Enhancing Good Governance in India : Law Schools and Community-University Engagement

Law school clinical programs can help alleviate poverty and injustice by improving the delivery of entitlements to meet basic needs in disadvantaged communities. Law Schools, as other higher educational institutions, have the responsibility of contributing to social development and social and economic justice. In India, regulations of the National Legal Services Authority provide specific authority for law schools to involve students in local legal aid clinics. Community-based legal services and research serve the dual objectives of prompting students to learn and apply their talents to relevant social problems and to strengthen efforts to accelerate systematic poverty alleviation in India. The global "knowledge mobilization" movement holds lessons for its Indian counterpart "community-university engagement". The authors examine these movements and advocate that the tool of community-university engagement be widely adopted to fulfill both the educational and societal development objectives of law schools and other institutions of higher education in India. They conclude with recommendations to incentivize universities to engage in such legal services and research