IDIA To Hold Annual Award Ceremony, Conference On Sept. 15, 16

The IDIA annual conference will be held on September 16 in New Delhi and the IDIA Annual Awards-2017 will be conferred on September 15 to honour and celebrate individuals and institutions who have contributed in significant ways to the cause of IDIA and inclusive education for the underprivileged.

The IDIA project is a nationwide movement in India that trains underprivileged and marginalised students and helps transform them to leading lawyers and community advocates. The IDIA is formally structured as a trust with four trustees - Justice Ruma Pal (former judge of the Supreme Court), Professor MP Singh (former Vice-Chancellor of NUJS and chairman of Delhi Judicial Academy), Shishira Rudrappa (founder of Spire Capital and Bar & Bench) and Dr Shamnad Basheer (IP scholar and academic). It was established with the aim to bust the bastions of privilege at the top law schools and bring in more diversity into the classrooms.

To celebrate the movement called IDIA, the annual IDIA awards and conference (Creativity and the Law) is scheduled to be held on September 15 and 16 in New Delhi.

The awardees will include:

1. The student volunteers who train and mentor the scholars,


2. The donors, partners and well-wishers who go well beyond the call of the ordinary to champion the cause, and

• The scholars as the future Champs and change-makers of tomorrow.

The IDIA actively involves itself with identifying young talent to create change-makers and revolutionaries and believes that leading legal figures from around the world, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Mandela, Ambedkar, Lord Denning, HLA Hart etc, came blessed with five common traits — they were all Creative, Holistic and Altruistic Mavericks and Problem Solvers (Champs). The IDIA has, therefore, piloted a project called ‘Champs’ to infuse these attributes in our scholars.

The IDIA believes that these attributes are not unique to law and are universally applicable like creativity. However, creativity is unfortunately not nurtured in schools and colleges. Even in law, a creativity deficit is suffered. It believes that lawyers have too many literal lawyers, but very few lateral lawyers shift perspectives and paradigms and help break bigoted biases. The conference has been conceptualised to introspect and discuss the creation of more lateral lawyers – ones who not only think out of the box, but go on to bust the box itself! The IDIA’s experience so far with its attempt to revolutionise legal pedagogy will be highlighted and creativity would be cultivated in the process.

The time and venue details are as under:

For RSVP, write an email to IDIA director Svetlana Correya (svetlana@idialaw.com), with a copy marked to info@idialaw.com.