The time from my last blog post to right now has been extremely eventful in my life. I never thought that so many changes would happen in the space of short months, but they have and I am now living with it. I am not going to trouble the reader of this post (assuming there are any ofcourse) with the details of my life in the last nine months. Suffice to say that I've grown up a bit since then.
Coming back to today, the most exciting news I read was an article in the Hindu detailing Manmohan Singh's views on changing the entire system of legal education. To quote him," (the handful of national law schools) are only islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity! [Excellent choice of words I thought] It was virtually God-sent because I was seriously considering writing a letter to Veerappa Moilly (I was still trying to figure out how he'd get it, but that was stage II!) and to the Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai Univ, exhorting them, literally, to change the abysmal state of legal education, especially in GLC!
I firmly believe that law is a subject that can both be a teacher's paradise and a teacher's worst nightmare. In the same way, it becomes THE best subject a student is exposed to, if taught well, and the biggest drag if taught poorly. And a small amount of personal experience has taught me that law is a fun subject to teach because it continuously challenges your creativity. You're wondering how best to put a particular subject into perspective so that it sounds and reads interesting to the students. Also, since it is a subjective field, the impressions and ideas that are thrown about in the class expand your thinking so much more.
Coming back to the National Law schools, the 'vision' that was unveiled (at the conference wherein Manmohan Singh made his significant speech about revamping legal education) included, inter alia, establishing a National Law School in every state. Now, I'm a 'day scholar', 'Mumbaite', 'GLCite' and to my line of thinking, while having a national law school is wonderful in its own way, I don;t think the hostel atmosphere, focussing all your energies in becoming a hot shot lawyer, 24*7, quite compares with the carefree, sometimes lazy, pure student life that you experience as a day scholar. You come back home by noon, go for your music, dance and other sundry classes, roam around on Causeway, curse Satkar food, take a random train to bandra, get your umbrella broken and torn during rains on Marine drive... you live happily, without a care, and collect enough memories to reminiscence on days when you're sitting up at 11 pm with one cup of coffee, taking a break from drafting/filing or whatever else we're cursing at that moment, talking to colleagues or looking out of the office window... Now it is not to say that 'National law school' students do not do all of the above things (of course, the above is restricted to Bombay, but am assuming the B'lore/Calcutta etc counter parts of the mentioned places) but in my limited experience with these students, I have found them to be extremely bright, driven and almost consumed with the idea of becoming a "successful- harvard/yale educated- Amarchand/AZB partner" lawyer image. While the image itself is perfect (and to confess, I've dreamed of it myself) I think sometimes that they don't remain students any more. They morph into these focussed workers, for lack of a better word, living and breathing their future personalities.
Again, this is not to criticize any one particular class of students. And while I use the term 'National Law School', this term is broad enough to cover students from all law schools, whether it be NLS/NALSAR or GLC/New Law College/Kerala university... anywhere. It is just a stray observation that passed through my not-so-acive mind.
In any case, the article has put me in a more optimistic frame of mind. I'm now convinced that in my lifetime we would see a sea change in the way legal education is imparted in our country and I would be extremely happy if I were to be a part of that face-changing event.
