Sajid Sheikh
While the opening of a National Law University in Jammu and Kashmir remains a distant dream, it is necessary to overhaul the education system which is having a paralytic attack due to Covid and the present Government instituted unreasonable restrictions on the internet.
While at present, there are 23 National Law Universities in India; Jammu and Kashmir still await a favourable justice. The bill for the establishment of National Law University in the State (erstwhile, now a UT) of Jammu and Kashmir was introduced in the Legislature during the budget session held in the months of January – February 2018 on the ground that a large number of students desirous to undertake Legal Education, instead of finding pastures elsewhere, can find a better ground in the state itself. On October 1, 2019, Governor gave assent to the bill. Surprisingly, Hon’ble Chief Minister was nominated as the Chancellor, a contradiction to the principles sent in the other NLUs. However, the deviation was rectified by instituting Hon’ble Chief Justice of the UT as the Chancellor. It is a popular sentiment in the legal community to keep the reins of the NLUs up to the higher judiciary rather than the executive.
The commencement of NLU system dates back to the establishment of National Law School at Bangalore in 1986 under the leadership of the Father of Legal Education in India, Late Padmashree Prof. (Dr.) N. R. Madhava Menon. Even with having enormous tuition fees, which is 5-10 times higher than others, the schools of this nature immediately got momentum due to the emphasis on the specialized legal education they provide, the pedagogy of skill-based learning and quality placements which all the NLUs strive to inculcate.
Now that the pandemic has struck the whole world, it is obvious that conceptualizing the National Law School in J&K would require an active effort and strength of all the stake holders, be it the higher judiciary of the UT, the members of the bar and even the academic community. A strong urgency needs to be created so that the groundwork can be done to foster the establishment.
Whereas, the education system all over the world as well as in India, went actively online, the students of Jammu and Kashmir had to suffer due to the restrictions on the internet which were imposed on them more than 9 months ago. While the Government showed promptness in passing legislations, amendments and policies on a buttery slope lately, it will be appreciated by academia, if the Government reciprocates the same zeal in the present matter.
The issue is that due to the pandemic, a shift to online education had to be made by depending on high data consuming platforms like Zoom, Google Meet. WebeX etc. It was observed that at many places the scheme of online classes failed miserably, while some were able to drag it ahead. However, Jammu and Kashmir students faced a larger crisis as the present internet restrictions crippled their quest for knowledge. Initially, no reasons were given for the restrictions on the internet, though the Government later flagged security concerns for not allowing 4G internet, while opinions have converged that perpetrators can still use 2G for their evil deeds and blocking 4G won’t enable or hinder this much. No doubt, national security is of prime concern, however, systemic security overhaul could have bettered the situation.
Though the administration boasted of showing a thin wave of a shift to online classes in schools and colleges, however, without proper preparedness and training, without proper accountability, it is easy to conclude that the wave plummeted.
We have seen that every other day the number of Coronavirus patients are breaking their own previous high, it is an unspoken belief that Coronavirus is here to stay for a while. Amid this, the probability of reopening of the educational institutions in the near future are meek. University Grants Commission in its notification has asked the Universities to start the next academic year in August for current students and September for new admissions. This is again an extension of the academic calendar which the universities generally follow. Further, it also proposed promoting the students based on their internal marks and previous semester marks where the institutes are not prepared to take online exams. Lately, a demand from the student community has also gained momentum that students should be promoted without exams. This makes sense as not much of an active teaching has happened in Jammu and Kashmir. However, at a conducive time, some evening course or a crash course must be given to fill the knowledge gap.
Covid may remain for a while or it may go soon. However, it is a high time to go online and adopt these practices of online teaching in our daily pedagogical exercise. The bosses of the educational institutions should strongly take the active initiative to advance a conducive environment for online teaching. Further, some encouragement packages for faculty also need to be developed to stimulate the faculty to adjust and adapt to the system of online teaching and learning. Especially, a skill training programme for the teachers for making online teaching effective should be conducted at the forefront.
I hope that the situation becomes better soon but without the preparedness, without proper training to conduct online courses, without a conducive ecosystem to sustain online teaching; the system of education, especially legal education, could fail in Jammu and Kashmir until and unless the government rectifies its wrongdoing.
(The author is an Assistant Professor at Maharashtra National Law University Mumbai)
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