Pranusha Kulkarni represented India at the 7th Asia Pacific Conference on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights held in Manila, in January 2014. She was the only youth volunteer from Family Planning Association of India (FPAI) who was selected for the Poster Presentation. She won the FPAI Scholarship to go to Manila and present the posters. Post this, she was also elected as the Country Coordinator for India, International Youth Alliance for Family Planning (IYAFP).
She has many national and international publications in her name. She is an avid writer and blogger and has her articles published in many prestigious websites as well as print media, like the WBNUJS Legal Aid Society’s newsletter, Youth24X7, Live Law, TinyBuddha, Spark Magazine, The Law Street Journal, Inolyst, WithStartups, the Commonwealth LII Law research series, LawZ Magazine, Lawctopus, Bar&Bench, Menstrupedia, LiveLaw, The Alternative, FirstPost, KSLU Students’ Law Review, to name a few. She won First Prize in state-level student paper presentation competition organized by JSSATE Bangalore in 2013. She also won the Best research paper at the 1st International Conference on Access to Legal Information and Research in the Digital Age, conducted by NLU Delhi and SAARCLAW in 2012.
She is currently working as a Research Associate at the Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad, under the Young Professionals’ Program for Legal Empowerment (YPPLE). This is an on field research job and she is posted at Gulbarga, which is one of the most backward areas of Karnataka. She is working on a project called Rehnuma Project. She manages The Rehnuma Legal Centre at Gulbarga. This project is funded by UN women and European Union and works for benefit of minorities and dalits. Prior to this she has interned with Maharashtra State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Maharashtra State Commission for Women, Bar and Bench, Centre for Disabilities, NALSAR University of Law, Cleft Children International, Hyderabad, VakilSearch, WithStartups, Inolyst, and the District and Sessions Court, Dharwad.
She did her LL.M. in Access to Justice from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai wherein she won the Institute Gold Medal for the Best Student in Law. She was also the Editor of the annual college magazine – Unmaad while at TISS Mumbai. She did her B.B.A., LL.B from Karnataka State Law University’s Law School, Hubli. While in under-graduation, she was on the founding Editorial Board of the Karnataka State Law University Students’ Law Review, a law research journal. She was elected as the youth representative of FPAI, Dharwad Branch and represented the Dharwad branch in various national & international level workshops. She also assisted the branch in conducting awareness programs for the youth in the area of sexual education especially for adolescents.
She completed the NUJS diploma in Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Laws in 2014. We asked her, what made her enroll for an online diploma course from NUJS. She had very interesting things to share, so we decided to present it to you all in the form of a success story. Over to Pranusha:
At the time of joining the NUJS diploma, I was in the 4th year of law school. I came across the advertisement of the NUJS diploma in Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Laws on a legal website. I liked the course structure, not just the structure but the fact that all subjects are explained in a very practical manner. Webinars were the thing which attracted me the most.
The course helped me think like a professional and not like a student. I even landed my first job at a legal startup in Mumbai because of this course. However, while at this job I realized that corporate Law is not my calling and decided to quit my job and pursue my LLM.
Although I’m not in the corporate law field, I’m still able to utilize the learnings from the course. This course gave me a perspective about managing an organization and this is coming handy in my current role.
The way different legal aspects are taught in this course is commendable. Things like drafting which is not well taught in most of the law schools of our country are explained very nicely in this course. It helped me how to draft and while drafting also how to place all facts logically.
All the modules were very well structured and beneficial but the module that personally benefitted the most is the Business Structuring module. After gaining the knowledge from this module, I started writing about this and started getting queries from friends and even random entrepreneurs asking me about the most feasible structure for their organisation and the knowledge from this module helps me give an informed advice to them.
In future I plan to take up teaching and also start an NGO or a socio-legal organisation of my own. This course would help me in my future vision also as it teaches about various compliances and acts which NGOs fall under.
This would help me in teaching also, as I have realized the importance of practical knowledge after going through this course. The NUJS diploma course is designed in this manner only with lot of emphasis on practical knowledge. Even questions in the examinations were not theoretical. They were practical examples which many students could relate to.
I have mentioned this Diploma in my CV and my LinkedIn profile and I would be happy to recommend this course to anyone. I’ve already recommended this course to few of my friends. Many of my juniors have approached me for my experience with the course and my feedback and I’ve shared my positive feedback with them. Personally, I feel entrepreneurs and people from non-law background who want basic understanding of the law can benefit a lot from this course. Even law students who want an understanding of commercial law can benefit immensely from this course.
