IDIA Pilot Project at Basanti, Sunderbans (West Bengal)

IDIA teams have been visiting schools in rural and poor regions of India to inform the students about law as a career option, National Law Schools and CLAT. An aptitude test to assess a student’s logic reasoning skills and aptitude for law too is adminstered to the students.

IDIA at Sundarbans (Basanti):

On 17^th May, 2010 the IDIA team consisting of NUJS students Uddyam (LLM), Sounak (LLM), Suman (1^st year LLB), Arpan (5^th year LLB) and Arnab (5^th year LLB) conducted one of the first sensitization programs of West Bengal at Basanti High School in Sunderbans.

In course of the interaction with the students of Basanti High School, the IDIA team realized that the school students had little idea about law as a career. Though they had heard of the 3 year course but they did not have any idea about the 5 year integrated course a National Law University offers.

In order to assess the student’s aptitude for law we took an aptitude test (35 marks) which was largely based on Logical Reasoning (16 marks). Other sections included GK (1 mark), English (10 marks), Legal Reasoning (4 marks) and Mathematics (4 marks).

The objective of the aptitude test was to identify students with an aptitude for law who possess the ability to crack CLAT and subsequently providing them free and intensive training for CLAT which would enable them to compete with other students from all over India who appear for the CLAT exam every year. On the basis of the aptitude test three candidates were selected who would be given caching to crack the CLAT examinations subject to the consent of their parents.

It was heartening to note that our talk on law as a career, CLAT, NLUs etc. had encouraged even those students who did not do well in the aptitude test to consider law as a career option. The NUJS team promised them full support in form of informal mentoring by students themselves etc.

IDIA' pilot projects require huge investments of time, effort and money and we would appreciate if lawyers, law firms, NGOs and philanthropists help us in this endeavour. Here is how you can help us.