GLC Mumbai: Asia’s oldest law college struggles with falling academic standards, fund crunch

MUMBAI: Dr BR Ambedkar, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, LK Advani, Pratibha Patil and Rahul Bajaj – the list of Government Law College (GLC) Mumbai alumni is long and illustrious. It also has the distinction of producing six chief justices of India — the highest by any institution.

After all, it's the oldest modern legal education institute in Asia. The 169-year-old college predates all the high courts and universities in the country, including its affiliating institute, the University of Mumbai (MU).

Despite its rich history and legacy, the institute appears to be in a free fall. The college never made it to the National Institutional Ranking Framework's (NIRF) annual lists of top law colleges in the country, even though the latest edition featured as many as 40 institutes. The institute's first-ever evaluation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) fetched it a B+ ranking. The only things the institute makes news for these days are squabbling over students' attendance, test scores and results.

Inside GLC's storied, if modest, campus opposite Churchgate railway station, classrooms are largely deserted even though the institute's student and faculty count is higher than ever. The students, both current and past, as well as faculty members tell tales of plummeting academic standards, administrative apathy, parochialism, petty politics and other ills corroding the once-great public space of learning.

Today, one could be forgiven for mistaking the institute for one of the many law colleges that have sprung up around the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) during the last decade or so.

Incidentally, this downfall has come at a time when law has been transformed from a rather niche discipline into an aspirational career path. The steady expansion of the National Law University (NLU) system since 2003 ushered in reforms in legal education, with salary packages offered at these institutes often rivaling those at top engineering and management institutes.

Private law colleges and universities have also multiplied, as the applicant count for the national and state law entrance tests has risen considerably.

Govt Law College Mumbai: Lost in time

In recent years, many of the students who joined the institute with high hopes quickly became disillusioned, with irregular and poor-quality lectures being the biggest sore spot. "On a given day, only one or two classes are conducted. Only a handful of old-timers teach well. There's nothing out of the ordinary – everything is at a basic level," said a BLS LLB student.

The Government School of Law, the earliest avatar of GLC, was set up in 1855 at the Elphinstone Institution, which included an English school and college for Indian students. The very first course of the institute reportedly had more than 100 students.

However, it wasn't until 1938 that the college was converted into a full-time institution, and was allocated the land parcel where it stands till date. The college became affiliated to MU in 1860, around three years after the varsity was set up. GLC is today fully funded and run by the Maharashtra government.

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Besides the three- and five-year LLB courses, LLM, and PhD programmes, it also offers specialised diploma courses. It has since added another academic building adjacent to the original structure. As the institute doesn't have its own hostel, students are accommodated in three nearby government-run dormitories, one of which has recently been demolished for reconstruction.

At around Rs 6,000, the annual fee of the five-year LLB is among the lowest in law colleges around the country.

The institute has historically relied largely on practicing lawyers to conduct classes as visiting faculty, with only a few full-time teachers. Some of these part-time faculty members who have been around for decades – 52 years in the case of 78-year-old Supreme Court lawyer Homer Pithawalla – are now designated as adjunct professors.

The institute's proximity to the Bombay High Court and other courts, coupled with its vast network of alumni, allows students to do year-long internships with senior advocates. Until recently, the college timings facilitated this arrangement.

GLC Mumbai: Temporary principals, run-ins with BCI

The concerns about GLC's downslide are not new. In January 2008, a division bench of Bombay HC urged the state government to “come out with a proper plan” to run the public college. The directive came in response to a letter to the court, which was converted to a public interest litigation (PIL), by senior advocates and former students of the institute. They had accused the government of neglecting the institute and failing to appoint permanent staff, including a full-time principal, at GLC.

However, it wasn’t until July 2013 that the state decided to form a governing council to monitor the institute’s affairs. The now-retired Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud served as the first chairperson of the council, which also comprised senior lawyers and bureaucrats. The council was empowered to decide on matters related to staff appointments, courses, assessment and pedagogy.

However, the council has evidently failed to make much of a dent, as the institute's problems not only persisted but also exacerbated.

For one, the college was without a full-time principal for more than 12 years after Parimala Rao retired as the head of the institute in 2009. In this period, GLC got around 10 temporary principals. While most of these appointees were faculty and administrators at other government institutes – notably some without any law background – on a few occasions, the charge was given to the incumbent joint director of higher education for the Mumbai region.

GLC also has had occasional run-ins with the Bar Council of India (BCI). In 2013, when some students of the college applied for their provisional sanad at the State Bar Council, they were told that their college had failed to clear affiliation fee dues pending before BCI.

In 2016, the regulator had faulted GLC and three other top law colleges in the city for not having adequate faculty and threatened to stop their admissions. A year later, the council reprimanded the institute for not fulfilling the shortcomings in infrastructure and faculty requirement as was promised in an undertaking the previous year, calling the institute's condition “pitiable”.

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Many of these shortcomings have since been addressed. The institute has renovated some of its facilities, including the auditorium. Earlier this year, it appointed 10 new faculty members, taking the strength of full-time teaching staff to 21, in addition to seven adjunct professors and around 60 teachers hired on clock-hour-basis (CHB).

"We have [made] additional faculty appointments so that students come to the college. We are moving ahead quickly. We now have enough appointees according to the workload," said Asmita Vaidya, the GLC principal.

Senior advocate Rafique Ahmed Dada, one of the petitioners at HC, who was later inducted into the governing council, also asserts that the college is being turned around. “We are doing our best, as being a government institution, you have to accommodate everyone. We plan to approach 25-30 senior lawyers to conduct special lectures. A Rs 60 crore grant has been earmarked for a facelift of the old building,” he said.

Faculty shortage, low attendance

However, many current and former students are more perturbed by the quality of teachers, rather than the quantity. "Many of our professors weren't meritorious. There were even language problems – many of them either couldn't speak fluent English or their accent was so different that we couldn't understand anything," said Manasi Bhushan, a Supreme Court lawyer who pursued BLS LLB at GLC from 2013 till 2018.

“There were issues in teaching style – you can't just come and read the book," she added.

"Many of them get into academia after failing in legal practice. The visiting faculty are appointed through walk-in interviews with the only requirement for hiring being meeting the required educational qualification, as there's such shortage of staff," said a faculty member.

The lack of interest in classroom instructions, coupled with students prioritising internships over theoretical learning, fostered a culture of absenteeism at GLC, which in turn contributed to the irregularity in lectures. The adjunct faculty are an exception, as they are perceived to be relatively better at their job, and also because, as senior lawyers they hold the keys to future employment prospects.

GLC has now planned to issue Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) cards in a bid to compel students to participate in lectures and meet MU's minimum 75% attendance criterion.

While students believe that internships are crucial, faculty see them as mere fad. They point out that many of the interns are given simple clerical or menial tasks. The principal informed that the college is now instituting organised court visits for students, and facilitating internships with lawyers and judges during their vacation breaks.

GLC Mumbai: Outdated syllabus, assessment

Another major limitation of the institute is its curriculum and assessment process, seen as irrational and outdated in parts. Since the institute lacks academic autonomy, it has to follow the syllabus and examination pattern set by MU. "Until now we were still teaching old labour laws, despite the introduction of the four new labour codes," said a visiting faculty.

"Competition law, a terribly important subject in my opinion, is absent from the syllabus. The constitutional law has unnecessarily been divided into two subjects. A subject on interpreting statutes has been reduced to a mere chapter," adds a senior teacher.

Sonali Shelar, a Bombay HC lawyer, who studied in GLC between 2014 and 2019, said: "The constitutional law is covered within a semester or two, despite it being such an important subject. On the other hand, contract law, a relatively easy topic, is spread over several semesters”.

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Bhushan, who did a diploma from the National Law School of Indian University (NLSIU) Bengaluru after graduating from GLC, found stark differences in the evaluation process. "At MU, you could easily pass by mugging up the content. Also, there was more focus on quantity – length of the answers – than the quality. In contrast, NLSIU had open book exams that tested the application of knowledge," she said.

However, Vaidya, who also happens to lead the varsity's Board of Studies for law, the body responsible for drafting curricula, refuted the claims about the syllabus. "We recently added Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and other laws in the curriculum," she said.

Government funds lost

"You ask me what's wrong with GLC. I ask you what's right about it," a senior professor responded acidly.

The educator believes that the institute has been in a gradual decline over several years, thanks to the state government's indifference and the timidity of college administrators. It often gets stuck in the bureaucratic entanglements typical of any sarkari office, it was said.

The teacher recounts that, around 2006, Dilip-Walse Patil, then higher and technical education minister in the state and himself a GLC alumnus, had announced a special grant for the institute. The money never came.

A media report from the time reveals that Walse-Patil had sanctioned Rs 35 crore for the institute and another special finance assistance of Rs 5 crore was also earmarked when he became the finance minister in the subsequent years. However, the allocation lapsed as no steps were taken for its utilisation.

The professor also narrates two incidents when the administrators failed to avail of two donations offered to the college. Bhushan said that she could only get a scholarship for meritorious students after she took the issue up with the trust offering the money.

Domicile quota, language, caste

According to alumni and teachers, the institute has increasingly become less accommodative to those from outside Maharashtra.

In 2016, the Maharashtra government introduced a state-level common entrance test (CET) for admission to GLC and other law colleges. Until then, students could get in simply through their board exam scores. Around the same time, the state also introduced a 65% domicile reservation at these institutes, drastically reducing the proportion of outstation students on campus.

The senior professor said that in the last few years, the institute has been issuing all the communication and notices in Marathi. The advertisement for appointments explicitly put knowledge of Marathi as a pre-requisite criterion.

In addition, caste fault lines are also visible at the institute.

Shelar explained that due to GLC's affordable fees and reservations, one finds students hailing from extreme ends of the social spectrum on campus. "People absolutely judge you on the basis of whether you have an iPhone in hand or not. I was told you don't look like someone who could speak English," she said.

All eyes on GLC Mumbai principal

Some of the senior teachers feel that the current principal must also share the blame for GLC's deterioration. In their telling, Vaidya is an incapable, authoritative and vindictive person, unworthy of the position she holds. They accused her of sidelining them, while surrounding herself with a coterie of sycophants.

Vaidya's appointment at GLC was anything but smooth. While she was reportedly rejected in the first round of selections in 2019 due to low Academic Performance Indicator (API) score, not meeting the associate professor criterion and lacking a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from her previous employer, she was selected in a second round. While she was appointed in June 2019, she didn't resume her duties until March 2021, reportedly due to an issue over her pay protection.

In 2022, two senior faculty members, Rachita Ratho and Shrinag Panchbhai, were transferred to two other government-run institutes in the middle of the term for “administrative reasons”. Ratho's transfer order was next year quashed by the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT), Mumbai, which termed her move as “punitive”.

Vaidya, on her part, refuted the claims about the institute's downfall, offering the above 99 percentile cut-off recorded by the institute as evidence. "In the last three years, we have been doing more than 100 programmes annually. In 2020-21, after I joined, we organised 75 programmes on the Constitution to commemorate 75 years of independence... This year also, we are conducting many programmes under the tag 'Amrut Vidhi'," she said.

"We are moving very fast academically. After assuming charge, I started LLM. We have established a research centre for PhD, besides certificate courses in communication skills, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and intellectual property rights (IPR). We held an immensely beautiful programme on income tax with experts, where chartered accountants and judges were present," she added.

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When asked why the institute didn't find place in NIRF rankings she said that the institute couldn't participate in the 2024 edition. She assured that it will get the top spot next year. She also explained that the institute fell short on 'research by faculty' criterion in NAAC evaluation. But she hoped that this would be overcome with the introduction of postgraduation programmes.

Vaidya also said that after NAAC accreditation, the institute may move towards getting academic autonomy, allowing it to offer more courses. "We should be able to do it within a year or two depending on the government's view," she said.

Law students’ aspirations shifting

Apart from its intrinsic problems, GLC also appears to have been humbled by the new landscape of legal education, market conditions and the changing aspirations of students. A considerable number of students are increasingly looking for cushy corporate jobs over the grind of litigation. For them, GLC becomes a less appealing choice.

"Students no longer want to litigate and the NLU system was created to produce corporate lawyers. But GLC isn't a corporate-oriented institute," said the visiting faculty at the institute.

Another visiting faculty and former GLC student called the newer law schools' claim of superiority a case of “manufactured perception”. Even as the Maharashtra government overlooked GLC's problems, it went on to set up three NLUs in the state.

But the GLC alumni assert that the institute's name and legacy still hold immense value in legal circles, even abroad. They, however, also want the state to do its part in returning the institute to its former glory.

Abhinav Bhushan, director (foreign law), dispute resolution at Singaporean firm Drew & Napier, and a GLC alumnus, believes that ‘top’ GLC graduates are at par with those studying at NLUs. "GLC has enjoyed its legacy. There might come a time when it will have to stop living on the laurels of the past. It's the government that needs to push the pedal," he said.

Shelar echoes the sentiment: "We absolutely need government institutes. If it weren't for them, many marginalised students wouldn't have got the opportunity they did."