Asha Bajpai began her career at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, where she was one of the founding faculty members. She went on to get her MPhil and PhD in law and has been involved for over three decades in teaching, research, and training on social laws, child rights, gender laws, public health laws, clinical education, law and social work, and legislative reforms. She had also trained law enforcement and judicial officers. As a professor of law, and the founding dean of the School of Law at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, she designed unique LLM courses on access to justice for preparing community lawyers. Prof. Bajpai was the director of field action projects such as the Access to Justice Clinic, and Chunauti – for rehabilitation of children in institutions.
Prof. Bajpai has been invited as amicus curiae and expert advisor by the Mumbai and Delhi High Courts in Public Interest Litigation cases. She has also been invited as a legal expert by UNESCO and by UNODC. She was a Fulbright lecturer at the Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C., and guest lecturer at the University of Warwick, UK, and the University of Westminster, UK. She has several publications, and her book Child Rights in India: Law, Policy and Practice by Oxford University Press is now in its third edition. Her other publications include From Exploitation to Empowerment, and Adoption Law and Justice to the Child.
In her three months as Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Missouri Western State University, St Joseph, MO, Prof. Bajpai will be teaching a course on comparative child rights law, and clinical street law at the Center for Women and Children.