Abhishek Manu Singhvi Talking About His Experience Interview

Abhishek Manu Singhvi Talks About His Educational Experience

Senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi talks about his education experience at India's and the world's top educational institutions and explains how tough it is to become a senior counsel, despite having a famous father.

On the subject of being the son of a famous lawyer, senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that it is not correct to say that one is born with a silver spoon and progresses through a platinum system.

Talking to Rainmaker, he said that he never felt a direct attraction to law even till his days of doing an undergraduate in economics. "The omnipresent sights and sounds of law if you are from a family of lawyers makes a difference."

"You think at times that you will not do what your father is doing and you examine other options. And it is the same with my two sons, I have scrupulously avoided pushing them into the profession but by a process of elimination, one is a lawyer and the other is studying law."

Abhishek Manu Singhvi also described his study of law as having possessed a "peculiar trajectory". "While I was doing my BA in Economics from St. Stephens, I got admission into Trinity College in Cambridge. But during the gap before the term started there, I also joined the Law Faculty of Delhi for about two months but went straight from there to Trinity, where I stayed on and completed my undregrad and my PhD and came back after six and half-odd years.

"It clearly gives you a push and a backup of infrastructure, with a library and a certain amount of resources. But this is a very unforgiving profession and very early on, if you do not work hard enough and if you are not able to prove yourself in a few cases, the system rejects you. The initial push is only like a rebuttable presumption in your favour. It is up to you to see that it is not rebutted."

Abhishek Manu Singhvi is an eminent personality in the Indian Political Scenario. He belongs to the Indian National Congress and is also a Member of the Parliament of India representing Rajasthan in the Rajya Sabha. Having acknowledged by the Global Leader of Tomorrow Award in 1999, he has been an actively inspiring role model for the youngsters. In 2007, he was invited to hold lectures on Federalism which was printed in the prominent and esteemed IIPA journal apart from the best essay.Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi presided over many Union Government Committees  and  panels.Simultaneously with his Rajya Sabha tenure, from August 2006 to August 2007 he was the Member, Joint Committee on Offices of Profit Member, Joint Committee.From August 2009 to July 2011 he remained the member of Committee on Personal and Public Grievances, law and Justice. This public outfit got functioned under the leadership of likes of Dr Singhvi and other panelists who were the luminaries among the country’s famous lawyers.In September 2006, he became the member of Committee of Privileges. This committee was to look after any charge against the members of the Parliament in regard to their attitude and behavior on the floor of the both the houses.

"I did my schooling in St. Columba's and did very well. I used to joke that academically everything has been downhill since then because I stood first in India. Even though during those days, law was distant in my mind, I saw my father getting dressed and going to court, I had the books of law all around me and my grandfather was a lawyer, so it does make a difference. However, there was absolutely no pressure in my case to enter the profession. In fact, there was a kind of anti-pressure. It happens by a process of elimination."
Abhishek Manu Singhvi also said that while being a good student, he was a complete introvert at school and retained some of that even in vibrant St. Stephens. It was only when he went to Cambridge, partly for survival in the strange context and climate, that he became more confident and extroverted.

Abhishek Manu Singhvi has appeared as lead counsel in several landmark and leading apex court decisions, including, to name a small number, the Naveen Jindal right to fly the Indian flag case, the DK Basu case on custodial death and torture, the Delhi Airport privatization case, the NTC Bombay Mills case, Renusagar 1 and 2 cases on International Commercial Arbitration, the Badal case on Prevention of Corruption, the Reliance dispute between Anil and Mukesh Ambani, the Vodafone Capital Gains Tax case and many more. He is a top ranking Senior Counsel at the Indian Supreme Court.

Abhishek Manu Singhvi also said that there was no question of him staying on abroad after his PhD. "In my case it was always a fixed case immigration. During my PhD, I also taught at St. John's college in Cambridge to supplement my income and also to keep my foot in academics. I was also doing my dining terms at Lincoln's Inn. But the moment I finished my PhD, I did not have a second thought and I came back to India."

About Abhishek Manu Singhvi  initial foray into profession, he said that though he had technically not studied the nitty-gritty of Indian law, his fears were misplaced because he learnt soon that it was a vocational profession where you learnt on the job. "Also, I had done a PhD in law - something that 99% of people, including my father who was a doctorate LLM from Harvard and a doctorate from Cornell dissuaded me from doing. Statistically in Cambridge, 50% of the people who join for a PhD do not complete it, and the remaining take up to six to seven years to complete it. The fear that you are wasting your time and your colleagues are getting ahead and there is no tangible nexus between a PhD and success in the profession were with me."

Abhishek Manu Singhvi  has appeared as lead counsel in several landmark and leading apex court decisions, including, to name a small number, the Naveen Jindal right to fly the Indian flag case, the DK Basu case on custodial death and torture, the Delhi Airport privatization case, the NTC Bombay Mills case, Renusagar 1 and 2 cases on International Commercial Arbitration, the Badal case on Prevention of Corruption, the Reliance dispute between Anil and Mukesh Ambani, the Vodafone Capital Gains Tax case and many more. He is a top ranking Senior Counsel at the Indian Supreme Court.

Recently ranked 34th on the India Today Top 50 Power List, Dr Singhvi is a sought after writer, commentator and panelist in both the visual and print media, and has done innumerable talk shows and interactive sessions in English and Hindi on almost all television channels and all leading print publications. He has written in several legal and non-legal journals and is an office bearer in several legal, social and cultural organizations.

 

"The third set of apprehensions set in when I returned to India and went looking for a senior and found that there were very few systems here that actually encouraged a junior-senior relationship. The few which were available were also filled up. So I decided to be with my father for a year and a half and then I remained on my own. The fourth major problem was that Delhi in particular, unlike Mumbai and Calcutta, had no slot for the intermediate counsel at all. People would be happy with drafting, your hard work and the fact that you could put a point across, but they would insist that you either had to be there at the side of the senior or you had to be the Advocate on Record on the vakalatnama. And the only reason I went into counsel work was the tremendous fear that I had of procedure. So it was a difficult period of about four to five years where you had good work and good clients but could not hold on to them.