Padma Shri awardee and Head, Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism at AIIMS, New Delhi

It gives me immense pleasure to pen a few sentences on the occasion of the award ceremony of the Prathiba M Singh Cambridge Scholarship for the academic year 2021. As someone who has been privileged to be a part of the journey of this scholarship, it gives me immense pleasure to see the continuing and incremental contribution that this scholarship is providing to support meritorious students aspiring to become well rounded legal professionals. Over this period, this scholarship has become well recognized by the student community of India’s leading law schools, thereby making the selection process incredibly competitive. This evolution I believe reflects the quality of previous awardees and also the demonstrable enhancement in their skills and competencies and the evolution and maturation in their persona which the scholarship facilitated by enabling the exposure and education they received at Cambridge. This year, like the previous, has been fraught with the challenges brought on by the COVID pandemic. But, just like there is light emerging at the end of the COVID tunnel, we sincerely hope that for our young awardees this scholarship brings with it a beacon of hope for an energizing and stimulating year ahead in the salubrious environs of Cambridge. Exposure to a “different” style of education and interacting with global peers adds significant value to the process of knowledge acquisition. As I reflect back on the time I spent as a graduate student at Cambridge, the contribution of my peers, the mentorship of the supervising faculty, and the encouragement I received to think through problems while arriving at potential solutions, stand out as notable memories. I am sure that this year’s awardees will also experience and cherish significant value addition to their educational journey. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations to the exceptional young people who have made us proud by accepting our offer of the scholarship. I would also like to congratulate their families, teachers, friends and peers - all of whom, indubitably have contributed to their success. I hope that this will be an enriching experience for them - as it has been for their predecessors - and that the legal talent pool of India will be enriched on their return