Volume 1, Issue 2

The enactment of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) marks a transformative shift in India’s data governance framework by introducing a comprehensive legal regime for the protection and processing of digital personal data. The legislation imposes statutory obligations upon data fiduciaries, including startups, to ensure lawful processing, data security, transparency, accountability, and protection of data principals’ rights. This research paper critically examines the compliance challenges faced by Indian startups under the DPDP Act, 2023, with particular focus on obligations relating to consent management, data security safeguards, grievance redressal, cross-border data transfers, children’s data processing, and penalties for non-compliance.

Punishment is one of the most significant concepts in criminal jurisprudence and reflects the relationship between law, morality, and society. Different legal systems across history have developed various theories to justify the infliction of punishment upon offenders. Theories of punishment explain the philosophical foundation, objectives, and social purposes behind penal sanctions. The major theories include the retributive theory, deterrent theory, preventive theory, reformative theory, and compensatory theory. This research paper critically analyses the major theories of punishment from a jurisprudential perspective.

Despite the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) prescribing a minimum of ten years’ imprisonment for acid attacks under Section 124 and a comprehensive ancillary framework for victim compensation and acid sale regulation, India recorded only 16 convictions against 207 reported attacks and 703 pending cases in 2023 (NCRB). This paper examines the doctrinal architecture of acid attack law in India — tracing its evolution from IPC 1860 to BNS 2023 — against the empirical record of implementation failure.

Over the past decade and a half, the position of LGBTQ+ persons in Indian public life has undergone a transformation that few observers would have predicted in the early 2000s. Three Supreme Court judgements have reshaped the constitutional terrain — National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (2014), which recognised transgender persons as a ‘third gender’; Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018), which read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code; and Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty v. Union of India (2023), which declined to recognise same-sex marriage while affirming the dignity of queer relationships.

The proliferation of algorithmic decision-making systems across healthcare, criminal justice, financial markets, and social media platforms has prompted urgent scholarly debate regarding the continued relevance of human free will as a meaningful psychological and philosophical construct. This paper examines the mechanisms through which predictive algorithms, recommendation engines, and automated governance systems constrain, redirect, or substantially replace volitional human decision-making.