The recent comment by Jairam Ramesh on the faculty and research standards at IITs and IIMs has created a flutter. At one level, this comment can be seen as running down premier institutions like the IITs and IIMs. However, at another level, Ramesh?s comments also provide an opportunity to assess research standards, not just at IITs and IIMs, but across disciplines and institutions of higher education in India. This piece wishes to ignite the debate on legal research in premier national law universities (NLUs).

Last year, PM Manmohan Singh described legal education in India as a ?sea of institutionalised mediocrity?. Legal education has always received step-motherly treatment from the government and has often not been the first choice of bright students and their ever-aspiring parents. However, things started to change with the advent of NLUs?the most significant change in Indian legal education in the last two decades. Referred to by the PM as ?islands of excellence? in the sea of institutionalised mediocrity; the first NLU was set up in Bangalore in 1988 and this was followed by more NLUs coming up in Hyderabad, Bhopal, Kolkata and Jodhpur in the 1990s. As of today, there are about 15 NLUs in India with the latest one planned to come up in the Northeast. These NLUs, often described as IITs and IIMs of legal education, have been set up to become centres of excellence in legal education by attracting quality students to study law, and producing quality research and legal scholarship by faculty.

NLUs have been very successful in attracting bright students to study law. Students passing out of these NLUs have been able to secure high paying jobs in national and international organisations and have also been awarded prestigious scholarships like Chevening, Rhodes and Inlaks. The success of NLU students has increased the popularity of legal education, which is evident from the fact that this year close to 24,000 students appeared for the recently conducted Common Law Admission Test for admission to 11 NLUs, an increase by almost 6,000 from last year.

The stupendous performance of NLU students often gives the impression, to an outsider, that these institutions have equally impressive research standards and credentials.

Although few NLUs have made efforts to boost a research culture, on the whole, the research standards at NLUs are still not at the level that national level institutes should have. With some notable exceptions, there is minimal evidence of faculty members of NLUs producing outstanding legal scholarship in international refereed journals or presenting works in major international conferences or involved in collaborative research with other institutions or universities?parameters often regarded most important globally to judge the research performance of universities.

There are several reasons for this like inadequate service conditions for the faculty and thus the failure to attract talented academic lawyers; not so stimulating research environment; lack of adequate incentives to undertake research; lack of a vibrant community of postgraduate research and doctoral students; and heavy teaching and evaluation load as also pointed out by the National Knowledge Commission in its report on legal education. Barring a few notable exceptions, most NLUs have not been able to attract and retain NLU alumni to teach. The majority of NLU students, after completing their undergraduate degrees and studying for higher degrees in the West, opt for an academic career in the US, UK, Singapore and other such places or with private universities in India, where remuneration is much more attractive. Even if some of them joined NLUs; they didn?t stay back. This is in sharp contrast to IITs and IIMs, where many IIT and IIM faculty members have themselves been the alumni of these institutions.

The final point is regarding remuneration, which plays a vital role in attracting talent and hence boosting research standards. Remuneration structures are not attractive enough at NLUs, notwithstanding the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission?s recommendations. Fresh law graduates from NLUs often earn more than what a professor with a PhD and with 10 years of experience at NLU earns. But this is something in which NLUs cannot do much unless they get support from the government. If the government seriously wants a world-class faculty, it should devise attractive salary structures for university academicians, including NLUs?, independent of salaries of civil servants. There should be a separate pay commission for university academicians. It is erroneous to equate salary structures of the teaching profession, where there is a major shortage, with salary structures of all-India central services, where the number of aspirants only keeps increasing, thus providing a much larger basket to select from.

NLUs are young and promising institutions and it will be unfair to judge them and their faculty too harshly in the relatively short period of their existence. Notwithstanding the constraints, NLUs and their faculty have done well in comparison to most law departments in conventional Indian universities, which have existed for long. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement. The faculty at NLUs has to rise to the occasion and produce world-class research on a consistent basis. NLUs have to think of ingenious ways to attract good faculty?something like paying signing bonuses to new faculty that IIT Bombay did is worth considering. NLUs also need to incentivise research; find ways and means to provide attractive compensation to faculty; and develop a vibrant post-graduate community of researchers. Ramesh?s comment should stir NLUs as well and should be used as an opportunity to bring meaningful reforms in legal research, so that law, as an academic discipline, attains its rightful place in our society.

The author is assistant professor at National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. These are his personal views