The ‘N ’ Factor
Age- 17/18. Qualification – just out of school, has completed +2.
What’s next?
Aspiring a career in Engineering or Medicine or B.Com. But hey!! How about Law???....hmmm...not a bad option. Man!! These new day law schools grads are making big money, yaar!!!
It’s the end of the admission season across the country and as I write this, the notification of the final list for CLAT is being anxiously awaited by hundreds (for those who haven’t come across the word, it’s the acronym for the Common Law Admission Test for admission to the prestigious National Law Universities). Seeing the many new ‘junees’ around, reminds me of an excellent piece of writing by a student of the ILS who penned her experience on ‘’Life without the National Law School Tag’’.
The year was 2003, more than half a decade ago, when the tally of law ‘schools’ in the country with the National tag stood at six. Vying for a seat into one of them and on not being successful, the author landed up at the ILS. ‘Shit Man!!...life is doomed...my dreams are shattered!!...couldn’t make it to a National Law School!!!’ - would have been my reaction to the situation. It’s difficult to comprehend the writer’s thoughts at the time but after a couple of months she perhaps did go in for a bit of introspection of the situation and penned down her opinion on whether the N-tag did actually make any difference??....
Coming to the present day, I am again drawn back in the memory lane n as I reminisce the article, I am forced to think....what exactly the value of this N-tag is???...Today when we have 11 + 2 + 1 National Law Universities (11 under the CLAT, one each at Delhi and Cuttack which are out of the ambit of CLAT and yet another coming up at not so known state capital of Ranchi)....how far does the N - tag count? I have been following the entire CLAT process and have had a very close communication with the mass student community, courtesy the social networking sites and I am amazed at many of the trends prevailing. The first being the number of takers for ‘law’ as a profession.
It’s the dwindling state of the traditional law universities in the country that had or as some may still maintain, has given a bad name to the profession. And why not??...at a time when more than three lakh lawyers graduate from these traditional universities, where do they go and what is their grasp over the subject....is the big question. With the nodal agency in the country for overseeing legal affairs, the Bar Council of India, which also has the responsibility of monitoring the dispention of legal education in the country, moving towards abolishing the three years degree programme, the situation speaks for itself - the bar has to be raised!!...with this objective, was established, the first National Law School at Bangalore, as it was then called. It now is the era of the Integrated B.A.,LL.B course which takes five years. Five long years to become a lawyer???????....phew!!!...Anyways...probably that’s why these new age lawyers make lotsa money....
Second question behind the N-factor that comes in is the number of these ‘elite’ institutes. With the Government elevating the number of IITs and IIMs and AIIMS....not to speak of the also much sought after NITs, NLUs are not left far behind. Today the tally of NLUs stands at thirteen with a couple of more in the pipe-line. In just over last three years, more than five NLUs have sprung across the country. This raises many-a-eyebrows....and c’mon, one has to face the reality, are all the new NLUs indeed worth all the N-Hype???...Patiala; Patna....Kochi, Ranchi...every year one more being added to the list. Comparing this to the older NLUs, it’s just for the namesake. As mentioned earlier, I’ve been in constant touch with the student community or should I say the wannabe lawyers community and I am really saddened with the decreasing value of the N-tag. Pondering further, the situation is ironical. On one hand the students striving to get the N-tag is on an ever increasing scale. On the flip side is the extent to which these aspirants have become fastidious about which NLU to join. To conclude, there is now competition among the National Law Schools. As the law school aspirants opine, only seven or eight of all the NLUs have been able to live up to the brand ‘National’. Others are striving to catch up in the race. Today it’s not just any ‘N’. The talk is about which ‘N’??
On a parallel note it becomes imperative to mention that education has become a business model for the ever enterprising Indian entrepreneur. Private law universities have also sprung across the country which is on the lines of the ‘National Law Universities’. Symbiosis University is the most prominent name in the private world with scores of others like the KIIT, UPES, MATs etc which claim to be equivalent to the ‘N’s. Talking of the ground reality I would not out rightly dispute the claim. This is where money plays a game. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow is touted to be the richest and the most infrastructural-‘ly’ sound among all the NLUs, with budget of a whopping 300 plus Crores...a amount four to five other NLUs, put together would find difficult to match. One of the latest to enter the league, RMLNLU has been able to establish itself as a respected institution owing to it’s financial capacity. Many other ‘N’s, old as well as new, have stagnated and the reason being money. Now with the emergence of the private law universities, one could easily find faculty and support staff shifting base away from NLUs...one of the best example is the new MATS Law School at Raipur which is being headed by Prof. Shantakumar, a name to reckon in the legal education scenario in India and who, prior to his present appointment, was associated with a well known NLU. Also continuous movement of staff members among the NLUs is not uncommon. This does the trick. In my opinion good faculty and good students are synonymous....n in this competitive world it becomes a challenging task to retain sound faculty. And who is successful in doing so...BINGO!!!...becomes the sought after. That’s one of the primary reasons why only seven or eight of the thirteen have been able to reach the high standards that the Brand N calls for. Surprisingly one finds that students prefer to pursue courses elsewhere than go to just any NLU.
The Indian youth as well as the Indian family is now opening up to experimentation. Fathers today don’t insist on a B.Tech or MBBS, and are open to new careers for their children. Hence law, which was not in style among the young, has over-night become a sought after course. Under these circumstances it is important for the Government to maintain a high standard of education is all spheres. The Constitutional Provision for establishment of National Law Universities in India is that every state is entitled to come up with it’s own National Law School/University. Hence a Government like Uttar Pradesh has enough money to spare where elsewhere in the country a state, like say Orissa is not capable to earmark an amount which is even one-tenth of the former. Here comes the discrimination. The other educational institutions at the national level have a central governing body and receive financial assistance through budgetary allocation. On the contrary, the NLUs have to stand up on aids and grants and student fees which again have become a point of concern as the intake in the NLUs is hundred on an average. And hence to meet the expenses of keep the institution running, the financial burden on the students is enormous.
Hence to keep up the N-bar high, as it claims to be, some serious policy reconsiderations are called for. A central nodal agency for the National Law Universities is the need of the hour. It would only be then that an equal platform could be given to all the NLUs across the length and breadth of the country. And all the national law schools could actually disseminate legal education and be N-Personified!!!
