BIC TALKS

395. Reading the City Reading Ourselves

Sundar Sarukkai's second novel published recently titled Water Days is a reflective look at the changes in his home city, Bangalore, how everyday life gets formed and what happens to the city insidiously and quietly. He explores migration and the changing social fabric, patriarchy, language, linguistic conflicts, power, and who gets to belong in the melting pot that is Bangalore. Water Days is not just a novel about a city; it is a novel about what it means to belong when everything around you is changing. Sarukkai does not romanticise Bangalore, but he listens carefully to it, and implores you to do so as well. Somak Ghoshal says of the novel in Mint: "Water Days is as much a call to reckon with the transformation of a city as an object lesson in empathy, observation, and community living. As urban India becomes divisive, unliveable, and intensely self-serving, it is chroniclers like Sarukkai who continue to do the work that no policy maker or political leader is doing – inspiring us with feelings to make us more concerned and caring citizens." In this episode of BIC Talks, Sundar Sarukkai will be in conversation with Stanley Carvalho. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Sep 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.

394. Building Teenage Mental Resilience

Adolescence has never been easy, but today's teenagers face unique challenges: the pressures of a digital world, rising academic demands, and the aftershocks of a global pandemic. Rates of anxiety and depression are climbing, leaving parents searching for tools to support their children. This discussion, inspired by Resilience Decoded: What Every Parent Should Know About Teen Mental Health, brings together author Dr. Sujata Kelkar Shetty, biological scientist, writer and resilience coach; philanthropist and education innovator Rohini Nilekani; and award-winning filmmaker Pavitra Chalam, who will moderate the conversation. Together, they will explore how parents can better understand the adolescent brain, strengthen everyday habits that boost resilience, set healthy boundaries around technology, and communicate in ways that build trust. Drawing on neuroscience, lived experience, and practical strategies, the session offers parents not just guidance but a roadmap for action. Because resilient teens begin with resilient parents, this conversation aims to equip families with knowledge, skills, and hope. Presented by: Dr. Sujata Kelkar Shetty In this episode of BIC Talks, Sujata Kelkar Shetty and Rohini Nilekani will be in conversation with Pavitra Chalam. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Sep 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.

393. Too Much Public Not Enough Interest

Public interest litigation (PIL) is a legal innovation of fairly recent vintage which was inspired by noble objectives. It has been seen as a useful tool in widening access to justice, especially in societies scarred by poverty, illiteracy, human exploitation, corruption and maladministration. The concept took deep roots in India some thirty years ago and has now become an ubiquitous feature of the legal landscape. Over the years, however, Indian PIL has, in Dr Venkat Iyer's view, produced a plethora of serious negative consequences, most of them unintended (but not unforeseeable), which have the potential not only to discredit the concept itself, but to irreversibly destroy the trust that the Indian masses have placed in the judiciary – an institution which has, over the past five decades, been come to be seen, rightly or wrongly, as the last bastion of freedom and the rule of law. The lecture is aimed at shining a critical spotlight on the state of PIL in contemporary India and to suggest that the time has come for a serious reappraisal of attitudes in this important area of law and public policy. In this episode of BIC Talks, Venkat Iyer will be in conversation with C N Kumar. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 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.

392. Handlooms - Past Present Future

What does it take to keep a centuries-old craft alive in the 21st century? Handlooms: Past, Present and Future brings together some of the most influential voices in the craft world for a vital conversation on heritage, change, and continuity. From policy and preservation to design and storytelling, this panel explores how handwoven traditions have endured through countless centuries, and the new challenges the 21st century provides. The discussion features Laila Tyabji, founder of Dastkar and a pioneering force in India's craft revival; Ratna Krishna Kumar, patron of traditional arts; actor and advocate Nandita Das; and Chandra Jain, textile revivalist and curator of River Weaves: Brocades of Banaras. Award-winning writer and cultural commentator Shoba Narayan will moderate the conversation. Together, they reflect on what must evolve and what must endure– especially in a time when fast fashion threatens to erase the soulful, skilled work of artisans. This panel is part of River Weaves, an immersive exhibition that celebrates the beauty, complexity, and cultural depth of Banarasi brocade. Designed by Siddhartha Das Studio and presented by Chandra Jain, the exhibition reveals the layers of history, symbolism, and sustainability woven into each fabric. Expect insight, honesty, and a renewed sense of why these threads still matter. In collaboration with: Kadambari In this episode of BIC Talks, Laila Tyabji, Ratna Krishna Kumar, Nandita Das, Chandra Jain with will be in conversation with Shoba Narayan. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 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.

391. Code Red: Climate in the Dock

It's here. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning. Climate Change: The Policy, Law, and Practice is a vital intervention. A book that gathers decades of global negotiations, Indian legal battles, and emerging climate jurisprudence into one urgent and accessible narrative. From courtroom precedents to cutting-edge policy, from carbon markets to constitutional rights, it examines how law can both shape and respond to the climate emergency. Author and legal expert Jay Cheema draws from his experience as Amicus Curiae to the Supreme Court of India in a landmark carbon emissions case. Guiding us through the evolving legal architecture of climate action and accountability, his presentation will be followed by an incisive conversation with an interlocutor to explore the tensions and hopes within the climate discourse. An open Q&A will close the session. Reshaping landscapes, displacing lives, and challenging our very systems of governance, this crisis can no longer be sidelined. Forests burn where there was once monsoon green, rivers swell as glaciers retreat, and the ancient cycle of India's six ritus feels increasingly unfamiliar. The chaos predicted by climate scientists in the 50's is increasingly creeping into our reality. Because the climate crisis is not only legal and political, but deeply personal. In this episode of BIC Talks, Jatinder 'Jay' Cheema will be in conversation with Navaneeta Bhaskar. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 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.