This course discusses how political philosophy is relevant to public policy in India. The course discusses how to understand well-being, why and how inequality is significant, moral considerations in choosing market or government provision of goods, rights, future generations, and the role of experts in a democracy. The discussion links political philosophy with concrete policy debates in India.

Many questions require interdisciplinary insights. This course does this from a PPE perspective for three big topics: democracy, decision theory, and development.

This course discusses several topics in political and legal theory in conjunction with a seminar series of external speakers. Some of the topics covered are the nature of law, legal absolutism, the philosophy of discrimination law, free speech, religious freedom, and secularism.

Equality is a core constitutional guarantee. This course focuses on constitutional debates on how the equality code is to be understood. The course links six constitutional controversies with larger debates in the philosophy of discrimination. Navtej Singh Johar illustrates the question who should be protected; Joseph Shine illustrates the question whether equality is expressive; Sabarimala illustrates the interaction with religious liberty; Champakam Dorairajan illustrates how affirmative action relates to non-discrimination; the Zoroastrian Case illustrates the interaction with freedom of association; Col Nitisha illustrates questions of indirect discrimination

This course is an introduction to political theory. The course discusses four big topics - democracy and constitutionalism, liberalism and secularism, social justice, and nationalism. The discussion of each big topic involves both historical and contemporary authors from the West and India.

This course discusses the value of equality in its many aspects. The course discusses equality as a distributive value - the equal distribution of opportunities and outcomes. It also discusses what makes us moral equals and equality as a relational value - the idea of relating to others as equals - as well as forms of inequality such as discrimination or caste.

Political philosophy experienced a revival following the publication of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971. This course tracks this resurgence by focusing on Rawls’s work as well as that of fellow liberal egalitarians Ronald Dworkin and Amartya Sen as well as the libertarian Robert Nozick and the Marxist G.A. Cohen. The topics discussed revolve around justice (does justice require the redistribution of resources from rich to poor?), liberty (what rights do we have and do these constrain such redistribution?), and authority (do we have an obligation to obey the law?)