Of Continuities, Ruptures and Déjà vu

This talk will describe and analyse the story of the regulation of Telecommunications in India from the colonial period till the recent past. Adopting a historical approach and focusing on specific phases of regulation across the colonial and postcolonial history of India, the talk will cover the three broad phases of independent India’s political economy – the ‘Socialist era’ (from 1947 to 1991), the ‘Neoliberal era’ (from 1991 to 2014) and the ‘New India’ era (2014-present). Prof. Thiruvengadam will argue that there is a striking similarity and a circling back to the dominant philosophy of regulation across this long span. Telecom regulation in ‘New India’ is harkening back to the colonial period. This has occurred despite a determined effort, across nearly a quarter century, to move telecom regulation away from a statist model between 1991-2014. Although this quarter century period was not without problems, it is during this phase that the Indian telecom sector was seen as a ‘great success.’ It is therefore surprising and unfortunate, that that trend was, in turn, countered by a new and different model that India has witnessed across the last decade and into the contemporary period. Finally, using telecom as a base, Prof. Thiruvengadam will seek to analyse the political economy of contemporary India more broadly.

About the speaker: Arun Thiruvengadam is a Professor of Law at the National Law School (“NLS”), Bangalore, and holds degrees from NLS and New York University School of Law. His teaching and research span Indian constitutional and regulatory law, comparative constitutional law, South Asian law and politics, Law and Development, and welfare rights. He is the author of The Constitution of India: A Contextual Analysis (2017) and co-editor of five other books. He has previously held academic positions at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, and Azim Premji University. He has taught as visiting faculty at several institutions including the University of Zurich, the Central European University, the City University of Hong Kong, the University of New South Wales and the University of Toronto.

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