434. Her Labour, Her Law

This session is in English and Kannada. Domestic work keeps the country running. But the women who make it possible, often after tending to their own homes first, have no contracts, no fixed hours, and no legal protection. The proposed Domestic Workers Bill in Karnataka aims to regulate the industry, bringing in protections enjoyed by employees in the formal sector. This panel examines what the Bill actually means: for the women it seeks to protect, for the households that depend on them, and for a labour movement that has long treated domestic work as an afterthought. A Q&A with the audience will follow. This event is a part of our programming to celebrate International Women's Day. Music, theatre, and conversation: by women, for everyone. In this episode of BIC Talks, Geetha Menon,Gayatri and Pushpa will be in conversation with Vinay K Sreenivasa. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in March 2026. 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.

Opportunity is abundant. Outcomes, however, are strategic. The three women on this panel have navigated all of it. Venture capital and enterprise strategy. Global talent transformation. The slow, necessary work of making the technology industry legible to the women coming up behind them. Startups built from scratch and careers that kept becoming something new. They have done this inside institutions that weren't built for them, in markets that moved before they were ready, in moments that required a decision before the picture was clear. Together they examine how signals and opportunities are recognised, and sometimes missed. How excellence is sustained over decades, not just built in a moment. How to navigate boards, capital, and institutions. How and when to seek help from the mentors, sponsors, and allies who make the difference. The answers come from lived experience. The lessons, hard-won as they are, turn out to be universal. This event is a part of our programming to celebrate International Women's Day. Music, theatre, and conversation: by women, for everyone. In this episode of BIC Talks, Nidhi Shanbhag, Veena Satish, Shreya Krishnan will be in conversation with Srinivas Gorur. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Mar 2026. 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.

Good design is invisible. Bad design is something women navigate every day. In public spaces, designers have rarely looked closely enough at how women actually move through streets, neighbourhoods, and informal gathering spaces. In digital infrastructure, women's needs and safety are an afterthought, if considered at all. In healthcare, the gap is starker still. A space meant for healing leaves too many women negotiating their right to be there, be it fair inclusion in clinical trials or access to safe examinations. This panel examines what it would take to change these systems to include those left off the original blueprints. This event is part of our programming to celebrate International Women's Day. Music, theatre, and conversation: by women, for everyone. In this episode of BIC Talks, Rajani Surendar Bhat, Kiran Keswani and Sarayu Natarajan will be in conversation with Nia Thandapani. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Mar 2026. 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.

Courage is not the beginning of self-knowledge. It is the constant condition of it. Courage to Be You follows two people asking that question from very different lives. Amit and Najib are a gay couple navigating not only their relationship but the religious and social distance between them. Rajeshwari, Amit's childhood friend, is quietly working to reclaim an identity fractured by early trauma. Their stories run parallel, but their questions are the same: what does it take to choose yourself, and what do you risk when you do? Rashna Imhasly-Gandhy draws on Jungian psychology and chakra healing, offering the reader a framework for the same inner work her characters undertake. Their guide, in both cases, is a therapist. Their destination is their own. Yasmeen Premji will introduce the session. Rashna's presentation will be followed by a conversation between her and Malini White. In this episode of BIC Talks, Rashna Imhasly-Gandhy will be in conversation with Malini White. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Mar 2026. 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.

Two questions plagued her for five years, living between Delhi, Venice, and Istanbul: how do we lose what we lose, and why do we love whom we love? Drawing on her collection of essays Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities (2026), written across 25 years and 13 cities, Ananya Vajpeyi will explore what cities hold for us.  The memory and meaning held in street corners and corridors of light; the way personal loss and political trouble have of finding each other in the very same spaces. Architect Prem Chandavarkar brings his own lifelong reckoning with cities to the table. Between them, the conversation promises to move across continents, disciplines, and the question of what it means to love a place. In this episode of BIC Talks, Ananya Vajpeyi will be in conversation with Prem Chandavarkar. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Mar 2026. 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.

You've received the call. The scam artist trying to get your information. Perhaps you fell for it, perhaps you knew better. In either case, it becomes a story to tell over coffee. But who are the people on the other end of line? In her new book, Scamlands, journalist Snidha Poonam explores the vast fraud economies stretching from small-town India to global scam hubs. Nuanced, detailed and above all, personal, Poonam reports on the many lives that run parallel to our own. Tracing the supply chains of fraud, she reveals an economy that's both ruthlessly efficient and heartbreakingly human. In this talk, she is joined by columnist Aakar Patel to explore the themes of the book. They will examine how scam economies thrive in the gaps of inequality, why trust is collapsing faster than we can rebuild it, and what it means when fraud becomes a viable career path for an entire generation. The session ends with an audience Q&A. There are no easy answers, but you'll know more when that unknown number calls again. In this episode of BIC Talks, Snigdha Poonam will be in conversation with Aakar Patel. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 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.

What did the architects of the Republic want our symbols to represent? Acclaimed musician and public intellectual T M Krishna launches We, the People of India: Decoding a Nation's Symbols, a rigorous exploration of the tricolour, the Preamble, the national anthem, and the symbols that define Indian democracy. In conversation with urban researcher Gautam Bhan and journalist Dhanya Rajendran, Krishna traces the historical and philosophical origins of these symbols. Together they will unpack how these symbols were born, what they were meant to represent, and how their meanings have shifted in contemporary India. A thoughtful inquiry into the past, present, and enduring significance of India's defining symbols. Presented by: Contxt In this episode of BIC Talks, TM Krishna and Dhanya Rajendran will be in conversation with Gautam Bhan. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 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.

A single family. A small village. An entire nation's story hiding inside. Tell Me A Story About Our World brings together academic and translator Vanamala Viswanatha and novelist Kavery Nambisan for a conversation about the art of fiction and storytelling, based on Nambisan's latest novel, Rising Sons. Set in a village in Karnataka, following one family from pre-independent India through to the 1970s, threading through the complexities of caste and colonialism while painting vivid landscapes of rural and urban life in a bygone era. What makes Rising Sons sing is how Nambisan inhabits her world. Kannada coexists comfortably within the English, not as a novelty but as a force of realism, enabling the reader's sensibility to percolate through society at every level. Then there is the narrator: never formally introduced, yet unmistakably present, speaking of "our village" and "our daily lives" with a voice that is not quite impartial. The resulting text reads as both narration and remembrance, an immersion into a carefully crafted world. The stories we tell are as much about the Word as they are about the World. Expect an interesting and illuminating conversation, followed by a Q&A with the audience. In this episode of BIC Talks, Kavery Nambisan will be in conversation with Vanamala Viswanatha. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 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.

A new dawn was breaking. And its light would reach far beyond its time. Rebellion in Verse unfolds a journey that goes back to the sixth century CE; a time when many yearned for a reprieve from the constraints of Vedic orthodoxy and caste hierarchies. The Tamil Bhakti movement emerged as their clarion call, a grassroots surge of devotion that redefined spirituality and the social fabric itself. The saints of this movement were poets of the people, composing their hymns in Tamil and their verses, brimming with simplicity and profundity, wrestled divine wisdom from the elite grip of Sanskrit and handed it to the masses. This conversation around Raghavan Srinivasan's book Rebellion in Verse, explores how poetry has long served as a space of defiance: challenging hierarchy, authority, and inherited social orders. Drawing from Bhakti and other traditions, the discussion reflects on how verse carried ideas of equality, desire, and resistance, and why these voices continue to matter today. A Q&A with the audience will follow. In this episode of BIC Talks, Raghavan Srinivasan and Sharada Srinivasan will be in conversation with Karthik Venkatesh. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 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.

In SheThePeople's signature style, this is a session of wit and grace. Bangalore Raani is a vibrant celebration placing female voices precisely where they've always belonged: centerstage. Unapologetic and electric, this dialogue brings together women whose presence, choices, and courage bring Bengaluru to life. In this edition, Shaili Chopra is joined by mother and daughter, Yasmin and Kubbra Sait. Through candid storytelling that moves from ambition to reinvention, relationships to those small everyday rebellions that shift culture, the conversation flows freely: sometimes hilarious, always real. Relatable yet aspirational, intimate yet energizing, this is the rare space where women's stories don't just resonate, but reverberate through lingering conversations, lasting inspiration and undeniable connection as a result of being deeply, and truly, seen. In collaboration with: Shethepeople In this episode of BIC Talks, Kubbra Sait and Yasmin Sait will be in conversation with Shaili Chopra. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 2026. 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.