law students from 31 universities from all over the country as well as foreign universities come every year to work as interns for minimum one month with the Rural litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RlEK). The main purpose of this internship is to understand the work culture and environment of NGOs. The interns also learn ways of how to fill up the gaps between legality and reality during the course of their internship. This aside, they spend time with the children of the schools for the marginalised communities like Van Gujjars, bonded labourers and children born in red light areas as a part of its motto of “Reaching the unreached and include the excluded”.
The first such batch of this year consisting of over 120 interns are from RMlNU, lucknow; SOA National Institute of law, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha; Damodaran Sanjivayya National law University, Vishakhapatnam; New law College, BVDU, Pune; HNlU, Raipur Chhatisgarh; National law Institute, University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh; Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, ICFAI, Dehradun; Banasthali Vidyapeeth, Jaipur, Rajasthan and Amity law School, Noida. Another batch of 100 students has joined on 1 June.
They would be here for a month. The internship programme will continue till late August. The main areas of focus are Right to Education, 2005, The Bonded labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, Environment Protection Act 1986 and Tribal and other Forest Dwellers Act 2006. Every year RlEK gets about 600 interns and they contribute through their various skills which can be easily valued or measured as 40 full- time paid workers. They also contribute their bits too to the economy of Uttrakhand.