Over the last twenty years, India has enacted legislation to turn crucial goals such as food security, primary education, and employment into legal rights for its citizens. But enacting laws is one thing and implementing them through an imperfect institutional structure is another. A Human Rights Based Approach to Development in India examines a diverse range of human development issues over a period of rapid economic growth in India. Demonstrating why institutional and economic development are synonymous, the essays in this volume detail the many obstacles that may hinder development. In addition, they show how the domestic policies required to implement laws may undermine India’s treaty obligations at the World Trade Organization or under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The contributors ultimately ask whether development can be achieved by making it a legal right and whether India’s right to develop is truly at odds with its international commitments.

Moshe Hirsch's profile page

Ashok Kotwal's profile page

Bharat Ramaswami's profile page

Moshe Hirsch is the Von Hofmannsthal Chair of International Law and co-director of the International Law Forum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Specializing in international economic law, public international law, and international legal theory, he is the author of Invitation to the Sociology of International Law and has contributed to the International and Comparative Law Quarterly and the European Journal of International Law, among other publications. Ashok Kotwal is a professor of economics in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. He is a development economist with a particular interest in development processes in India and their impact on poverty. Kotwal is also the editor-in-chief of the Ideas for India online newsletter on Indian development research findings.Bharat Ramaswami is a professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi. He received the 2004 Indian Econometric Society Mahalanobis Memorial Medal for his work in quantitative economics. Much of his work studies food, agriculture, and employment in the processes of economic development.

Contributors: Ashwini Deshpande, Simon Harding, Milind Kandlikar, Ashwini Kulkarni, Nisha Malhotra, Milind Murugkar, Pitman B. Potter, Wilima Wadhwa