NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, DELHI

Sector – 14, Dwarka, New Delhi – 110 078

January 7, 2011
Notice for NLUD Students

Student Volunteers from National Law University, Delhi are required for a ‘GOI-UNDP
Project on Access to Justice for Marginalized People’, aimed at enhancing access to justice
of marginalized communities through legal empowerment of the marginalized people,
provision of effective legal aid for them, and capacity development of civil society and
community-based organizations working with the marginalized communities.

The project is designed to facilitate community-based initiatives, locally conceived and

directed, combining participation and legal empowerment through the student support-
groups of NLUD. This, in addition, will enable students to understand the practical needs
of marginalized societies and communities, through much-needed and greater involvement
of their clinical programmes. Accordingly, although the primary aim of the project is
empowerment of the marginalized sections of the society; however, the implementation
strategy has been planned in such a way that a secondary objective of sensitizing and
educating law students is also achieved, complementary to the core objective. In aiming to
help the marginalized sections of the society by way of access to legal aid in the most
effective, innovative and sustainable ways, students will be better able to appreciate the
subtle nuances of working in the communities directly and will greatly benefit from the
practical exposure.

Hence, the primary goal of empowerment of communities is sought to be fulfilled by

achieving a secondary goal of active student participation in legal clinics. These linkages
will be exercised through a nodal agency, in form of an NGO, active in the selected region
and building knowledge based initiatives in collaboration with the NGO. Thematically, the
NLUD will focus on labour (especially migrant workers) and governance issues of the
communities (in the region of Uttar Pradesh – specifically resident in certain sectors of
Noida).

We intend to erect and formalize certain structural and functional frameworks in order to
ensure effective implementation of the project, shortly. There is also a proposal to provide
an incentive scheme in form of credits in a semester for students who undertake this
clinical legal programme. However, we consider it apt to make it amply clear at this
juncture that this should not only be treated as a CV building exercise, and as such,
students who are genuinely interested and wish to acquire knowledge about the ground
realities concerning industrial (esp. migrant) labour (and allied governance issues) with a
strong base in the related policy underpinnings.

As against any other conventional measures, we do not want to add to the list of initiat ives
taken for the upliftment of the marginalized towards better access to justice. What is
typically witnessed is birth of numerous organizations that involve in working for the
community in isolation. As a result, they remain third-party organizations that people have
to resort to every now and then to secure access to justice, given the frameworks erected at
the macro level. With the collapse of the specific organization, owing to any reason(s), so
does access to justice for the people. By way of this project, in addition to lending external
support to the people, in essence we aim at training and empowering them in order to
ensure a sustained and self-performing/ replicable approach. Accordingly, what this would
lead to is that not only that the existing initiatives by various organizations becoming more
effective, but also that people evolve a self-sustaining model within their society. This is
considered to be ideal, because we believe that no matter what amount of research and
ground work has been put in, no one other than the people residing in that society would
understand their own needs and problems, and accordingly work out effective remedies
and devise preventive steps.

Pursuant to the aforesaid, a brief orientation workshop will be organized at the NLUD to
acquaint and familiarize the interested group of students with the substantive and
procedural modalities of the project, nature and scope of responsibilities to be undertaken,
logistic and administrative issued involved, and to answer all questions in this regard.

With a dedicated documentation center, the project will also aim to provide information
and guidance to other law schools across the country for carrying out similar activities
under their clinical component of curriculum. This way, the project aims to reach at other
target states and act as nodal point of consultation centers aiding to the development of
communities targeted across the country.

The interested students may forward the names to the office of the Vice-Chancellor. The
candidates would be selected after an interview and thereafter will be required to attend a
workshop for orientation. The names must be forwarded by 22 January, 2010.

Sd/-
Vice-Chancellor