Dr. Tapobrata Pakrashi has been working as an Assistant Professor (Selection Grade) at School of Law in The NorthCap University, Gurgaon, Haryana. He has a B.A. LL.B. (Honors) from Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, an LLM in Intellectual Property Rights from the National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi, an M. Phil. in International Law as well as a PhD in International Trade and Intellectual Property Law from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He has been teaching here for about 5 years. Before joining the NorthCap University, he was associated with one of the country’s top and the world’s leading legal organizations as a Senior Legal Officer.

He has worked with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Right to Health between 2013 and 2014. He visited Tokyo twice – in 2011 as a research scholar for presenting a research paper at an international conference, and, in 2016 as a visiting researcher. Both these visits were entirely funded by the concerned Japanese University. He teaches miscellaneous subjects in law at various levels, like undergraduates, graduates and doctoral. He also has quite a few doctoral scholars researching for their doctoral degrees under his supervision, one of whom has recently defended her doctoral thesis as well.

The NorthCap University

What are the key factors that keep you connected with the education sector?

For me, education is not an ordinary domain or any industrial sector. Rather, academics has been my passion from the very beginning. I also have the opportunity to interact with a host of students from different backgrounds. Being able to make a difference in their lives gives me an unexplainable feeling of satisfaction, pride and happiness. 

Last but not the least, I get numerous opportunities to enhance my own knowledge and skills, be it while interacting with my fellow colleagues or experts in my domain. Hence, I firmly believe that all these factors have jointly contributed a lot in my association with the education sector.

As an Assistant Professor of the School of Law, what is your philosophy of leadership? 

I do not possess any special philosophy and I believe there should not be any such. Human beings are products of circumstances and training; hence, it is these circumstances that makes them what they become, not even always being able to choose as to what philosophy to follow or adopt. The same applies for me as well.

I strongly believe that a clear knowledge of multiple philosophies is possibly more important, and the path treaded should more likely be a mix of sorts, as and how it is necessitated.

How does pursuing the Law courses at your institution be beneficial for students?

The main objective of our School of Law is to train the young minds in a way that they fulfill most of the societal requirements – by being a sensible human being even before becoming a full-fledged lawyer.

In order to make all this true, we offer a wide range of subjects and specializations to students. Additionally, a majority of our faculty members are graduates of National Law Universities (NLUs) of India, so there should be little room for doubt about the quality of education we offer. Apart from this, our institution is situated close to major government offices, courts at the highest levels, leading law firms and multinational offices etc.; all these ultimately helps us provide the finest quality practical exposure to the young and ambitious.

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What do you think should be the University’s top priority over the next 10 years?

In my opinion, our university should focus on enhancing its education policies so that the students receive the best of knowledge about Laws on Artificial Intelligence, Space Law and Laws on Data Protection and meet the challenges of the future that awaits them.

Apart from this, we should provide them with more training programs and upgrade our university infrastructure in accordance with changing times and technologies. Overall, our university should continue to explore the newest and evolving areas that could be made a part of the curriculum for the overall growth and development of students.

When you first joined the School of Law, what was your vision for it and how far have you come in implementing those visions?

To be honest, when I had joined, I had not thought much about the objectives as I was new to this domain. However, over time, I picked up pace to make out the multiple facets that it holds and also decided to help improve the quality of education and research at our law school. I noticed the fact that the international aspects were not part of the existing curriculum of ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ specialization at the PG level; hence, I introduced a new course called “International Intellectual Property Law and Policy” for the LLM students.

In addition to being a teacher, the most important role that I think I have played, is that of being the PhD Programme Coordinator for the Law School. There were multiple challenges faced by our PhD scholars. Hence, I found the opportunity to play a major role in shaping the academic and research curriculum of the PhD programme that suits the best interests of legal research scholars. Last but not the least, during my tenure at this university, I have also acted as a peer reviewer for one of the world’s best publishers.