m.idiculla@unsw.edu.au
Mathew Idiculla
PhD Candidate
B.A.,LL.B (Bangalore University, India)
Mathew Idiculla is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney. He has over 12 years of experience as a legal consultant and academic in India. He has served as a visiting faculty member at Azim Premji University and the National Law School of India University and as a research consultant at the Centre for Law and Policy Research in Bengaluru.
Mathew's interests are primarily in the intersection of law, politics, and policy, particularly on questions related to Indian cities, local governance, federalism, and constitutionalism. He has engaged with the field of urban law and governance for over a decade in varied ways: academic research, teaching, legal consultancy, policy advocacy, and popular writing. Mathew has been part of multiple international research and consultancy projects on subjects such as peri-urban governance, planning law, low-carbon urbanisation, and informal livelihoods. As a legal consultant, he has contributed to the formulation of urban laws and policies of Indian states like Karnataka and Kerala.
His scholarly work has appeared in multiple edited books and in journals like VRÜ: World Comparative Law, Socio-Legal Review, Economic and Political Weekly, and Chinese Journal of Comparative Law. He also writes frequently on various law and policy issues in the op-ed pages of India’s leading publications such as The Hindu, The Caravan, Mint, Deccan Herald, New Indian Express, Scroll, News Minute, The Quint etc.
Research topic
Local Self-Governance in Federal Constitutionalism: The Contested Authority to Plan and Govern the Indian City
Synopsis
Mathew’s doctoral research examines how the authority to plan and govern Indian cities is organised, exercised, and contested between multiple constitutional actors. Through a socio-legal enquiry, it seeks to provide a grounded understanding of the relative authority of different levels of government over urban environmental governance and explore the scope and limits of local self-governance in India’s constitutional order.
Supervisors
Amelia Thorpe and Theunis Roux
Areas of interest
Urban Governance; Federalism; Constitutional Design; Democratic Theory; Indian Constitutional & Political History; Environmental Law; Local Government Law; Urban Planning; Housing Rights; Urban Informality.
Email
- Publications
- Presentations
- Public Writing
- Media
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Idiculla, Mathew. “The Rise of Private Governance in Bengaluru’s Electronics City” India’s Greenfield Urban Future: The Politics of Land, Planning and Infrastructure (Loraine Kennedy and Ashima Sood ed.), Orient Black Swan, 2023
Idiculla, Mathew, and Gaurav Mukherjee. "Local governments, federalism, and the governance of public health in India." Local Governance in Multi-Layered Systems: A Comparative Legal Study in the Federal-Local Connection. (Matteo Nicolini and Alice Valdesalici ed.) Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023. 417-438.
Idiculla, Mathew. “New Governance Regimes and Urban Development” in Urbanisation and its Discontents (Tikender Panwar ed.), Penguin 2025 (forthcoming)
Idiculla, Mathew. “Governing the City-Region: Rethinking Urban and Regional Governance in India” Future of Cities: Planning, Infrastructure, and Development (Ashok Kumar ed.), Routledge 2022
Basole, Amit, Mathew Idiculla, R. Narayanan, H. Nagendra, and S. Mundoli. “Strengthening Towns through Sustainable Employment a job guarantee programme for Urban India”, Reviving Jobs: An Agenda for Growth (Santosh Mehrotra ed.), Penguin, 2020
Gowda, Rajeev, and Mathew Idiculla “Integrating Information Disclosure with Indian Environmental Policy”, India’s Risks: Democratizing the Management of Threats to Environment, Health, and Values (Raphaelle Moor and M.V. Rajeev Gowda ed.), Oxford University Press, 2014
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Idiculla, Mathew. “The Travails of India’s Urban Planning: An Examination of the Planning Law Regime of Bangalore”, Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 11, Issue 1, April 2023, cxad002
Idiculla, Mathew. “Unpacking Local Self-Government: The Uncertain Power of Cities in the Indian Constitution” VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (World Comparative Law), Volume 53, Issue 2, 2020, pp 30-50
Idiculla, Mathew. “A Right to the Indian City? Legal and Political Claims for Housing and Urban Space in India”, Socio-Legal Review, Volume 16, Issue 2, 2020, pp 1-25
Idiculla, Mathew. “The Transformation of Governance in ‘India’s Silicon Valley", Seminar, 694, June 2017, pp 17-21.
Idiculla, Mathew. “New Regimes of Private Governance: The Case of Electronics City in Peri-urban Bangalore,” Economic and Political Weekly: Review of Urban Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 17, 2016, pp 102-110.
Idiculla, Mathew. “Decoding ‘Public Authority’ under the RTI Act”, Journal of National Law University, Delhi (JNLUD), Volume 2, Issue 1, 2014, pp 115-123.
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Idiculla, Mathew “Legal and Policy Framework for Effective Urban Governance: Enabling Collective Local Self-Governance in Urban Kerala”; Thematic Paper, Kerala Urban Policy Commission, February 2025
Idiculla, Mathew “Urban Planning and Informal Livelihoods in India: An Analysis of Urban Planning Laws and Processes in Delhi and Bangalore”. WIEGO Working Paper No. 44. Manchester, UK: WIEGO 2022
Idiculla, Mathew and Roopa Madhav “The ‘Right to the City’ and Emerging Indian Jurisprudence: Implications for Informal Livelihoods”, WIEGO Law & Informality Insights, No 3, March 2021
Idiculla, Mathew “The Delayed BBMP Elections and Governance Reforms in Bangalore”, Centre for Budget and Policy Studies: Working Paper, August 2009
“Urban Planning, Informality, and the Law: An Analysis of the Planning Law Regime of Delhi”, 9th Fordham International and Comparative Urban Law Conference, GIMPA Faculty of Law, Accra, Ghana, 18-20 May 2023
“Pandemic Federalism: A Challenge to the Theory and Practice of Power-Sharing”, Issues in Public Law in South Asia Workshop, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, 1-3 July 2022
“Governing the “City-Region”: A Multi-Tier Framework for Urban and Regional Governance”, 68th National Town and Country Planner Congress, Institute of Town Planners, India, CIDCO, Navi Mumbai, 11-13 January 2020
“Unpacking "Local Self-Government": The Incomplete Power of Cities in India's Constitutional Scheme”, Cities in Federal Theory Workshop, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, 20-21 June 2019
“The Travails of Urban Planning in India: An Examination of the Planning Law Regime of Bangalore”, Workshop on Planning Law in Asian Cities, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 16 April 2019
“An Ideal Scale of Governance? The Possibilities of Multi-tier governance in Bangalore,” 3rd Comparative Urban Law Conference, Fordham Law School, University of Hong Kong, 29 June 2016
“Megaprojects, Governance Transformation and Multiple Suburbanisms in Bangalore: The Case of Suburban Governance in Bangalore,” Workshop on Suburban Governance in an Era of Globalizing Urbanization, University of Montréal, October 26-27, 2015.
“Crafting City Spaces: New Spatial-Legal Institutions in India,” RC21 International Conference on The Ideal City: between myth and reality, University of Urbino, Italy, 27-29 August 2015.
“State in the City: Locating Urban Government in Bangalore, India,” Comparative Urban Law Conference, Fordham Law School, Heythrop College London, 30 June 2014
“Globalisation and Bangalore's Contesting Suburbanism,” A Suburban Revolution?: An international conference on bringing the fringe to the centre of global urban research, CITY Institute, York University, Toronto, 26-29 September 2013
“TN Governor Judgement: Constitutional history as an interpretive device”, Supreme Court Observer, 13 May 2025
“The SC ruling reining in the Governor is a boost to federalism”, The News Minute, 13 April 2025
“Justice DY Chandrachud and Gender Equality in the Higher Judiciary”, National Law School of India Review Online, 1 January 2025, (co-authored with Jayna Kothari)
“The entanglements of urban water governance in India”, Urban Governance Research Network Blog, November 15, 2024
“Safeguarding Local Democracy”, The Hindu, 7 March 2024
“Women’s quota, Panchayats to Parliament”, The Hindu, 5 October, 2023
“Housing as a way to claim citizenship and exercise rights in Indian cities”, Question of Cities, July 2023
“The Delhi ordinance is an unabashed power-grab”, The Hindu, 5 June, 2023
“Maharashtra Political Crisis: The Limits of Supreme Court’s Expiations”, Supreme Court Observer, 15 May, 2023
“Reigning over the capital, from above”, The Hindu, 17 February 2023
“The values of local self-governance”, The Hindu, 5 January 2023
“Representation, all the way up”, The Hindu, 1 August 2022
“Demolishing the rule of law", The Hindu, 25 April 2022
“Who Plans the Indian City? The Anomalies of India’s Urban Planning System”, India in Transition, 22 November 2021
“Why the fight for upholding federalism should be extended to UTs like Lakshadweep”, The News Minute, 12 June 2021
“Bill giving primacy to Delhi LG shows hollowness of Modi’s claims of co-operative federalism”, Scroll, 28 March 2021
“Smothering the housing rights of the urban poor”, The Hindu, 12 September 2020
“Hardly smart about urban health care”, The Hindu, 13 July 2020
“Reviving urban livelihoods post-lockdown through job scheme”, Deccan Herald, 24 June 2020
“Institutional fixes and the need for ethical politics”, The Hindu, 18 April 2020
“Climate justice through judicial diktat”, The Hindu, 24 September 2019
“The primacy of the elected”, The Hindu, 4 July 2019
“The shape of an urban employment guarantee”, (co-authored with Amit Basole and Rajendran Narayanan), The Hindu, 29 March 2019
“CBI does not need to be saved from Narendra Modi. It needs to be dismantled”, Scroll, 13 February 2019
“Let the grassroots breathe”, The Hindu, 11 January 2019
“City Plights: Indian states’ tight leash on urban governance”, The Caravan, November 2018
“Castles in the air”, The Hindu, 16 October 2018
“Inside the Glittering Façade” - The Hindu Business Line, August 17, 2018 (Book Review: James Crabtree, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, 2018)
“The Missing Tiers”, The Hindu, 14 June 2018
“Why are Indians immune to reckless police brutality against protestors?”, (co-authored with Abhayraj Naik), Scroll.in, 17 April 2018
“Federalism and Fairness”, The Hindu, 3 April 2018
“A path to executive power”, The Hindu, 30 January 2018
“How Unsmart Are Our Smart Cities? Rethinking Urban Transportation”, The Quint, 3 October 2017
“Subnationalism not a threat”, The Hindu, 14 September 2017
“Ambedkar’s vision of democracy”, The New Indian Express, 22 April 2017
“Planning for the People”, The Hindu, 16 February 2017
“Charisma trumps rule of law”, The New Indian Express, 15 December 2016
“Responding to rapid urban expansion”, Mint, 10 August 2016
“Will Smart Cities stifle local democracy?”, Scroll.in, 20 December 2015
“Urban Planning, Water Governance, and the Law”, TREADS (Transboundary Rivers, Ecologies & Development Studies) Talk, Centre for Policy Research, 30 August 2023
“Urban designers must first answer the question, whose city is it anyway: Mathew Idiculla”, Interview with Citizen Matters: Part 1, September 28, 2023
“Streamline planning processes for transparent and efficient urban development: Mathew Idiculla”, Interview with Citizen Matters: Part 2, October 2, 2023
“Urban Planning, Informality, and the Law: Unpacking the Planning Law Regime of the Indian City”, Centre for Policy Research (CPR)-Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH) Workshop, 29 August 2023
“The Right to the City: Toward an Urban Realm that Belongs to All”, BIC Streams Discussion, 30 November 2021
“A New Deal for City Governments”, BIC Talks Podcast conversation with Pavan Srinath, Episode 49, 11 September 2020