While the National Law School of India University under its expansion and inclusion plan has increased student intake, it comes at a glaring lack of accommodation within the campus and an abysmal catering system. As a stopgap measure, the University has sought to provide hostel facilities to the newer batches at RR Nagar, which is approximately 5 km from the campus. Students being made to stay at Olive Residence bear the inconvenience of travel. Further, the students have to bear further financial expenses out of their own pockets. This expenditure on travel is over and above the fees paid by students which as it stands currently is Rs. 4.13 lakhs. Notably, the fees have been seeing a steep increase of almost Rs 50,000 a year with the facilities being offered to students remaining largely the same. While infrastructure projects have been carried out within the campus premises, they have acted as a way to gloss over the lack of residential facilities for students within the campus.
The recent proposal for shortening of the trimester increases the academic workload considerably. While the trimester in itself offers less scope to manage the academic rigour, shortening of the trimester further curtails the possibility for effectively managing the workload. Even though the university administration has sought feedback for the proposal, the implementation of the shortened trimester appears to be a foregone conclusion. Interestingly, the intended purpose of the proposal is to allow for an increased duration for internship. However, shortening of the trimester leads to the conclusion of a trimester during the last week of the third month. Such a conclusion does not allow for an increase in scope for internship since organizations and chambers rarely commence internships at the end of a month.
The university has centralized its power within the hands of a few oligarchs. The scope of student activism and student voice has been restricted and it is channelized along official lines. The focus on rigour acts as a disciplining mechanism where students are not given the time to think about
themselves. It is ironic that while we are taught about reasonableness being the basis of law, the way the university has been functioning makes a mockery of procedural reasonableness. Perhaps, there is no irony here. In a political environment where societal ideology of social Darwinism is being bolstered by ceding of responsibility for the education of its citizens by the state and destruction of the spirit of freedom exercised by the students by framing in a language of concerns about national security, educational institutions have gotten additional justification to raise fees. This system ensures that only the most privileged get education. The university seems to have a unified student culture. Just as we should not mistake the veneer of progressivism with what is the actual reality in authoritarian societies and states, we must distinguish between the veneer of liberal education in institutions occupied by a few people who are super elite and actual reality which is that the culture of the university is very uniform and dull- typical middle-class culture based around the paradox of conspicuous consumption and feeling of insecurity. The reason it is so uniform is that it is very difficult for a kid from the working classes to even attempt the entrance exam with an application fee of around Rs. 3000, which may be higher than even the monthly savings of the family, leaving the question of annual fees. It seems that liberalism is something to be born with rather than cultivated and acquired. It is good for elites to become adept at the game of hypocrisy and this may well be the best contribution of NLS to its students.
