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