Legal awareness among the underprivileged

Dear Editor,
On 25 August, we completed our weeklong legal awareness programme at several government schools and villages of Lower Subansiri district and even in such areas where network connectivity seems to be just another thing to be achieved.
I see the importance of awareness on legal system to be paramount as the underprivileged sections of our society still have no clue where to have their grievances redressed.
The significance of the knowledge of our legal system is as important as the answer to the question you will get if you ask any victim of any criminal offence how important it is to get justice for them. Those deprived people are still under the perceptible shadows of corruption and malpractices of society, and the sad part is they don’t even realize that they are victims of such ignorance.
My heart goes out to them, and in this bittersweet timeline of our legal awareness programme I learned that the elected representatives of my own district were not much keen on the idea of conducting such legal awareness programmes to reach out to the common public, and I was personally displeased by their lack of support. But nevertheless, I would like to thank individuals, friends and families who made it possible.
The idea behind imparting knowledge of our legal system is visibly intrinsic at this hour, and I could clearly see the satisfaction of those who participated in our programmes.
I hope for every person of Arunachal to be aware of the rights and duties provided by the constitution of India, so that they are able to differentiate between the rights and the wrongdoings by themselves on the basis of legality, so that they can stand firm against the odds and instead of panicking or reacting to the situation they are equipped with the right tools to face the corrupt practices of bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, graft, or embezzlement.
People must realize that no person is above the law and every person is equal before the law, be it the prime minister of our country, and each and every person deserves justice as well as the right to live with dignity. The toil my team had to go through is nothing compared to the self-satisfaction and the encouragement to carry out more such programmes from the participants. Looking forward to performing more.
Sincerely,
H Kapa,
Paralegal volunteer