and contextualises the regulatory challenges of social entrepreneurship in India. In this pursuit, interviews were conducted with five social entrepreneurs across rural and urban geographies in India, and diverse operational models, and five practitioners (incubators, consultants, and researchers), in the social entrepreneurship sector. Thematic analysis of the interviews with the five social entrepreneurs reveals the following challenges: (a) High costs of regulatory compliance; (b) Inconsistent regulations to promote entrepreneurship; (c) Difficulties accessing capital and finance; (d) Ambiguities due to no certification system for social enterprises; (e) Mismatch between impact measurement frameworks and local realities; (f) Exclusion from mainstream entrepreneurship schemes due to lack of capacity in government to understand what social entrepreneurship is. Essentially, the primary challenge that emerges is insufficient state capacity to not only understand what social entrepreneurship at a grassroots level is, but also the complex regulations that central and state governments create that do not benefit grassroots organisations. Finally, the observations from the interviews of social entrepreneurs and practitioners in this sector are decoded via thematic analysis, and using the power-interest-influence matrix, a stakeholder analysis is conducted. This helps in the identification of the precise stakeholders that are part of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem in India, and discusses the role they can play to alleviate the identified regulatory challenges. By bridging the theory of social value creation to the empirical evidence from primary data, this dissertation offers policy recommendations to operationalise the policy ecosystem for social entrepreneurship in India.
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    Analysing The Relationship Between Financial Inclusion and Women Empowerment : A Rights-Based Approach to Understanding Economic Agency and Barriers
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-29) Varsha Sekhar
    Financial inclusion is well recognised as an empowerment tool for women, but its potential to expand women’s economic rights remains unevenly achieved, especially in a patriarchal context. This study investigates whether and how financial inclusion deepens women’s ability to assert their economic rights through a rights-based framework, and what structural and socio-cultural variables mediate this relationship. The research uses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with sixteen women from Malappuram district, Kerala, and unstructured interviews with two local bankers. Participants were sampled using snowball sampling and represent a variety of socio-economic and occupational backgrounds. Thematic analysis revealed that although all the participants possessed bank accounts, genuine financial autonomy was frequently limited by poor financial literacy, patriarchal decision-making factors, and poor institutional support. Financial autonomy was also influenced by factors such as employment, financial literacy and intra-household dynamics. Evidence indicates that financial inclusion policy needs to progress beyond access to proactively stimulate financial literacy, institutionally-backed accountability, and gender-insensitive outreach to facilitate effective and equitable economic empowerment.
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    The Limits of Accountability in A Democracy: A Study of India's Right to Information Act
    (National Law School of India University, 2024-05-15) Siddharth Vikrant Kaulgud
    The dissertation explores the limits of accountability within a democratic framework, specifically through an in-depth analysis of India’s Right to Information (RTI) Act. Since its inception, the RTI has been hailed as a transformative tool for promoting government transparency and accountability. However, the Act has faced criticisms for its bureaucratic nature, which some argue aligns it with neoliberal governance ideals—prioritizing efficiency and transparency at the cost of deeper political engagement and social justice. The research juxtaposes two main perspectives: RTI as a rational-legal, technocratic tool, and RTI as a catalyst for political mobilization and civil society activism, especially among marginalized groups. By evaluating the interplay between these contrasting views, the study investigates how RTI both shapes and is shaped by political action. Civil society’s role in navigating bureaucratic hurdles to democratize access to information is pivotal in the ongoing debate about the RTI’s democratic potential. The research uses interviews with RTI activists and examines case studies from grassroots civil society movements that utilize RTI in anti-corruption campaigns, revealing both its limitations and transformative possibilities. While the RTI has empowered certain sectors of the population—primarily educated, urban middle-classes—its bureaucratic and technical nature has hindered its accessibility for disadvantaged groups. The study assesses how civil society actors help mitigate these barriers by providing assistance and fostering collective action to challenge state opacity. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that while the RTI's bureaucratic structure presents limitations, its connection to civil society movements offers a path towards a more inclusive and politically engaged form of accountability, thereby deepening democracy.
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    Comparing ESG And Non ESG Funds in India: A DEA Approach
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-02) Sai Karthik V
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    Groundwater Depletion and Its Impact on Sugarcane Farming: A Water-Energy-Food Nexus Analysis In Uttar Pradesh
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-22) Nagesh Maurya
    India’s agriculture sector, which plays a significant role in ensuring food security and sustaining rural livelihoods is increasingly under threat from unsustainable groundwater usage. This issue is specifically acute in Uttar Pradesh which is country's largest sugarcane-producing state and contributes nearly 45% of India’s total sugarcane production. Approximately 70% of sugarcane fields in the state are irrigated by tube wells, reflecting a major shift from surface water irrigation to groundwater-based irrigation. This shift is largely driven by government policies of electricity subsidies through fixed tariff pricing and Minimum Support Price (MSP) mechanism in the form of Fair and Remunerative price (FRP). These policies have enhanced agricultural productivity but also leads to overexploitation of groundwater. This study adopts a mixed method research design, combining panel regression analysis of sugarcane producing districts, primary fieldwork and carbon emission estimation to assess the multi-dimensional impact of groundwater depletion on sugarcane farming. These impacts are analysed and interpreted within the theoretical framework of ‘Water-Energy-Food’ (WEF) nexus which highlights the interdependent nature of water, energy and food systems. Findings suggest that a 1-meter drop in groundwater level is associated with a 3.67% increase in sugarcane yield apparently counterintuitive result but can be explained by farmers increased investment into deeper tubewells as corroborated by data from the Minor Irrigation Census. However, these practices raise serious questions about long term sustainability of groundwater-based irrigation. The study finds that groundwater depletion disproportionately impacts smaller farmers. It results in an increasing reliance on deeper tubewells which causes financial burdens for smaller farmers. Many farmers take debt on their land from cooperatives, or kisan credit cards to continue groundwater irrigation while some small farmers also turn to water markets to buy water which significantly increases their cost of production. Small farmers in Saidpura Khurd (over-exploited) village face higher costs (Rs. 272–425/hour) than larger farmers (Rs. 76– 92/hour) due to smaller tubewell operating hours annually and water purchases from informal markets (Rs. 60/hour). This leads to an increase in loan dependency and decline in profit margins resulting in widening of socio-economic disparities among farmers. The study also estimates carbon emissions from sugarcane irrigation which amount to 7.36 million tonnes CO₂e annually. The Carbon footprint of electric pumps is around 4.04 tonnes CO₂e/ha significantly higher than diesel pumps (1.51 tonnes CO₂e/ha) primarily due to India’s coal-based electricity production. These findings of the study highlight the urgent need for integrated policy interventions within the WEF nexus to address the issue of groundwater depletion in Uttar Pradesh.
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    Assessing The Reproductive Health of Women in India: Enabling Agency Through Information
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-29) Clitus Larissa
    The Emergency Contraceptive Pills and Abortion pills are two aspects of Reproductive Health that is at the forefront of discussion in India with rising consumption. While the former is sold Over the Counter and the latter through prescription only, women have been found to consume this pill frequently and outside of medical oversight as prescribed respectively. This has affected the Reproductive Health of women to varying degrees and remains at the centre of controversy among medical professionals. In order to ensure that women are able to exercise their agency, the availability of information is essential which is currently being hampered due to lack of interaction with the medical professionals. To that end the research wishes to understand the role of information in the perception of agency among women in relation to other socio-political factors and to seek the interplay of sources of information in reproductive decision-making. The study employs a mixed methodology with the Relative Autonomy Index for the Emergency Contraceptive Pills and qualitative interviews for the Abortion Pills. At present, when it comes to Emergency Contraceptive Pills women fall in the middle of the spectrum of agency, leaving scope for improvement, while information is an important determinant in decision-making. However, the agency of women in choosing a chemical abortion is severely constrained due to multiple external constraints, though information plays an aiding factor. This calls for better policies that would strengthen information dissemination to enable agency among women in making decisions pertaining to reproductive health.
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    Cultivating Sustainability: An Examination of Policy, Practice and Industry Adoption in India's Organic Cotton Sector
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-02) Kuruba Mahi Chandana
    The idea is that organic agriculture is a growing area and has a significant presence across the world. Given the importance of this space and the positive effects that it can have on humankind and the environment largely, there is a need to understand the key theoretical frameworks that outline the importance and effects of organic and sustainable agriculture. In fact, theories that look at the translation of organic agriculture from policy to practice are the focus. In the process of popularizing organic agriculture and its multi-fold benefits, the landscape has evolved to include the standards that need to be followed to call the product from the plant origin organic. The research looks at the Indian standards (NPOP) and its evolution since its inception in 2001 closely and compares the same with the widely recognized standards such as USDA, EU organic and JAS. The analysis depicts how the initial focus of NPOP and its formulation was highly influenced by these recognized international standards, catering to the export goal of organic products. The impact of organic agriculture and inception of the first version of NPOP is highly limited to maintaining compliance and attaining equivalence with USA and EU. It was viewed merely as an economic opportunity rather than making agriculture sustainable. The lack of context specificity is one of the major challenges of NPOP certification since it excluded a key portion of the farmer community, the smallholder farmers from benefitting from the process. In the following section challenges of NPOP certification are comprehensively dealt with in greater detail from the inspection and certification decision officers’ perspective. To better understand the challenges and practical limitations of NPOP, it is contextualized in the organic cotton sector. Stakeholder contexts and capacity, financial barriers, operational barriers, institutional barriers, market and reputational impacts are identified as some of the pressing challenges. These can be overcome by the policy harmonization, capacity building, innovative digital traceability solutions, and adequate support mechanisms according to the interviewed stakeholders. However, the story of NPOP certification doesn’t end with identifying and solving the challenges. Especially in a non-fmcg, intermediate product line like cotton, which further undergoes processing before it turns into a consumable good, the responsibility of NPOP extends to later stages. Recognizing the nature of organic cotton, the final section deals with the later stage of supply chain that is its adoption by the textile industry in the form of organic sourcing of raw material. Additionally, this section also looks at the general conditions and factors that influence integration of sustainability in the business strategies. The analysis of the ESG reports and BRSR frameworks of the select textile companies against parameters like organic sourcing, waste management, etc. presents some gaps in the translation of policy objectives of NPOP into practice. These include inconsistencies in reporting, and lack of standardized metrics for reporting in most of the indicators.
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    Women's Mobility and Trip Chaining in Urban India: Implications for Public Transport Policies in India
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-27) Chandak Komal
    Humans need mobility, which defines their ability to move from one place to another to survive and perform their day-to-day tasks. Without mobility, their access to livelihood, and other things that one derives from their livelihood gets restricted. Mobility manifests based on the person’s gender, class, culture, caste and region where they belong. Urban mobility is a fundamental aspect of daily life, and because it is shaped by different aspects that have been mentioned above, the expansion and improvement of urban transport infrastructure have not always translated into equitable access for all. Similarly, studies like Mobility of Care have shown that women in particular face unique challenges: their travel patterns differ from men due to a greater share of care and domestic work, and rely on a wider variety of transport modes. These differences can lead to increased time poverty and double disadvantage, especially for women living far from employment hubs or in areas underserved by public transport. This study explores women’s mobility in urban India, in the context of Mumbai city, by examining one commuting pattern called trip-chaining, a behaviour mostly depicted by caregivers who, in India’s case, are mostly women. Using both methods - quantitative in the form of surveys and qualitative in the form of interviews - this research investigates the impact of care responsibilities on women’s commuting behaviour. Then, building on the implications from the findings, the research evaluates whether the public transport infrastructure meets these unique needs of women or not. Through an analysis of policy documents on urban transport and infrastructure, this research will suggest improvements through which urban transport and infrastructure can be made more robust by integrating aspects of of mobility of care and gender mainstreaming. Key words: Urban mobility, urban transport infrastructure, gender, care-giving, Mobility of Care, trip-chaining.
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    Platform Apps as Sites of Production: Examining Control, Autonomy & Surplus Extraction in the Gig Economy
    (National Law School of India University, 2025-05-02) G. D. Jerry Alvin Kishore
    The aim of this research was to explore the dimensions of control, autonomy and surplus extraction that operate in the On-Request Platform Economy, specifically focusing on the food delivery and ride hailing sectors. The research uses Labour Process Theory (LPT) as the analytical framework to identify the different forms of control that are exerted by platform companies. Five interconnected forms of control - direct, technical, computer (algorithm), normative & bureaucratic - were identified. An in depth exploration of the different ways in which these control types are exerted reveals that platforms have a significant influence over the labour process of a worker. The platforms are able to direct the labour effort of the worker and are able to extract excess labour effort. The 6R Framework is used to organise the data collected on control types. This helps to explore the variations in type and intensity of control between food delivery and ride-hailing sectors. The analysis using the 6R Framework - Restricting, Recommending, Recording, Rating, Replacement and Rewarding - revealed that the food delivery platforms exhibit stricter forms of control and surplus extraction compared to ride-hailing platforms, particularly through mechanisms like rigid disciplinary actions, mandatory acceptance of task and through wage manipulation. Finally, the research tries to critically examine the platform companies claim of being “digital intermediaries” and their rejection of claims that there exists a “Principal - Agent” relationship. Since, the platforms exist in a legal vacuum and regulatory grey space, such claims have largely gone unchecked. Using the “Control & Integration” test - the preferred test to judge the existence / non-existence of an employment relationship - the research is able to show that the claim of platform companies is a manipulation of facts. In reality, there exists an employer-employee relationship in the food delivery sector. Recent changes in company policy and standards in the ride-hailing sector indicate that while there does not exist an employer - employee relationship, there is a need to look at new forms of classifications beyond the traditional binaries (Employee or Independent Contractor) when looking at 21st Century jobs. Future course of action must include the government and civil society players increasing their monitoring and surveillance of the activities of platform companies to ensure that worker exploitation is minimised. Key Words : Labour Process Theory, Control, Variation in Control & “Control & Integration Test”