Rounik Raj Aryal is pursuing a B.A-LL.B degree at the National Law College (NaLC) affiliated to Tribhuvan University of Nepal. He is an aspiring lawyer and his research is mostly focused on the justice sector of Nepal. Besides his study, he is also a social activist, Japanese language instructor and translator and has been leading the social organization “All Nepal Welfare Foundation (ANWF)” as an Executive Director. He became second in the “Vision writing competition 2017” and was awarded by Rt. Hon. President of Nepal which was organized by the National Youth Council, Ministry of Youths and Sports.
As a student of Law, what is the importance of data in your B.A-LL.B?
As a students of law, our main aim is to provide justice to the people. Justice is the ultimate consequence of law. Data is important in the field of law. For example, what is the percentage of citizens that have access to justice, how people seek justice and are able to get redress. Last time, our batch went to Siurung village of Lamjung to conduct a survey. Our main task was to collect data regarding law and justice like in terms of how many people seek justice from the formal justice system and after that teach them about the importance of law in society and available remedies to them with which they were not familiar. After conducting the survey, we submitted our data to the concerned authorities, courts and administrative offices. This data will help them to improve access justice in future. Therefore, data is very important in the field of law.
What kind of data related to the justice and law enforcement sector in Nepal do you look for while doing your term paper and research?
We have been doing research in remote areas of Nepal where even government and their authorities are not interested. We mostly seek data related to law enforcement and implementation. For example, data regarding the number of rape cases, punishment of offenders, crime rates, how many people go abroad for foreign employment, where they go mostly, which channel they use and how many of them choose to go illegally through the border with India, Pakistan etc. We need these kinds of data to make the process of migration of foreign migrants workers safe and legal in future.
What are the biggest challenges in searching for data as a student?
We need data for various purposes as law students, but the main problem is that we cannot find the data we need even if we go to the websites of different ministries and the Central Bureau of Statistics website. In many cases, we are struggling to find the latest data as the website has not been properly updated and data is mostly outdated. While doing research for our term paper and if there would be updated data it would help us to do our work more effectively and efficiently.
What is your future career ambition and how do you think data will be useful for your work?
Basically, my aim is to contribute to the legal sector in my own country, especially in those parts of the country where people are not acquainted with the notion of law and justice. In Kathmandu valley, the majority of the population know the concept of law and justice system and they are accessed to administrative office and courts. In contrast, outside the valley, we can hardly find people who know about justice and have access to justice. Their way to approach the justice is also traditional. For example, in rural parts of Nepal we rarely find officers and staffs in governmental offices, even we can hardly find Chief District Officer in office, there is no teacher in school, there are not enough health workers in hospitals, which are also an example of unjust society. I feel this is injustice towards local people.Our society still believes in traditional superstitions like witchery, chaupadi and caste discrimination. Hence, my aim is to eradicate these kind of superstition beliefs and provide effective justice to those people.
To achieve my aim, data plays a significant role. For example, if I need to work in remote area of Nepal and prepare a program model for that, it would not be accessible and feasible to go there just for to planning and data collection as we have many constraints like budget and travelling time. If I could get proper data of those places through official websites of ministries or departments I can prepare the plan from here. Subsequently, during the program’s implementation phase, I can go to field and have achieve better results.
As a student, what message would you like to give to your friends or other students regarding the importance of data and the use of the Nepal in Data portal?
Through the Nepal in Data portal, I got various data regarding various legal topics like corruption, crime, punishment etc. Nepal in Data comprises of data of various other sectors like business, religion, politics, plans and policies etc. Therefore, I feel Nepal in Data is useful not only for students, but also for professionals as well.