Untouchabilty and atrocities

It is perhaps unnecessary to have a preface for a small booklet. The introduction which follows does explain the importance of the subject and the objects with which National Law School of India University has undertaken the publication. Neverthless, being the first attempt in a series intended to bring law to the people and promote a new legal culture towards the social revolution promised by the Constitution of India, it may not be out of place to share some thoughts through this prefatory note on what we hope to accomplish by this exercise.

Universities are admittedly centres of scholarship and learning. Are they also institutions for service and change? Can they be instruments for accelerated social development, instruments for fighting injustice, poverty and ignorance ? Contem porary opinion seems to be that they can be and they ought to be. However, there are no clear-cut policies and models yet for achieving this goal except what is canvassed through the extension and continuing education programmes as well as the National Service Scheme. Agricultural Universities opened up new possibilities in this direction during 1960s and '70s. The "Lab to Land" experiment is another development of the 1980s. Institutions of legal education, of which we have more than 360 in India, have been largely out of such experiments till 1980 when the Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes (CILAS) tried, with modest suc cess, to draft Law schools in the scheme of legal aid to the poor. Today, after a decade-long effort, CILAS could not involve more than a score of law colleges in the exciting experiment of "legal aid" in "legal education". It is a matter of surprise to find that law schools have not bought the idea despite the immense potential the experiment offers for practical education of the law students.