IDIA Sensitisation Program in Calicut

In an initiative to expand its operations to northern Kerala, the IDIA began its sensitisation program in Calicut. Sensitization sessions and aptitude tests were conducted at Government Higher Secondary School, Mavoor, Calicut and Rahmaniya Higher Secondary School, Medical College on 7.8.2010. Calicut Co-coordinator of IDIA, Adithya Raj along with an IDIA team consisting of Anna, Sarath and Nithin conducted the programme.

The sensitization session at Government Higher Secondary School, Mavoor commenced at about 11 A.M. 51 students from humanities and commerce stream of the 12 standard attended the programme. Firstly, an interactive session was conducted. As usual, students had a very bleak idea about law as a career option. Law was still perceived as a course for those interested in pursuing a career of a practicing advocate. Law as a career option found favour only with a handful of students and none had even heard of National Law Schools and the varied prospects available to a graduate from such premier law schools. The team therefore had to elucidate about the National Law Schools and the advantages of graduating from the National Law Schools and other prestigious law colleges in the country. The session was boosted with a power point presentation which exposed the need of National Law Schools and the main objective behind the IDIA program.

This was followed by a question and answer session during which the team could clear many doubts about law as a career and correct the umpteen pre conceived notions prevailing among students with respect to law as a career option. This also helped the team gauge the ignorance in this regard prevailing in a literate state like Kerala.The interactive session was followed by Aptitude test. 21 students took the test. The test lasted for 45 minutes. The session was wound up by 1 PM.

The next session was held at Rahmaniya Higher Secondary School, Medical College, Calicut. The programme started at 2.00pm. More than 50 students from the 12^th standard batch of Humanities, Commerce and Science stream attended the session. The popularity of law as a career option and the initial response of the students was the same as elsewhere. As usual, it took the volunteers some time to convince the students about the advantages allied with a law graduate passing out from a premier law college.The interactive session lasted for about 1 hour. Subsequently, the aptitude test was conducted. All the students took the test. The test lasted for 45 minutes and the programme was concluded by 4.00.

The ignorance of advantages of law as a career option in supposedly most literate state of the country, underlines the need for more initiatives like IDIA. IDIA Kerala sincerely hopes to bring about a change in the current situation when it moves to the next phase. 

IDIA Training Program at NUJS For Students From Pelling

The training session conducted at NUJS from the 6th-9th of July, 2010 marked the commencement of the second round of training that would be given to students selected through the aptitude test that IDIA volunteers are conducting in different schools in rural and distant areas. The first such training session of the IDIA project started on the 6th of July, 2010 and completed on the 9th of July. Eight students who were selected by the aptitude test in their school in Pelling had come to NUJS campus for contact classes accompanied by one of their teachers. The training classes for them were also held at the IMS centre in Calcutta.

The centre head of IMS Kolkata Mr Ajay Sharma congratulated the students on being selected in the aptitude test and wished them luck for their CLAT preparation. The training session at IMS was conducted by Mr Rajneesh Singh, the national product manager at IMS. The students were asked about their reasons behind choosing law as a career option. The students did not seem to be very confident about the answer. Some, for obvious reasons, equated study of law with deliverance of justice but there was also a student who candidly replied “Pots and pots of money.”

Rajneesh Singh assured the students all help in the form of online supplements and answering queries speedily via email or social networking sites such as Orkut. IMS had earlier provided these students with all their study materials and he emphasised on the need of studying the materials thoroughly.

Rajneesh helped the students getting acquainted with all the major law schools in the country and their respective entrance tests like CLAT, SET, etc. He also went into the detail of the past year question papers of CLAT. He also gave them a few tips about the strategy on how to attempt the question paper and also to what extent they should give importance to a particular subject.

The faculty who imparted training to these students were a mix of NUJS students and professional trainers. While Rajneesh taught Mathematics, Ramanuj, Rukmini, Jenisha and Shamnad taught English, Legal Aptitude was taught by Bhavin Patel.

Mathematics

Rajneesh started the class with discussing about the methodologies of studying with respect to different subjects. He started off with Mathematics. He realized the students’ apprehensions about the subject itself and assured them repeatedly that it can be the most scoring section among all the other sections if attempted with a definite strategy. The basic concepts of mensuration, arithmetic and algebra were revised. It was repeatedly emphasized that stress should be given on answering the questions correctly rather than getting a substantial portion of the questions wrong. He also discussed about the patterns of problems that could be asked and also the subsections that require more importance. Initially students’ response was slow but they gradually picked up the pace.

The lesson mostly involved discussion of the short cut methods that will help in saving time during the entrance test. As short cut methods were shown, responses started improving. Once the concepts were explained and revised, the students were given questions to solve. The main focus was on formulas, short-cuts and striking out options. He later taught them topics like time and work, time distance and speed, average. The students were asked to follow the Basic Reference Material from IMS while practicing.

English

The first topic to be taken up in English was Reading Comprehension. It was realized during the lesson that the students are considerably weak in vocabulary. The exercise was started by some high frequency words which they were unable to answer satisfactorily. On noting this weakness, it was suggested that they read one newspaper extensively as that will serve both the purpose of English and General Knowledge.

The students were also given an op-ed article to read and understand the arguments that the author tried to make in that article. This class was conducted by Ramanuj Mukherjee and Prof. Shamnad Basheer. The objective of the lesson was to teach the effective methods of reading so that it yields maximum output in terms of culling out points that are important and relevant and the ability to chuck out useless information. The task of the students was to locate important points from the article and spot the central idea. Needless to say, that, they were not very successful in the first attempt but they gradually grasped the principles. The different elements that are present in a write-up were discussed. The main focus was on the simple questions- What to read, How to read, How to remember, How to use. Seeing that the response coming from the students is moderate, Prof. Basheer encouraged them. The students were advised to practice prioritizing in reading. They were urged to follow the arguments, counter arguments and the concepts. Stress was also given on vocabulary. The students were advised to write the important things down and then organize it well. They were expected to discuss the lessons among themselves as it will help in remembering. Prof. Basheer advised them to do group study.

English Grammar was taken up next by Jenisha Parikh and Rukmini Das and a rigorous training was imparted. Students were finding it difficult to even identify the parts of speeches but they were shy to speak out about their problem. The students were facing difficulty in solving the some very easy questions.

Seeing them struggle with the reading comprehension, another class was taken on the topic. A passage was taken from Times of India. Students were advised to decipher the meaning of an unknown word with respect to its context. Tips were given to them about intelligent reading (read along with contexts, headings and subheadings, identification of the tone). They were asked to prepare questions in mind while they are reading.

Logical Reasoning

The concepts of critical, deductive and analytical reasoning were taken up, discussed and cleared through examples. The students took time to understand the concepts.

General Knowledge

Regarding G.K. the students were told that questions on only current affairs will be coming. The students were given tips on extraction of relevant data for the purpose of CLAT from the newspaper.

Legal Aptitude

The legal reasoning class was taken by Mr. Bhavin Patel who himself graduated from NLSIU and was the Chief Legal Aptitude faculty at LST. He started the class by asking the students’ purpose behind attending these sessions. The answers were very candid and ranged variedly from ‘to give justice’ to ‘earn pots of money’! Some were reticent and fumbled while answering. Bhavin plotted all the reasons provided by the student and tried to explain to them the feasibility of the options (reasoning, justice, money, fun). He tried to elicit response from the students asking them to think like laymen and logically arrive to a conclusion. Bhavin emphasized on the point of thinking logically. It is about training their minds to arrive to the conclusion step by step (breaking it down for simplification and also to arrive at the conclusion). They were not required to possess prior knowledge of law. The students took time to grasp the matter but gradually all were involved in the class. He explained them about the concept of justice.

• What is this thing which is loosely termed as justice?

• If the aggrieved party cannot win the suit will it still be called justice?

Bhavin charted the following course justice-court-parliament-constitution. All these were explained by method of simple reasoning and by pushing the arguments. In this method no prior knowledge of law is required. He provided some basic example of problems of legal reasoning (scalpel problem). The students were determining the problem on the basis of what they feel (mostly). While explaining the example he did not write down the options. In this way the students remembered only that answer which they thought was correct at the first go. Then he explained the basic principles in solving a legal reasoning problem. The students became very interested in the class. The problems discussed comprised of negligence, vicarious liability, trespass, contracts. They solved the tough problems at first and then moved on to easier ones. In the first question no one got the right answer but gradually more and more people started getting them right.

Inspiration & Fun

The Vice Chancellor of NUJS, Prof MP Singh visited during the session and vouched for his support behind the entire project. He emphasized on the fact that NUJS is keen on increasing the diversity. Prof Shamnad Basheer also spoke about how Prof Singh came from a small village called Jitholi near the UP border and how from that position he rose up to what he is today.

Other faculty members who came from far flung areas were also introduced to the students so that they could feel that even they have a chance of making it to the premier law schools.

In particular, the experiences of Assistant Professors Shameek Sen and Sarfaraz Ahmed Khan were truly inspiring.

The students were shown ‘Twelve Angry Men’ and were also taken around the city so that they do not miss out on the fun element while visiting Calcutta.

Even while teaching, Rajneesh held a Quiz to retain the students’ interest. The quiz proved to be a fresh respite for the students. Students were very enthusiastic and they responded very well. The quiz consisted of current affairs and static G.K. questions. One special mention has to be made- on being asked who is the prime minister of Japan, the answer came ‘Jackie Chan’! The quiz round consisted of identifying personalities, major events and current affairs.

Conclusion

The students need to put in loads of effort in English and especially grammar. It should be seen that grammar is taught along with some fun. The students need to practice Maths from the study materials provided to them by IMS by using the short cut methods which Rajneesh has taught them. For vocabulary and current GK, the students need to read the newspapers daily. For Logical reasoning, immense practice is required so that students are clearly able to solve problems in deductive reasoning and critical reasoning. Possible help from the faculty will also be required. It has to be seen that the students are able to solve questions in a given time. Most of the students could not complete the paper in a mock exam that was conducted on the third day of the training. For this, proper strategies should be prepared.

Report prepared by Aditi Pal (2nd year, NUJS) and Shambo Nandy (3rd year, NUJS).

Sensitisation Programme at KISS, Bhubaneswar

The KIIT Law School Chapter of IDIA conducted a sensitisation programme at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Bhubaneswar on 3^rdAugust, 2010. KISS is the world’s largest tribal residential school with a capacity of around 10,000 students. The students from KG to PG are given free education, accommodation and other amenities without any charges. Students in this institute basically come from the poorest of the poor families in the tribal villages of Orissa and other part of the country. This makes the institute the most obvious choice for selection of students for the project.

Group of four students of 3^rd year from KLS, which included Ananya Anindita, Amartya Bag, Aditya Chanakya Boxipatra and Priyasa Patnaik approached the authorities for conducting the awareness and sensitisation programme. The authorities were very helpful and allowed us to interact with the students after hearing our wonderful project and proposal.

The programme started around 11.00 A.M. Mr. A.K. Nandan, one of the teachers in the institute assisted us to the Commerce section of class XII. We could interact with the commerce students (Class - XII) only, who were about 100 in number. The interactive session with the students of KISS was spearheaded by Mr. Aditya Chanakya Boxipatra and Ms. Ananya Anindita.

The majority of the class intended to join the banking sector after their graduation in commerce. The students barely had an idea of the stuffs that we were talking about. In fact they were ignorant of the basics as well. Due to their ignorance, we had to start from the very basics about the importance of law in our life and society. None of them have heard of NLUs or CLAT, nor do they have any idea of the opportunities after studying law other than the traditional knowledge of becoming a lawyer. Then we discussed about the national law schools, how they differ from the traditional law colleges. We also explained them about the pattern of CLAT exam and how hard it is to crack the CLAT. We explained them the objective of IDIA and how we would help them to get them into law schools.

The students were pretty interactive and enthusiastic and were highly interested as we continued to discuss with them about what law is and how law as a career option would indeed be a great choice. Although everyone replied positively when asked if they know English well, but the observation proved otherwise. We would like to mention that the students are not really comfortable in using English for communication purposes. Therefore, we are concerned whether a year's coaching would be enough for them. Apart from this, they need to be trained extensively in English for communication purposes.

At the end of the session, every student was keen on taking the aptitude test which is scheduled to be held in a few days. The session concluded after a long discussion of around two hours at about 1.00 PM.

Report Prepared by Amartya Bag and Ananya Anindita of KLS, Bhubaneswar

To Pelling With Love: CLAT Training Session at Pelling (Sikkim)

Pelling is a small town hidden in mountain ranges in the district of West Sikkim with an altitude of 6100 ft. Pelling is 115 km from the state capital Gangtok and about 135 km from Siliguri, the nearest railhead and airport. The nearest airport is Bagdogra airport.

Most of the people of Pelling are Buddhists and speak the Sikkimese language. The other languages spoken are Nepali, Hindi, and English. The population in the region has an eclectic mix of several tribes and ethnic groups. Due to lack of access, education, especially the vocational sort, has suffered in this region. The only senior secondary school in a 10 km radius is the Government School,

The IDIA team had earlier conducted a pilot project at Pelling. The project included a talk to on law, law as a career, CLAT and National Law Schools. The team also conducted an aptitude test to identify intelligent students having an aptitude for law.

This time the agenda was to visit the school again to kickstart the preparation for CLAT for these students, distribute necessary books, IMS study material and talk to their teachers to identify such persons who can continuously guide the students. Interestingly, some of the teachers possess LL.B. degrees, but in their own words, they had seldom encouraged their students to take up law as a career.

The main challenge was to teach the students to use the material given to them even in absence of physical presence of a teacher. If we can motivate the students sufficiently, and show them how they can prepare on their own, very good results can be expected. Our effort was also towards building an effective study group amongst these students so that they can learn from each other, and keep themselves motivated in the long run through cooperation.

It took us more than 24 hours to reach Pelling since the beginning of our journey in Kolkata, especially due to a few tricky land slides on the way. The next day we visited the school, met several teachers who expressed their approval of our efforts, and pledged to support it in future.

We gave a set of study material to the library so that it can be accessed by anyone interested in preparing for law entrances. We established contact with the identified students, and ensured that they gather the next morning for an intensive session. The school agreed to provide us with a classroom for this purpose. Several teacher attended the session as well.

After a short introduction by Shamnad sir, we familiarised the students with the CLAT questions, explained the task that they are facing, and took them through the 7 books (see the list here) that were given to them earlier, apart from the several modules in the IMS study material packet. The whole affair continued for a large part of the day. We would have liked to conduct a session on how to use the internet resources effectively, but due to time restraints (the students had their annual examination starting from the next day) we had to skip that.

We (From left to right: Ramanuj, Arnab, Prof. Shamnad Basheer) gave the students certain milestones, things that they have to learn before they arrive at NUJS for the next session of training on 6th of July, 2010 for another 4 days of training. At this time, we shall conduct diagnostic tests to identify individual strengths and weaknesses so that we can help them improve.

Report prepared by Ramanuj Mukherjee (5th year student, NUJS).

IDIA Sensitisation Program at Vimala Hridaya Girls HSS, Kollam

The Kollam chapter of the IDIA was taken forward with sensitization programme being held at Vimala Hridaya Girls HSS, Kollam on 31-7-2010. State Co-ordinator of IDIA, Raghul Sudheesh along with an IDIA team consisting of Asitha, Bijitha, Vishnu, Navaneet and Ananthu conducted the sensitization program.

The program started at about 10:00 in the morning. The 12^th standard batch of the Humanities and Commerce stream took part in the program. Mr. Raghul Sudheesh and Miss. Asitha spearheaded the interactive session with the students. The lack of popularity of law as a career was manifest from the response of the students. The conventional belief that profession of law meant court and court practice seemed to be rooted in the minds of most present.  The volunteers therefore had to convince the student about the diverse opportunities available to a law graduate.         

As the session moved on students began to evince greater interest in the topic and a fruitful interactive session followed. Soon umpteen questions were put forth by them pertaining to the scope of law, the term of the course, the scope of law as a career etc.  The session underlined the need for senitisation from ground zero as the ignorance about law as a career option was blatantly manifest. After the session the number of law aspirants who were just two at the initial stage increased to 12.The session lasted for about two hours and concluded at about 12:00.

Report prepared by Ananthu B and Murali Krishnan

IDIA Sensitisation Program at Sree Narayana HSS, Cochin

IDIA Cochin Chapter initiated its activities in Ernakulam on 31-7-2010. The much awaited sensitization session of IDIA took place at Sree Narayana Higher Secondary School, Ayyappankavu between 1.30 PM and 2.15 PM. The team which conducted the session consisted of Aiswarya, Rinie, Parvathi, Boaz, Reshma and Anupama. The fourty five minute long session was held for two classes, one consisting of students belonging to humanities stream and the other of commerce stream.

We started off by asking how many of them were interested in taking up law as their career.  To our disappointment, only 3 to 4 hands went up and as usual, they too were ignorant about law schools and the varied career prospects of law. Hence we had to start from the scratch. We began by enlightening them about the various prospects of law.  Then we explained about law schools, law colleges and other law institutes and their differences. We also elucidated the difficulties for gaining an entry into National Law Schools. Then we dwelt upon the purpose of IDIA and how IDIA could make legal education accessible to meritorious candidates.

Soon the session became more interactive and informal as the students put forward many doubts. At the end of the session, we put forth the same question that we had asked them in the beginning i.e. how many were actually interested in taking up law. To our surprise and joy, there was a considerable increase in the number of hands that had gone up. Moreover, 10 out of 40 commerce students and 30 out of the 50 humanities students were keen on taking the aptitude test. 

Report prepared by Anupama S. and Murali Krishnan

IDIA Sensitisation Program @Raghudevpur Shadharoner Vidyalaya For Girls, Howrah

The trip made to the school Raghudevpur Shadharoner Vidyalaya for girls Howrah, West Bengal proved to be quite an educating experience for the IDIA team from NUJS. The IDIA team consisting of NUJS students Arnab (5th yr), Diptoshree(4th yr), Ramanuj(4th yr), Radhika(4th yr), Adreeka (2nd yr), Aditi(1st yr) accompanied by Mr. Shameek Sen, faculty at NUJS, conducted this sensitization program.

The students in the school primarily hailed from lower income group. During the entire course of the session, the school authorities were extremely helpful and accommodating. The inputs received from the teacher seconded the obvious apprehension of the team about the lack of awareness about law as a career amongst students in small towns, rural areas and other non-affluent backgrounds.

The students who participated in the session were from XIth and XIIth standard. The team realized from the beginning of the session 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.

The team started the session with the question, whether any of them had considered the legal profession as a career option and, literally, none seemed interested. We explained them about what lawyers do and the diverse options one has after doing law. They were told about the various universities where one can pursue law and the advantage of pursuing it at one of the ten National Law schools in terms of better quality of education, infrastructure and recruitment.

The students were informed about the high pay packages given to students from law schools and campus placement. The presenters- Ramanuj and Diptoshree, recounted their personal experiences of choosing law over other professional streams. After the presentation it appeared to them a good idea as it posed law as a viable career option as opposed to last resort. It was noticed during the course of the session that the most important consideration for these students seemed to be social justice as well as economic stability for themselves.

The students hailed from impoverished background. One of their major concerns was regarding the financial assistance they may be provided. Most of them lacked the means for pursuing further education leave alone higher education. Inspite of all the possible financial hindrances that may arise in future, some were ambitious. But the irony is, though they aimed to study medical or engineering (which are also expensive), no one mentioned law. This clearly indicated towards lack of awareness as a primary reason behind the absence of students from economically poor backgrounds in the National Law Universities.

To assess the student’s aptitude for law, an aptitude test was taken which was largely based on Logical Reasoning, General Knowledge, English, Legal Reasoning and Mathematics. The question paper was deliberately drafted in vernacular and only the GK section was in English. The aim of the aptitude test was to identify those students with the aptitude required for law and the ability needed to crack the Common Law Admission Test. They will be provided free and intensive training for CLAT. Then a list of top scorers was prepared and the students were selected on the basis of the aptitude test’s result, their financial background and general academic performance.

The team was quite heartened to see that they were successful in encouraging even those students who did not fare well in the test but still were inclined to consider law as a career option.