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, 国民彩票 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 VR脺: 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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.聽 鈥淭he Rise of Private Governance in Bengaluru鈥檚 Electronics City鈥 (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."聽. (Matteo Nicolini and Alice Valdesalici ed.) Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023. 417-438.
Idiculla, Mathew.聽 鈥淣ew Governance Regimes and Urban Development鈥 in Urbanisation and its Discontents (Tikender Panwar ed.), Penguin 2025 (forthcoming)
Idiculla, Mathew. 鈥淕overning the City-Region: Rethinking Urban and Regional Governance in India鈥 (Ashok Kumar ed.), Routledge 2022
Basole, Amit, Mathew Idiculla, R. Narayanan, H. Nagendra, and S. Mundoli. 鈥淪trengthening Towns through Sustainable Employment聽a job guarantee programme for Urban India鈥, (Santosh Mehrotra ed.), Penguin, 2020
Gowda, Rajeev, and Mathew Idiculla 鈥淚ntegrating Information Disclosure with Indian Environmental Policy鈥, (Raphaelle Moor and M.V. Rajeev Gowda ed.), Oxford University Press, 2014
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Idiculla, Mathew.聽 鈥溾, Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 11, Issue 1, April 2023, cxad002
Idiculla, Mathew. 鈥溾 VR脺 Verfassung und Recht in 脺bersee (World Comparative Law), Volume 53, Issue 2, 2020, pp 30-50
Idiculla, Mathew. 鈥溾, Socio-Legal Review, Volume 16, Issue 2, 2020, pp 1-25
Idiculla, Mathew. 鈥", Seminar, 694, June 2017, pp 17-21.
Idiculla, Mathew. 鈥,鈥 Economic and Political Weekly: Review of Urban Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 17, 2016, pp 102-110.
Idiculla, Mathew. 鈥溾, Journal of National Law University, Delhi (JNLUD), Volume 2, Issue 1, 2014, pp 115-123.
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Idiculla, Mathew 鈥淟egal and Policy Framework for Effective Urban Governance: Enabling Collective Local Self-Governance in Urban Kerala鈥; Thematic Paper, Kerala Urban Policy Commission, February 2025
Idiculla, Mathew 鈥溾. WIEGO Working Paper No. 44. Manchester, UK: WIEGO 2022
Idiculla, Mathew and Roopa Madhav 鈥溾, WIEGO Law & Informality Insights, No 3, March 2021
Idiculla, Mathew 鈥溾, Centre for Budget and Policy Studies: Working Paper, August 2009
鈥淯rban Planning, Informality, and the Law: An Analysis of the Planning Law Regime of Delhi鈥, 9th Fordham International and Comparative Urban Law Conference, GIMPA Faculty of Law, Accra, Ghana, 18-20 May 2023
鈥淧andemic Federalism: A Challenge to the Theory and Practice of Power-Sharing鈥, Issues in Public Law in South Asia Workshop, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, 1-3 July 2022
鈥淕overning the 鈥淐ity-Region鈥: A Multi-Tier Framework for Urban and Regional Governance鈥, 68th National Town and Country Planner Congress, Institute of Town Planners, India, CIDCO, Navi Mumbai, 11-13 January 2020
听鈥淯npacking "Local Self-Government": The Incomplete Power of Cities in India's Constitutional Scheme鈥, Cities in Federal Theory Workshop, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, 20-21 June 2019
鈥淭he Travails of Urban Planning in India: An Examination of the Planning Law Regime of Bangalore鈥, Workshop on Planning Law in Asian Cities, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 16 April 2019
鈥淎n Ideal Scale of Governance? The Possibilities of Multi-tier governance in Bangalore,鈥 3rd Comparative Urban Law Conference, Fordham Law School, University of Hong Kong, 29 June 2016
鈥淢egaprojects, Governance Transformation and Multiple Suburbanisms in Bangalore: The Case of Suburban Governance in Bangalore,鈥 Workshop on Suburban Governance in an Era of Globalizing Urbanization, University of Montr茅al, October 26-27, 2015.
鈥淐rafting City Spaces: New Spatial-Legal Institutions in India,鈥 RC21 International Conference on The Ideal City: between myth and reality, University of Urbino, Italy, 27-29 August 2015.
鈥淪tate in the City: Locating Urban Government in Bangalore, India,鈥 Comparative Urban Law Conference, Fordham Law School, Heythrop College London, 30 June 2014
鈥淕lobalisation and Bangalore's Contesting Suburbanism,鈥 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
鈥溾, Supreme Court Observer, 13 May 2025
鈥溾, The News Minute, 13 April 2025
鈥溾, National Law School of India Review Online, 1 January 2025, (co-authored with Jayna Kothari)
鈥溾, Urban Governance Research Network Blog, November 15, 2024
鈥溾, The Hindu, 7 March 2024
听鈥溾,听The Hindu, 5 October, 2023
听鈥溾,听Question of Cities, July 2023
听鈥溾,听The Hindu, 5 June, 2023
鈥溾,听Supreme Court Observer, 15 May, 2023
听鈥溾,听The Hindu, 17 February 2023
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 5 January 2023
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 1 August 2022
听鈥&辩耻辞迟;,听The Hindu, 25 April 2022
鈥溾,听India in Transition, 22 November 2021
听鈥溾,听The News Minute,聽12 June 2021
鈥溾,听厂肠谤辞濒濒,听28 March 2021
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 12 September 2020
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 13 July 2020
鈥溾,听Deccan Herald, 24 June 2020
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 18 April 2020
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 24 September 2019
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 4 July 2019
听鈥溾, (co-authored with Amit Basole and Rajendran Narayanan),聽The Hindu, 29 March 2019
鈥溾,听Scroll,聽13 February 2019
鈥溾,听The Hindu, 11 January 2019
鈥溾,听The Caravan, November 2018
鈥溾, The Hindu, 16 October 2018
鈥溾 - The Hindu Business Line, August 17, 2018 (Book Review:聽聽聽 James Crabtree, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India鈥檚 New Gilded Age, 2018)
鈥溾, The Hindu, 14 June 2018
鈥溾, (co-authored with Abhayraj Naik), Scroll.in, 17 April 2018
鈥溾, The Hindu, 3 April 2018
鈥溾, The Hindu, 30 January 2018
鈥溾, The Quint, 3 October 2017
鈥溾, The Hindu, 14 September 2017
鈥溾, The New Indian Express, 22 April 2017
鈥溾, The Hindu, 16 February 2017
鈥溾, The New Indian Express, 15 December 2016
鈥溾, Mint, 10 August 2016聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽
鈥?鈥, Scroll.in, 20 December 2015
鈥溾, TREADS (Transboundary Rivers, Ecologies & Development Studies) Talk, Centre for Policy Research, 30 August 2023
鈥溾, Interview with Citizen Matters: Part 1, September 28, 2023
鈥溾, Interview with Citizen Matters: Part 2, October 2, 2023
鈥溾, Centre for Policy Research (CPR)-Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH) Workshop,聽29 August 2023
听鈥溾, BIC Streams Discussion, 30 November 2021
鈥溾, BIC Talks Podcast conversation with Pavan Srinath, Episode 49, 11 September 2020