A LEGACY IN CRISIS

Asia's oldest law college and alma mater to legal luminaries, Government Law College, Mumbai, now grapples with declining standards, administrative apathy, and students' shifting educational aspirations

- Musab Qazi

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.