Fwd: The Spirit of IDIA
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Amartya Bag
Aug 15, 2010, 5:21:45 AM8/15/10
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From: Shamnad Basheer <sha...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: The Spirit of IDIA
To: idiadi...@googlegroups.com
From: Shamnad Basheer <sha...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: The Spirit of IDIA
To: idiadi...@googlegroups.com
Let me thank all of you for participating in this thread with very thoughtful comments:
I think these are very crucial questions that go to the very heart of this project and what we are seeking to do. Let me try and frame out my understanding of the real idea behind IDIA:
The objective is to give students from underprivileged backgrounds the powerful “tool” of law to (hopefully) better their lot and the lot of their communities. We leave it to them to make their career choices in the way that they wish: but we try and enable them as best as possible to make an informed choice.
Naturally their choice (and our recommendation) would depend on the quality of legal education and the brand of the law school in question. A high quality education ensures that their foundations are strong and they are able to deploy the instrument of the law in better and more creative ways than someone who has not been privileged enough to receive such education. A good brand ensures that they have more job opportunities and the potential to explore the leveraging of legal skills in many more ways than someone with a law degree from a lesser known law school. So yes, there is a hierarchy of colleges and brands....but please lets not take it personally. Remember, that this is not about us or the particular law schools in question. Its really about these kids ...and their ultimate welfare ...for that is what should be our primary concern......
Of course a lot depends on the individual concerned: Illustratively, X who is highly motivated will make the best of even the worst college environment (remember Kiran Bedi who converted a punishment posting at Tihar Jail to a magsasay award:). And Y who is generally lax and takes things easy will not leverage the opportunities that the best college offers him/her. Our job is to try and maximise the chances of each IDIA student to the best of our resources and to the best of their ability.
In terms of law school rankings, we must work towards a more objective ranking than currently exists. Shambo Nandi (3rd year, NUJS) Debanshu khetry (3rd year, NUJS) and I are in the process of filing a complaint against the present India Today and Mint rankings. I think students must be presented with more objective data on the law schools and more optimal rankings that reflect the real brand value of these law schools and the quality of education offered. And perhaps we must get a more objective entity to undertake such rankings.
The IDIA project insists on a small set of students for two reasons. One is that our resources (particularly money and man power) is limited. Secondly we want maximal time per student. And this is why we wish every student to have a mentor from our group. I hope all the local chapters can follow this norm. The hope is that all mentors would suitably keep their wards motivated throughout....and more importantly, would counsel them on college choices etc..explaining the pros and cons of each college....and what opportunities and educational environment they present.
Let them make the choice. If a Padam Chettri from Pelling does not make CLAT and his only other options is to join a normal BA degree at a not so good college in his locality (or perhaps not join a college at all), he may prefer to explore Hazra College of law (Kolkata university) instead. That should be his choice...and not ours. All we try and do is to enable him to make as informed and educated a choice as possible under the circumstances.
Let me make it very clear that our job is not to merely glorify the national law schools. Indeed when the PM stated at the Delhi conference that the national law schools were islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity, I cringed! Islands of excellence indeed! Only those of us who’ve seen the system from the inside know really how much “excellence” these colleges really embody :) But amongst the 913 odd colleges that exist in this country today, they are clearly amongst the best ones. And our primary shot should always be at attempting to get our IDIA children into the best available law school in the circumstance.
Our next phase of the IDIA project is to help ramp up legal education at those colleges that are less privileged than the national law schools (in terms of reputation, infrastructure and faculty). For all underprivileged kids cannot come to the national law schools...or an ILS..or KIIT..or GLC..
I’d already hinted at this in one of the earlier emails---where I spoke about trying to follow the excellent lead of the Ekalavya project run by an IIT...where we create excellent course content (eg. Video lectures from the best law professors) and take it to these colleges, so that kids benefit from this learning, despite the lack of good faculty. Many of us could also teach at some of these colleges during vacations etc. Given Sam Pitroda’s national information highway project etc, we’ll have content delivery platforms and meaningful bandwidth across the length and breadth of India in the near future. All we then need is to create quality content...And if work as hard as we are now, we’ll revolutionise the legal content industry :)
This is another way (and I think a far more powerful way) of enabling access to legal education.. But our resources are stretched and we cannot bite off more than we can chew now...so we must wait.....
Thanks,
SB
On 8/15/10 12:32 PM, "Tanuj Kalia" <tanuj...@nujs.edu> wrote:
I think these are very crucial questions that go to the very heart of this project and what we are seeking to do. Let me try and frame out my understanding of the real idea behind IDIA:
The objective is to give students from underprivileged backgrounds the powerful “tool” of law to (hopefully) better their lot and the lot of their communities. We leave it to them to make their career choices in the way that they wish: but we try and enable them as best as possible to make an informed choice.
Naturally their choice (and our recommendation) would depend on the quality of legal education and the brand of the law school in question. A high quality education ensures that their foundations are strong and they are able to deploy the instrument of the law in better and more creative ways than someone who has not been privileged enough to receive such education. A good brand ensures that they have more job opportunities and the potential to explore the leveraging of legal skills in many more ways than someone with a law degree from a lesser known law school. So yes, there is a hierarchy of colleges and brands....but please lets not take it personally. Remember, that this is not about us or the particular law schools in question. Its really about these kids ...and their ultimate welfare ...for that is what should be our primary concern......
Of course a lot depends on the individual concerned: Illustratively, X who is highly motivated will make the best of even the worst college environment (remember Kiran Bedi who converted a punishment posting at Tihar Jail to a magsasay award:). And Y who is generally lax and takes things easy will not leverage the opportunities that the best college offers him/her. Our job is to try and maximise the chances of each IDIA student to the best of our resources and to the best of their ability.
In terms of law school rankings, we must work towards a more objective ranking than currently exists. Shambo Nandi (3rd year, NUJS) Debanshu khetry (3rd year, NUJS) and I are in the process of filing a complaint against the present India Today and Mint rankings. I think students must be presented with more objective data on the law schools and more optimal rankings that reflect the real brand value of these law schools and the quality of education offered. And perhaps we must get a more objective entity to undertake such rankings.
The IDIA project insists on a small set of students for two reasons. One is that our resources (particularly money and man power) is limited. Secondly we want maximal time per student. And this is why we wish every student to have a mentor from our group. I hope all the local chapters can follow this norm. The hope is that all mentors would suitably keep their wards motivated throughout....and more importantly, would counsel them on college choices etc..explaining the pros and cons of each college....and what opportunities and educational environment they present.
Let them make the choice. If a Padam Chettri from Pelling does not make CLAT and his only other options is to join a normal BA degree at a not so good college in his locality (or perhaps not join a college at all), he may prefer to explore Hazra College of law (Kolkata university) instead. That should be his choice...and not ours. All we try and do is to enable him to make as informed and educated a choice as possible under the circumstances.
Let me make it very clear that our job is not to merely glorify the national law schools. Indeed when the PM stated at the Delhi conference that the national law schools were islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity, I cringed! Islands of excellence indeed! Only those of us who’ve seen the system from the inside know really how much “excellence” these colleges really embody :) But amongst the 913 odd colleges that exist in this country today, they are clearly amongst the best ones. And our primary shot should always be at attempting to get our IDIA children into the best available law school in the circumstance.
Our next phase of the IDIA project is to help ramp up legal education at those colleges that are less privileged than the national law schools (in terms of reputation, infrastructure and faculty). For all underprivileged kids cannot come to the national law schools...or an ILS..or KIIT..or GLC..
I’d already hinted at this in one of the earlier emails---where I spoke about trying to follow the excellent lead of the Ekalavya project run by an IIT...where we create excellent course content (eg. Video lectures from the best law professors) and take it to these colleges, so that kids benefit from this learning, despite the lack of good faculty. Many of us could also teach at some of these colleges during vacations etc. Given Sam Pitroda’s national information highway project etc, we’ll have content delivery platforms and meaningful bandwidth across the length and breadth of India in the near future. All we then need is to create quality content...And if work as hard as we are now, we’ll revolutionise the legal content industry :)
This is another way (and I think a far more powerful way) of enabling access to legal education.. But our resources are stretched and we cannot bite off more than we can chew now...so we must wait.....
Thanks,
SB
On 8/15/10 12:32 PM, "Tanuj Kalia" <tanuj...@nujs.edu> wrote:
Actually, the ultimate objective is to give students a good (and empowering?) legal education, a good job and a good life.
They are free to join law firms, NGOs or do whatever they want.
On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Amartya Bag <abag...@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Abhinav, the students should be made aware of the pros
and cons of getting admission in a non-NLU. Some of the government law
colleges like ILS, Faculty of Law, Delhi University is no way lesser
than the NLU in term of legal education. Legal education is not always
meant to be in the Law Firms, working for some foreign company. The
motive of establishment of NLUs was not to churn out lawyers for the
law firms, but for getting educated lawyers who would increase the
standards of the Bar.
I would like to ask what is the ultimate objective of IDIA; is it for
making students ready for becoming a lawyer or is it meant to be for
creating a law firm employee?
On 8/15/10, Abhinav Harlalka <harlalka...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree completely with Tanuj.
> I guess in order to accomplish that in respect to non Nationals, we might
> need to categorize them on the basis of various parameters to determine
> which are ones we should include in IDIA and which are the ones we should
> not, or not without telling the students the negative aspects of the
> college.
> Thank You,
>
> On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 12:47 AM, Tanuj Kalia <tanuj...@nujs.edu> wrote:
>
>> Let us not make this NLUs v. Non NLUs slugfest. For that LegallyIndia.com
>> and various communities on Orkut and Facebook would suffice :)
>>
>> IDIA aims at getting economically poor kids into law schools. We want that
>> at the end of five years they get a good job and a good education and end
>> up
>> rich (in mind, body and soul). Only if we know that a college can provide
>> quality recruitments, faculty and has a good student crowd should we
>> include
>> that college.
>>
>> Best.
>> On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 9:01 AM, Shamnad Basheer <sha...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I’ve had some queries on why schools other than the national law schools
>>> ought to participate in IDIA. A couple of quick reactions:
>>>
>>>
>>> 1. for good or for bad, some of the national law schools are
>>> considered premier institutions. And our efforts are to really try and
>>> get
>>> these kids into the top law schools. If they get a low CLAT rank and
>>> have to
>>> pick a lower ranked college, they will then have to assess whether or
>>> not
>>> they want a lower ranked national law school or a higher ranked non
>>> national
>>> law school. Which brings me to the second point.
>>> 2. we must also have the kids write the other law entrance
>>> exams—Symbioisis, KIIT Orissa etc. since our resources are stretched
>>> for
>>> this year, we can’t have any specific training geared up for these
>>> specfic
>>> entrances---but we can help them with forms and registration etc. ILS
>>> Pune
>>> does not have an entrance right? We must particularly target local
>>> colleges---eg. Law College at Kolkata University for kids we pick from
>>> W.
>>> Bengal etc...as a back up option—if they don’t make it to the top law
>>> schools. CLAT training will anyway help for the other entrances as
>>> well—but
>>> there may some differences and gaps.
>>>
>>>
>>> Not sure how we’ll work out the finances (their fees etc) once they make
>>> it to any law schools, apart from the ones where we have some guarantee
>>> of a
>>> fee waiver at the very least. But you have to make it clear to the kids
>>> you
>>> train that if they don't make it to the top 3-5 law schools, fee waivers
>>> are
>>> not guaranteed. We’ll try and have some sort of scholarships in each of
>>> these institutes...but it will take time.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> SB
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tanuj Kalia
>> 3rd year, B.A./B.Sc. LL.B. (Hons.)
>>
>> http://www.idially.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Abhinav Harlalka
> 3rd Year
> W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences
> Kolkata
>
--
Amartya Bag
B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) (5th Semester)
KIIT Law School, KIIT University
Bhubaneswar - 24, Orissa, India
Ph: +91-9040264792
--
Amartya Bag
B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) (5th Semester)
KIIT Law School, KIIT University
Bhubaneswar - 24, Orissa, India
Ph: +91-9040264792
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