BIC TALKS

413. Election Commission – A Guardian of Democracy

At a moment when democratic legitimacy rests on public trust, the role of the Election Commission demands urgent, sober reflection. This Constitution Day session examines the institution at the heart of India's electoral democracy: one tasked with ensuring free and fair elections for over 900 million voters. Yet recent concerns over voter-roll preparation, election scheduling, enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, and responses to hate speech raise critical questions about its autonomy and constitutional resilience. Grounded in the original vision of an independent referee, the discussion considers whether today's political pressures and structural vulnerabilities call for renewed safeguards or a deeper reimagining of the Commission itself. An essential conversation for anyone seeking to understand how democratic institutions endure, and what it takes to protect them. In collaboration with: Daksh In this episode of BIC Talks, S Y Quraishi delivers a talk. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Nov 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

412. The Women No Longer Wait

A wobbling world tries to find its axis: fabrics tear, lands splinter, loved ones vanish, names fade. This session intertwines conversation and poetry, inviting audiences into the bold, shimmering world of Arundhathi Subramaniam's luminous new collection. The session will trace the arc through the sacred and the feminine, culminating in this celebration of fierce, unruly womanhood. Sumbramaniam's collection takes us through shifting landscapes, following the strides of extraordinary women. Women who vault over borders, stroll naked through history, tilt sideways into the unexpected, and sometimes walk entirely upside down. They blur the boundaries between the mundane and the magical, the remembered and the imagined, revealing a world waiting quietly within the old one. Welcome a world that demands new ways of being, new acts of courage, new freedoms! In this episode of BIC Talks, Arundhathi Subramaniam takes us through her book and her process. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Nov 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

411. Rediscovery of a Lost Gandhi

Meet Mohandas: experimenting, debating, and testing the ideas that would later define him as Mahatma. This conversation around The Dawn of Life, Prabhudas Gandhi's newly translated memoir, returns us to the ashram circles of South Africa, where Gandhi was still shaping the ideals that would one day define him. Translated into English for the first time by Hemang Ashwinkumar, recipient of the 2024–25 New India Foundation Translation Fellowship, the book revives a family archive both historical and deeply personal. Written by his young grandnephew who lived alongside him at Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy Farm, the memoir offers an intimate portrait of shared labour and domestic routines, debates on diet and brahmacharya, experiments in simplicity, and the quiet discipline that shaped a philosophy. Here, Gandhi appears exacting yet tender, fallible yet searching, and alive in the small routines that forged his philosophy. In conversation with Nandini Nair of the New India Foundation, Hemang reflects on recovering overlooked histories and carrying a handwritten chronicle into the present; opening a rare window onto Gandhi in the making. The session will conclude with an audience Q&A. In collaboration with: The New India Foundation and Penguin In this episode of BIC Talks, Hemang Ashwinkumar is in a conversation with Nandini Nair. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Nov 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

410. Worlds Within Worlds

Four poets from Bangalore come together for an evening of poetry in English and Hindi, exploring how language moves across geographies, experiences, and ways of seeing. Their poems reveal how words can hold multiple realities, opening up Worlds Within Worlds through translation, memory, and imagination. The event will feature readings from Perennial: The Red River Book of 21st Century Hindi Poetry (Red River, 2025), edited by Sourav Roy and Tuhin Bhowal; So That You Know (HarperCollins, 2025) by Mani Rao; and The Book of Blue (Red River, 2024) by Atreyee Majumder. Together, these books offer distinct yet connected perspectives on how poetry continues to shape and question the world we inhabit. In this episode of BIC Talks, Atreyee Majumder, Sourav Roy and Tuhin Bhowal are in conversation with Mani Rao. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Oct 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

409. Bengaluru Bus Stories

Carrying the people and pulse of a city. Bengaluru Bus Stories is a conversation on how public transport weaves lives together by connecting neighbourhoods, opportunities, and communities across the city. Drawing from EQUIMOB, an international research collaboration between the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Utrecht University, Bangalore Bus Prayaanikara Vedike, and SAMVADA, the discussion explores how buses shape daily life, build connections, and remain vital to the city's social fabric. Moderated by Dr. Ranjana Raghunathan of Vidyashilp University, the panel brings together researchers and activists reflecting on their work with commuters and policymakers, reimagining Bengaluru's buses as true lifelines that are designed with care, inclusion, and dignity at the core. In this episode of BIC Talks, Shaheen Shasa, Sobin George and Prajwal Nagesh are in a conversation with Ranjana Raghunathan. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Oct 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.