Volume 8, Issue 2 / 2026

The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is spearheading India’s move towards a single digital health system. This paper reviews the structures of India’s digital public infrastructure for health and maps the interdependencies that arise at the macro level (policy making) and the micro level (clinical care) of clinical data governance and interoperability. It examines the consequences of digital fragmentation, namely information asymmetry, redundant clinical testing and flawed policy design, and how these must be addressed to realise the National Digital Health Blueprint of 2019 in conjunction with the National Health Stack proposed by NITI Aayog. Public–private networks, the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) unique identifier, the operationalisation of the Health Information Exchange and the legal constraints imposed by the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 are also analysed. The paper concludes with recommendations for an overall system to overcome federal database silos, a standardised approach to technology procurement, and a fair and privacy-protecting national health system.

Non-performing assets (NPAs) remain a significant challenge for the Indian banking sector. Although the legal framework for recovery has become progressively more sophisticated through the Recovery of Debts and Bankruptcy Act, 1993, the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (SARFAESI Act) and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC), recovery-oriented mechanisms often become central only after financial distress has already hardened into default. This article examines whether alternative dispute resolution (ADR), particularly mediation and arbitration, can operate earlier in the life cycle of banking stress and thereby reduce the progression of viable stressed accounts into prolonged recovery disputes. It argues that mediation has stronger preventive potential than arbitration because it can facilitate confidential, interest-based negotiations concerning restructuring, repayment, compromise and the preservation of going-concern value. Arbitration remains useful for arbitrable contractual disputes, but its scope is constrained where legislation assigns jurisdiction to specialised statutory forums. The article analyses the Mediation Act, 2023, the RBI framework on stressed-asset resolution and compromise settlements, and the interaction of ADR with the SARFAESI Act, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) and the IBC. It also examines the 2026 Patna High Court decision in M/s EAEI Transformers Private Limited v. Reserve Bank of India as a practical illustration of the value and limits of consensual, ADR-assisted banking recovery. The article proposes a ten-stage banking mediation model linking early-warning identification, viability assessment, mediation, institutional approval, settlement documentation and monitoring, while preserving statutory recovery remedies if negotiations fail. The central proposition is that ADR should not replace statutory recovery; rather, it should form a time-bound, selective and commercially informed layer within a graduated banking recovery architecture.

The increasing globalisation of corporate activity has transformed the relationship between international law and corporate sustainability. Contemporary challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, labour exploitation, human rights violations and corruption transcend national boundaries and require coordinated legal and regulatory responses. This paper examines the evolving role of international law and treaties in shaping corporate sustainability, with particular emphasis on the interaction between binding international instruments and non-binding soft-law standards. It analyses the influence of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, International Labour Organization conventions, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and emerging sustainability-related frameworks. The study further examines how international norms are incorporated into domestic legal systems and subsequently translated into enforceable corporate obligations through legislation, judicial decisions, regulatory mechanisms and contractual arrangements. Particular attention is given to corporate human-rights and environmental due diligence, ESG disclosure, climate accountability and the growing extraterritorial reach of sustainability regulation. The analysis is supported by case studies including Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell, corporate due-diligence developments in France and Germany, the OECD National Contact Point mechanism, Microsoft’s human-rights practices and the Bangladesh Accord. The paper argues that international law is progressively moving beyond its traditional state-centric character and becoming an important determinant of corporate behaviour. The convergence of hard law, soft law, market expectations and judicial accountability demonstrates that sustainability is increasingly a legal, governance and strategic imperative for corporations seeking long-term resilience and responsible value creation.

Human dignity occupies a central place in modern constitutional democracies. The Indian Constitution enshrines fundamental rights with the intent of protecting the dignity, equality and liberty of every individual. Prominently, Article 21 guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, which the Supreme Court has interpreted broadly to encompass the right to live with dignity. Progressive judicial interpretation has widened the scope of this right to include various aspects of human existence such as privacy, autonomy, identity and freedom of personal choice. Despite these constitutional guarantees, individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ community have historically been subjected to discrimination, socially stigmatised, and excluded from many domains of the public and private spheres. The paper analyses the development of LGBTQ+ rights in India in the context of jurisprudence, specifically the connection between dignity and constitutional rights. It studies the major cases through which the courts have recognised LGBTQ+ rights and discusses whether the process has succeeded in enhancing the right to a dignified life. The paper suggests that even though constitutional jurisprudence has gone a long way in acknowledging the rights of sexual and gender minorities, further legal reform and greater social understanding are needed so that the constitutional pledge of dignity and equality becomes a reality for all citizens. Securing normative status for LGBTQ+ rights is an essential step towards a more welcoming and fair society. The procedural safeguarding of the dignity of each person is not merely a constitutional requirement but also a noble principle of a democratic society. The reinforcement of legal safeguards, a culture of inclusivity and enhanced social awareness will be important in ensuring that the right to live with dignity is meaningfully realised for the LGBTQ+ community in India.

Rapid digitisation has opened the way to a range of crimes, including crimes committed by children, giving rise to a new form of juvenile delinquency. Child cyber delinquency has escalated ethical, legal and procedural problems and become a troubling trend in the digital age. Although India’s principal child-centric justice framework, the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, has been modernised over the years and has brought about significant changes, it still fails to address the complexities of cyber delinquency adequately. Acts such as identity theft, phishing, online fraud, hacking and digital extortion not only highlight the growing involvement of juveniles in cybercrime but also underline the need to view children as both offenders and victims. This study uses doctrinal methods to assess the lack of cyber-specific classification, assessment and rehabilitation. The paper critically examines official crime data and police reports, and provides a comparative analysis of selected international juvenile justice models in the United Kingdom, Singapore and New Zealand. It sheds light on the inconsistent treatment of juvenile offenders and on the lack of cyber-psychology and digital maturity assessment. The primary objective is to examine the legal gaps in the principal Act and the legal and moral dilemmas surrounding it, and to propose digital-age reforms for better governance. The paper finds that the current principal legislation reflects a pre-digital mindset, yielding irregular implementation of the law and insufficient rehabilitative outcomes. It argues that the current approach undermines accountability, and it emphasises the urgent need for reforms that integrate cyber-forensic expertise and promote rehabilitation programmes within the juvenile justice framework. The study concludes by proposing targeted policy reforms to strengthen India’s child protection legislation while upholding its restorative and rights-based character in the evolving digital ecosystem.

Digital technology has changed the meaning of the working day. E-mail, instant messaging, smartphones, video meetings and remote-working systems allow employees to work beyond the place and time traditionally associated with employment. This flexibility can improve productivity, but it can also create a workplace in which an employee is never fully off duty. A message sent at night may be harmless information, or it may require immediate action. The legal problem begins when after-hours communication becomes an expectation of work or availability. Indian labour law now operates mainly through the four Labour Codes. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (“OSH Code”) regulates working hours, overtime and notice of work periods. Yet it does not contain a detailed rule dealing with e-mail, instant messages, virtual meetings or continuous digital availability after working hours. The issue is therefore not simply whether overtime is payable. It is also whether an employee should be required to remain available when no legitimate work need exists. This paper examines the relationship between after-hours digital work, overtime and a proposed right to disconnect in India. It distinguishes ordinary communication, actual work and on-call availability. It also considers Article 21 values of dignity, privacy and autonomy, while recognising that the Constitution does not presently establish a standalone fundamental right to disconnect. The paper further examines the Right to Disconnect Bill, 2018, and the later Right to Disconnect Bill, 2025, together with selected international approaches from France, Spain and the European Union. The paper argues for a limited and workable statutory right. Employees should ordinarily be free from work-related demands outside their agreed working period, and they should not suffer retaliation for refusing non-essential after-hours work. At the same time, genuine emergencies, properly defined on-call duties, shift work and international operations should receive reasonable exceptions. The proposed framework therefore combines protected non-working periods, employer-level digital communication policies, recognition and recording of substantial after-hours work, protection against retaliation, internal grievance mechanisms and sector-specific flexibility. The objective is not to prohibit communication but to prevent technological convenience from becoming unlimited employer access to personal time.

“Digital arrest” is a form of cyber-enabled fraud in which offenders impersonate police officers, investigators, regulators, customs officials, or judicial authorities and create the false appearance that a victim is under criminal investigation or custody. Victims may be kept on video or telephone calls for hours and pressured to transfer money to accounts controlled directly or indirectly by the offenders. The distinctive legal difficulty is geographical. The caller may be in another State or another country; the victim may be in Lucknow or another Indian city; the first recipient account may be located in a different State; later transactions may cross several jurisdictions; and the digital infrastructure used for communication may be situated abroad. This article examines whether Indian criminal law can determine the appropriate forum for such a distributed offence. It argues that Indian law possesses substantial domestic jurisdictional capacity: the place where electronic communication is received, the place where the consequence occurs, and the place where property is delivered can connect the offence to an Indian court. The principal domestic difficulty is the multiplicity of potentially competent forums. The cross-border problem is different: Indian law may prescribe jurisdiction over foreign conduct, yet foreign evidence, platforms, and accused persons remain beyond direct coercive reach. The article proposes a “Digital Arrest Jurisdiction Nexus” based on five factors (act, communication, victim, consequence, and evidence) and a six-stage procedure for investigators and courts.

International investment arbitration occupies a hybrid position between private arbitral ordering and public international law adjudication. This article examines a recurring but fragmented problem within that system: serious systemic values such as anti-corruption, human rights, environmental protection and international public order may affect investment disputes through different doctrinal routes, yet arbitral law lacks a common analytical vocabulary for explaining their limiting effect. It argues that universality becomes a legal fiction if treated as a freestanding basis for jurisdiction: arbitral authority remains grounded in consent, treaty text, party identity, subject matter, time and territorial or economic connection. Yet universality is not irrelevant. Arbitral practice invokes systemic values through legality requirements, treaty interpretation, applicable law, admissibility, counterclaims, procedural rules and remedial discretion. Drawing on cases concerning corruption, serious illegality, international public order, human rights, environmental harm, third-party interests and abuse of process, the article argues that universality is best understood as a cross-cutting systemic limitation rather than a jurisdiction-conferring principle. It therefore proposes ratione universalis as a cautious analytical category for organising how serious systemic values may condition claims, protection or relief within, rather than beyond, a consent-based arbitral system.

This article argues that security of land rights is a matter of function, not form. Vietnam’s transferable land use right supplies much of that function without freehold, but its security depends on two relations: against private parties, through continuity and registered transfer; and against public power, through the protection of value and the availability of remedy. The first is strong yet conditional; the second is the weaker, because the holder’s protection turns on how the State values and compensates, and the State, within statutory limits, also decides whether to recover. Land market development in Vietnam is therefore constrained less by the absence of freehold than by the rules through which the State recovers, values and compensates land. The argument applies a four-criterion framework to the Constitution of 2013, the Civil Code of 2015, the Land Law of 2024 and the Law on Real Estate Business of 2023, and tests the criterion of continuity against leasehold in China and Hong Kong. It proposes three reforms within Articles 53 and 54: independent valuation decisions, disclosed valuation data and judicial testing of prices.