Law school alumni to help a poor student with Rs 3,000 per month stipend

BENGALURU: Twenty years after graduating, four alumni of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) have come together to start a stipend program for underprivileged students in the freshman year.

This comes amidst the premier law school's desperate efforts to become inclusive and shed its "elitist" tag.

The SPaRK Stipend Support Program has been instituted by 1996 batch alumni -Pramod Rao, general counsel at Citibank India; Shekhar Bobby Saraf, an advocate at the Calcutta High Court; Shatanshu Panda, assistant general counsel at ITC Limited and Anil Kasturi, a partner at AZB & Partners.

They have contributed an initial corpus of Rs 12 lakh for the program under which one first-year BA (LLB) student will get Rs 3,000 per month for two years towards basic living expenses. The student selected under the program stands to get Rs 27,000 for an academic session lasting nine months. Last year, NLSIU became the first law school to develop and adopt an elaborate scholarship policy under which two economically-backward students received a full fee waiver.Since then, a Scholarship Committee has awarded scholarships of varying amounts to 41 students based on their needs.

The stipend program has been established through a memorandum of understanding between the alumni and the NLS.

Students from middlelower income groups and tier 3-4 cities have started making it to the law school, NLS Student Bar Association president Aman Saxena said. "A monthly stipend can help meet basic monthly needs and ensure they continue their education without the burden of loans," he said.

How the NLS can shed its elite tag is a discussion happening in the alumni circles, said lawyer Harish f Narasappa from the 1996 batch.g "It will continue to be elitist as e long as admissions are based on an h entrance test. The bigger concern is to ensure those who crack the exam and get admission should not quit because they can't afford it," the lawyer said.