Usha Ramanathan is an Indian human right activist. She is the South Asia Editor of ''Law, Environment and Development Journal'' (LEAD Journal), a peer-reviewed academic journal jointly published by IELRC and SOAS.

Background and personal life

Ramanathan was born in a

South Indian South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

family. She is an alumnus of

Madras University The University of Madras is a public university, public State university (India), state university in Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and most prominent universities in India, incorporated by an ...

. She studied law at Madras university, the

University of Nagpur Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU), formerly Nagpur University, is a public state university located in Nagpur, Maharashtra. It is one of India's oldest universities, as well as the second-oldest in Maharashtra. It is named ...

and

Delhi University The Delhi University (DU, ISO 15919, ISO: ), also and officially known as the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate research university, research Central university (India), central university located in Delhi, India. It ...

. She is married to Justice S. Muralidhar, former chief justice of the

Orissa High Court The Orissa High Court is the High Courts of India, High Court for the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Odisha. The then Bengal Presidency was a vast province including present day Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West ...

Career

Ramanathan is research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, teaches environmental law, labour law and consumer law at the Indian Law Institute and is a regular guest professor many universities around the world. Her research interests include human rights, displacement, torts and environment. She has published extensively in India and abroad. In particular, she has devoted her attention to a number of specific issues such as the Bhopal gas disaster, the Narmada valley dams and slum eviction in Delhi. She is a frequent adviser to non-governmental organisations and international organisations. She is for instance a member of Amnesty International's Advisory Panel on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and has been called upon by the World Health Organisation as an expert on mental health on various occasions. Her writings can be found in the Frontline, The Hindu, The Wire and the Indian Express, amongst other leading newspapers.

Access Now Access Now is a non-profit organization headquartered in Brooklyn, New York City, in the United States. It was founded in California in July 2009 and focuses on digital civil rights. The organization issues reports on global Internet censorship, ...

organisation gave her the 2018 'Human Rights Hero' award for tireless efforts to highlight the issues related to the UID, commonly known as

Aadhaar Aadhaar (Hindi: आधार, ) is a twelve-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by all residents of India, based on their biometrics and demography, demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification ...

References

Indian human rights activists University of Madras alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{India-activist-stub