Usha Ramanathan

Human Rights Scholar


Usha Ramanathan works on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights. She researches, writes and speaks on issues that include the nature of law, Bhopal Gas Disaster, mass displacement, eminent domain, manual scavenging, civil liberties including the death penalty, beggary, criminal law, custodial institutions, the environment, judicial process. She has been tracking, and engaging with, the Indian national ID project and has written, and debated extensively, on the subject. She has been writing and debating issues of technology and the human conditions of freedom and liberty over the years. 

She is visiting faculty at various universities including, in the past 3 years, Azim Premji University (Bengaluru), NALSAR and Mahindra University (Hyderabad), National Law University Delhi, Institute of Law at Nirma (Ahmedabad). She was a member of the Expert Group on Privacy set up in the Planning Commission of India which gave in its report in October 2012. She was a member of a committee (2013-14) set up in the Department of Biotechnology to review the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012. She was a member of the Committee set up by the Prime Minister's Office (2013-14) to study the socio-economic status of tribal communities which gave its report to the government in 2014. She has been on a series of committees on revising the vagrancy law. She was awarded Access Now's Human Rights Heroes Award in 2019.