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.