- The story starts in 2003, around 50 years after the first IIT was set up by Nehru in KGP. President APJ Abdul Kalam suggested that alumni from the IITs existing at the time (B, D, KGP, M, K) should unite to transform India through technological solutions.
- Heeding the call, a group of alumni met in Silicon Valley in 2003, under the name "Pan IIT". The speakers included Bill Gates and Narayan Murthy ((IIT K alum), R Gopalakrishnan (IIT KGP alum), Nandan Nilekani ((IITB alum) and Manohar Parrikar (then CM of Goa, IITB alum). The themes included:
1. How to build a knowledge economy in India 2. How do we take out 260 million people out of poverty 3. How to bring professionalism in governance 4. How to improve standard of living in Indian cities 5. How to learn from successful entrepreneurs 6. Empowerment of women.
- In 2004, the second Pan IIT Conference was held in Delhi. President Kalam attended, along with over 3,000 IIT alumni.
- In 2006, the third Pan IIT Conference was held in Mumbai. Again, Kalam attended, along with 5,000 alumni. Arvind Kejriwal (KGP alum and then a social activist) also attended.
- However, this time the IIT alumni formed themselves into a formal association, called Pan IIT. IIT Guwahati and IIT Roorkee were added to the group. It was registered under the Societies Registration Act with a Delhi address.
- A steering committee was formed with influential alumni from all the 7 IITs, such as millionaires Vinod Gupta (who funded the IIT KGP law school) and Satish Mehta (founder of EmCure).
- After this, annual Pan IIT conferences were held in Kolkata, Chennai, Washington DC and Santa Clara. Speakers included P Chidambaram, LN Mittal, Amartya Sen, Raghuram Rajan etc. A newsletter called Pan IIT was also started. Today, the conference alternates between India and the US.
- The Pan IIT group has since donated money to different IITs, created a scholarship pool and started a rural development initiative. Additionally, Pan IIT has lobbied the government for funds. Pan IIT also lobbied against the OBC quota introduced by Manmohan Singh (unsuccessfully, but they were able to dilute its implementation in IITs).
- PM Manmohan and PM Modi have since spoken at Pan IIT summits. Modi invited IITs to contribute to Aatmanirbhar Bharat
- Following the IITs, the IIMs also united to form an alumni body called Pan IIM. The first Pan IIM conference was organised by the oldest IIM (IIMC) in Kolkata, in 2013. Manmohan and Modi have both spoken at Pan IIM conferences.
- Like Pan IIT, Pan IIM transformed itself into a lobby group.
- For NLUs, possibly the first attempt to unite was made in 2017. NLIU Bhopal was witnessing student protests and serious charges of corruption and nepotism were levelled against the admin. The student associations of NLSIU, NALSAR and NUJS wrote a letter jointly expressing solidarity with NLIU and used the hashtag #NationaliseNLUs on Twitter.
- In 2018, NUJS held a physical protest in the college using the hashtag and chanting "Nationalise NLUs"
- In 2019, lawyer and BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi (an NLU parent) introduced a private bill in the Lok Sabha seeking to Nationalise NLUs. The bill also proposed a major branding change. Like the IITs, the existing NLUs would be renamed as NLU Bangalore (instead of NLSIU), NLU Hyderabad (instead of NALSAR) etc.
- Unfortunately, NLU students and alumni did not unite behind these efforts. In fact, NLSIU alumni and VC Sudhir Krishnaswamy seriously undermined these efforts. NLSIU challenged domicile reservation in the Karnataka High Court instead of unitedly challenging all NLU reservation in the SC, jointly with other NLUs. Shockingly, NLSIU's counsel contended before the court that only NLSIU is the only genuine "national" NLU and other NLUs are "state" NLUs, as NLSIU's VC is the CJI and a BCI trust set up NLSIU. He conveniently forgot that some NLUs also have the CJI as VC and NLSIU is also the creature of a state legislation. To make matters worse, Sudhir summarily withdrew from the CLAT.
- One positive effort has been the establishment of the CAN Foundation by NLU alumni (Confederation of Alumni of NLUs). However, this body has restricted itself to raising money for scholarships and organise guest lectures by judges. No serious engagement with the government and CJI has taken place, no attempt to form a lobby group like Pan IIT. Also, the CAN Foundation was mostly driven by NLIU Bhopal alumni. The present team does not seem to have anyone from NLSIU. Also, unlike Pan IIT, the most influential of the NLU alumni do not seem to be involved.
- So the key question is whether NLU alumni can do what IIT and IIM alumni have done. Do the NLUs require a powerful supporter like President Kalam or Narayan Murthy or Vinod Gupta? Could the CAN Foundation be the basis for a Pan NLU body? Will the attendance of the PM, President or CJI at a conference give the impetus? Could Chandrachud be the well-wisher NLUs need?Would love to hear your thoughts.
I don't know have an answer but I really like how you researched about this particular topic. Kudos to you mate, rare to find interesting threads these days! 💯
Law school alumni have always been united. We have very strong lobby groups - courts, bar council, parliament. Even the pan IIT/IIM bow down to our power.
Dude first of all congratulations to you,an excellent read this is. I can't pin-point the exact reason why this has happened to NLUs, since I am presently in my 3rd yr at prob the most toxic and disunited batch across NLUs, i.e. 24 batch of Gunloo. I can speak fr my disunited batch's perspective. The seeds of disunity and bitching was engrained in my batchmates fr my first yr itself. As the semester turned into an online one, cheap, low-level politics starting taking center-stage, and most of the students' started back-biting one another. Some students were mocked at the expense of others, and within the starting of the 2nd yr a high amount of Toxicity and Disunity had set in the batch, and for a lot of students from different backgrounds it became extremely tough for surviving, even though the semesters were online. One particular incident which would tell the horrible state of affairs was when a boy who had lost his parent to Covid, could not submit a particular project and requested the batch to collectively postpone the assignment. Some of the batchmates instead of emphatising with his condition, went ahead and even berated him for his inability to complete the project. This was just a small incident, majority of the incidents of utter selfishness and back-bitching would be too inhuman to say here. All in all, I feel that this is a common thing across majority of the NLUs, where standing United for even one minor te is unheard of. Though our batch is an example of an extreme case of selfishness and toxicity, I don't think that the situation would be much better elsewhere.
Bhai, maybe I dont have the full perspective, but ye full batch ka project postponement doesnt make sense. A special permission for the poor kid to submit when he is in the position to do so would have made sense. Also, if the admin was approached and did not consider this, then thats shameful.
I have got a question. Why would a single student's inability to submit an assignment (for very valid reasons) require the postponement of submission for the entire batch? I mean, wouldn't it have been better for the batch to collectively request via your class representative or even by yourselves to have given that student the break that he deserved? In most places, that would have been the norm. Unless there were group exercises involved in relation to that assignment.
The Prof had given the batch the option of extending the deadline with the caveat that everyone should submit it by the same deadline. Some of the batchmates however took advantage of the situation since they had cmplt the project, and nefariously prevented the Prof from giving any extension. They not only wanted their own marks but also wanted those who were not able to submit (due to Covid or other reason) to get less marks.
Well researched views. My value addition to this debate would be on the aspect of differential attitude of NLSIU. I feel that in respect of IITs and IIMs, the individual institutes based out of Kharagpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Ahmedabad and other cities have been national institutes from the day-1.
I also believe that all these individual institutes in themselves have had an independent brand value and therefore they readily joined hands in the name of PAN--- entity.
No when we talk about NLU's we deliberately ignore the fact that we are not national institutes at the onset. Moreover, except for NLSIU > NALSAR > NUJS, the rest of NLU's are not even on nearby footing.
The difference in RML/RGNUL and NLU Assam is similarly high. Now in such a scenario, the NLSIU feels that the partnership is not on equal terms of give-and-take but more on 'Altruistic' terms of 'Have' and 'Have-not'.
Then the issue of Jindal Global, CLC, GLC, Symbi, Amity and ILS giving fight for better legal education is also a problem.
IITs and IIMs are having a global brand value and have standards at such high level.
To achieve that level of brand and success is like expecting our NLUs to become international centres of legal education like Ox-bridge, which is a tough objective. Furthermore we cannot cite lack of legal resources for this deficiency in the performances of our Law Colleges, since our Indian Legal Jurisprudence is almost on equal footing with that of UK and USA in its strength.
Thus what remains is sheer lack of will and temperament. This is the basic reason why NLUs cannot equate themselves to IITs and IIMs.
PS: Ask a layman and he will tell you that an IITian or IIM graduate would never behave in the manner a Lawyer behaves in public. There are Whatsapp video of Lawyers begging in Allahabad High Court and on another occasion a lady lawyer shouting on a Judge. In Uttar Pradesh Lawyers are shooting each other in elections. Oudh Bar and Allahabad Bar going on strikes. Elder committee of Allahabad Bar being beaten by Allahabad Bar President.
These are not the ways in which other technical and management based professionals behave in public.
"Technical and management-based professionals" have been quite openly casteist, abusive and bigoted in public.
They have founded enterprises such as Byju's where staff-members are threatened, been accused of rape and been let off due to "being the state's future assets" (Guwahati HC) and so much more.
The mind-drain into engineering colleges is responsible for the current state of affairs in India for a large part - where a large number of engineering graduates have been misled into believing that their education as an engineer allows them to make highbrow commentary on all public policy matters as well as society, art and culture.
Er.. the IIT KGP professor who made casteism taught English. She is from an arts background. Also, there are bad apples everywhere. Lawrence Liang is an NLSIU-JNU grad, MJ Akbar is an arts graduate.
The younger NLSIU students and alumni came through CLAT and see CLAT as similar to IIT JEE, NLUs as similar to IITs. They have brothers, sisters and best friends in all NLUs, right down to Ranchi and Sonipat. They won't mind if NLSIU changes to NLU Bangalore and if NLUs become a pan-India brand. But the NLSIU boomer generation alumni have the opposite view. They will never consider other NLUs to be their equal and do not want NLSIU to be clubbed with them. They consider NLSIU to be even superior to IIT. They call it "Law School", as if it is the only law school. Also "Harvard of the East".
So Sudhir Krishnaswamy's indifference to other NLUs should be seen in that context. Ask his former students at NUJS how he behaved with them. Has Sudhir even hired a single new law prof who is not from NLSIU?
Thus, if we want to unite all NLUs then the boomers have to be kept out. To some extent millennials too. Gen Z has to drive it entirely. Only Gen Z can make it happen.
Sudhir has actually hired more than one person from outside NLSIU. Saurabh Bhattacharjee (NALSAR graduate, ex-faculty from NLUJ and NUJS) for example. Of course, he prefers to work with people whom he knows already, but that is true for most VCs.
People whom he knows already??? Most of the people he hired were in their diapers when Sudhir was in college. Don't try to defend the indefensible. The fact is that this man is an obstacle to pan-NLU unity because of his outdated beliefs.
Even if a pan NLU association is formed, no one will listen to it unless the achievement of individual alumni are of the same magnitude as that of IIT / IIM alumni. Ofcourse, I m not talking about building companies, but producing lawyers of the stature of Nani Palkivala or social workers of the stature of Kailash Satyarthi. If that could happen, NLU association could even become the moral compass of other pan iit / iim associations.
Self entitled law students lmao, lawyers are mostly a liability to the companies and clients who peruse them. So are doctors but atleast they save lives. Engineers and management professionals actually contribute to the progress but lawyers don’t. NLUs with a mere 80,000 students competing for CLAT will never hold the same esteem as IIT and IIMs.
Engineers and management professionals won't get a lot of the societal progress turned into reality without the lawyers playing their own role in it. You really seem to be overcome with bitterness to consider so little of the profession that you apparently pursue.
Friends, please understand that there is something in the business world called "brand dilution". You may have also heard this term if you learnt IP law. It means that if Hilton Hotels ties up with AirBnB and OYO Rooms then the brand valuation of Hilton will go down, no matter how popular AirBnb and OYO Rooms might be.
NIRF has ranked NLSIU, NLUD and NALSAR as the top 3 NLUs for 4 years in a row, while the the fourth position and below has always changed. It means that there is a clearly demarcated tier 1 brand and tier 2 brand of NLUs. Also, JGLS is going to debut in NIRF this year and if it gets the fourth spot then it will further show the gulf between tier 1 brand NLUs and tier 2 brand NLUs.
Thus, it is foolish to think that NLUs can be unified like IITs. Let us at least wait till the NIRF rankings and see at what rank JGLS makes its debut. That will confirm or rebut my hypothesis.
Don't know about dilution of brand, but surely your arguments are a clear example of dilution of logic to the extent of those homeopathic mixtures. Nor does NLUD have any brand to speak of yet and the gulf between it and NLSIU reputation-wise is as wide as that between NLUD and Amity.
In my view a Pan NLU movement will surely happen, but it will take time. There will come a day when all the NLUs in India will have NLU alumni as VCs, all the leading Senior Advocates will be NLU alumni, all the top law firm owners will be NLU alumni. This will possibly happen 25 to 30 years from now. So maybe a Pan NLU 2050 conference is what we should plan for.
NLU alumni are not united enough to consider such alliances even when they head law schools. What sort of collaborative initiative has Sudhir extended yet to the younger NLUs that would have welcomed such assistance/guidance? They are each happy with their small fiefdoms.
I totally reject the premise of this discussion. When Pan IIT was formed, there were only 7 IITs: Kharagpur, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati (the newest one). Thr first 4 were regarded at par (and still are), while Roorkee was originally founded as an engineering college in British India and later upgraded to an IIT, so it still had a good reputation and alumni base. Guwahati was new but still attracted good rankers and was centrally funded.
Now contrast that with NLUs. Only NLSIU, NALSAR and NLUD have truly good faculty. As for placements, only the top 7 (adding NUJS, NLUJ and GNLU) are at par. So where is the common ground?
The CAN Foundation has actually been doing a really good job and it logically should be the laughing pad for an nLU unity movement. However, the people running it are a bit young and do not get enough support. The Pan IIT movement had multi billionaires backing them. CAN doesn't need that, but at least outstanding NLU alumni for each NLU should back them. If NLSIU is not interested, then people from other NLUs can be tapped.
- Heeding the call, a group of alumni met in Silicon Valley in 2003, under the name "Pan IIT". The speakers included Bill Gates and Narayan Murthy ((IIT K alum), R Gopalakrishnan (IIT KGP alum), Nandan Nilekani ((IITB alum) and Manohar Parrikar (then CM of Goa, IITB alum). The themes included:
1. How to build a knowledge economy in India
2. How do we take out 260 million people out of poverty
3. How to bring professionalism in governance
4. How to improve standard of living in Indian cities
5. How to learn from successful entrepreneurs
6. Empowerment of women.
- In 2004, the second Pan IIT Conference was held in Delhi. President Kalam attended, along with over 3,000 IIT alumni.
- In 2006, the third Pan IIT Conference was held in Mumbai. Again, Kalam attended, along with 5,000 alumni. Arvind Kejriwal (KGP alum and then a social activist) also attended.
- However, this time the IIT alumni formed themselves into a formal association, called Pan IIT. IIT Guwahati and IIT Roorkee were added to the group. It was registered under the Societies Registration Act with a Delhi address.
- A steering committee was formed with influential alumni from all the 7 IITs, such as millionaires Vinod Gupta (who funded the IIT KGP law school) and Satish Mehta (founder of EmCure).
- After this, annual Pan IIT conferences were held in Kolkata, Chennai, Washington DC and Santa Clara. Speakers included P Chidambaram, LN Mittal, Amartya Sen, Raghuram Rajan etc. A newsletter called Pan IIT was also started. Today, the conference alternates between India and the US.
- The Pan IIT group has since donated money to different IITs, created a scholarship pool and started a rural development initiative. Additionally, Pan IIT has lobbied the government for funds. Pan IIT also lobbied against the OBC quota introduced by Manmohan Singh (unsuccessfully, but they were able to dilute its implementation in IITs).
- PM Manmohan and PM Modi have since spoken at Pan IIT summits. Modi invited IITs to contribute to Aatmanirbhar Bharat
- Following the IITs, the IIMs also united to form an alumni body called Pan IIM. The first Pan IIM conference was organised by the oldest IIM (IIMC) in Kolkata, in 2013. Manmohan and Modi have both spoken at Pan IIM conferences.
- Like Pan IIT, Pan IIM transformed itself into a lobby group.
- For NLUs, possibly the first attempt to unite was made in 2017. NLIU Bhopal was witnessing student protests and serious charges of corruption and nepotism were levelled against the admin. The student associations of NLSIU, NALSAR and NUJS wrote a letter jointly expressing solidarity with NLIU and used the hashtag #NationaliseNLUs on Twitter.
- In 2018, NUJS held a physical protest in the college using the hashtag and chanting "Nationalise NLUs"
- In 2019, lawyer and BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi (an NLU parent) introduced a private bill in the Lok Sabha seeking to Nationalise NLUs. The bill also proposed a major branding change. Like the IITs, the existing NLUs would be renamed as NLU Bangalore (instead of NLSIU), NLU Hyderabad (instead of NALSAR) etc.
- Unfortunately, NLU students and alumni did not unite behind these efforts. In fact, NLSIU alumni and VC Sudhir Krishnaswamy seriously undermined these efforts. NLSIU challenged domicile reservation in the Karnataka High Court instead of unitedly challenging all NLU reservation in the SC, jointly with other NLUs. Shockingly, NLSIU's counsel contended before the court that only NLSIU is the only genuine "national" NLU and other NLUs are "state" NLUs, as NLSIU's VC is the CJI and a BCI trust set up NLSIU. He conveniently forgot that some NLUs also have the CJI as VC and NLSIU is also the creature of a state legislation. To make matters worse, Sudhir summarily withdrew from the CLAT.
- One positive effort has been the establishment of the CAN Foundation by NLU alumni (Confederation of Alumni of NLUs). However, this body has restricted itself to raising money for scholarships and organise guest lectures by judges. No serious engagement with the government and CJI has taken place, no attempt to form a lobby group like Pan IIT. Also, the CAN Foundation was mostly driven by NLIU Bhopal alumni. The present team does not seem to have anyone from NLSIU. Also, unlike Pan IIT, the most influential of the NLU alumni do not seem to be involved.
- So the key question is whether NLU alumni can do what IIT and IIM alumni have done. Do the NLUs require a powerful supporter like President Kalam or Narayan Murthy or Vinod Gupta? Could the CAN Foundation be the basis for a Pan NLU body? Will the attendance of the PM, President or CJI at a conference give the impetus? Could Chandrachud be the well-wisher NLUs need?Would love to hear your thoughts.
Sources:
https://sites.google.com/site/ruraltransformationtrack/welcome-letter-from-santhanam
https://www.rediff.com/money/2006/oct/19iit.htm
https://www.rediff.com/money/2006/nov/09trans.htm
https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/pm-narendra-modi-at-iit-global-summit-pan-iit-movement-can-help-realise-dream-of-aatmanirbhar-india-1746797-2020-12-04
https://sites.google.com/site/ruraltransformationtrack/welcome-letter-from-santhanam
http://www.lokvani.com/lokvani/article.php?article_id=3799
https://www.paniit.org/about
http://abdulkalam.nic.in/sp231206.html
https://www.legallyindia.com/nls-nalsar-nujs-release-statement-in-solidarity-with-nliu-bhopal-students-call-to-nationalisenlus-20171110-8885
https://www.legallyindia.com/nls-nalsar-nujs-release-statement-in-solidarity-with-nliu-bhopal-students-call-to-nationalisenlus-20171110-8885
https://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/nujs-leads-nlu-student-consortium-demand-for-ini-status-to-nlus-with-law-day-demonstrations-20181127-9661
https://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/mp-meenakshi-lekhi-to-introduce-nationalise-nlu-bill-in-lok-sabha-tomorrow-20191205-11064
https://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/law/national-law-universities-need-structural-reform-1502885439.html
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/kozhikode/pan-iim-meet-calls-for-radical-changes-in-future-of-education/article37978855.ece
https://www.pressreader.com/india/hindustan-times-ranchi/20130401/281719792043256
I can't pin-point the exact reason why this has happened to NLUs, since I am presently in my 3rd yr at prob the most toxic and disunited batch across NLUs, i.e. 24 batch of Gunloo. I can speak fr my disunited batch's perspective.
The seeds of disunity and bitching was engrained in my batchmates fr my first yr itself. As the semester turned into an online one, cheap, low-level politics starting taking center-stage, and most of the students' started back-biting one another. Some students were mocked at the expense of others, and within the starting of the 2nd yr a high amount of Toxicity and Disunity had set in the batch, and for a lot of students from different backgrounds it became extremely tough for surviving, even though the semesters were online.
One particular incident which would tell the horrible state of affairs was when a boy who had lost his parent to Covid, could not submit a particular project and requested the batch to collectively postpone the assignment. Some of the batchmates instead of emphatising with his condition, went ahead and even berated him for his inability to complete the project.
This was just a small incident, majority of the incidents of utter selfishness and back-bitching would be too inhuman to say here.
All in all, I feel that this is a common thing across majority of the NLUs, where standing United for even one minor te is unheard of. Though our batch is an example of an extreme case of selfishness and toxicity, I don't think that the situation would be much better elsewhere.
My value addition to this debate would be on the aspect of differential attitude of NLSIU. I feel that in respect of IITs and IIMs, the individual institutes based out of Kharagpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Ahmedabad and other cities have been national institutes from the day-1.
I also believe that all these individual institutes in themselves have had an independent brand value and therefore they readily joined hands in the name of PAN--- entity.
No when we talk about NLU's we deliberately ignore the fact that we are not national institutes at the onset.
Moreover, except for NLSIU > NALSAR > NUJS, the rest of NLU's are not even on nearby footing.
The difference in RML/RGNUL and NLU Assam is similarly high. Now in such a scenario, the NLSIU feels that the partnership is not on equal terms of give-and-take but more on 'Altruistic' terms of 'Have' and 'Have-not'.
Then the issue of Jindal Global, CLC, GLC, Symbi, Amity and ILS giving fight for better legal education is also a problem.
IITs and IIMs are having a global brand value and have standards at such high level.
To achieve that level of brand and success is like expecting our NLUs to become international centres of legal education like Ox-bridge, which is a tough objective. Furthermore we cannot cite lack of legal resources for this deficiency in the performances of our Law Colleges, since our Indian Legal Jurisprudence is almost on equal footing with that of UK and USA in its strength.
Thus what remains is sheer lack of will and temperament. This is the basic reason why NLUs cannot equate themselves to IITs and IIMs.
PS: Ask a layman and he will tell you that an IITian or IIM graduate would never behave in the manner a Lawyer behaves in public. There are Whatsapp video of Lawyers begging in Allahabad High Court and on another occasion a lady lawyer shouting on a Judge. In Uttar Pradesh Lawyers are shooting each other in elections. Oudh Bar and Allahabad Bar going on strikes. Elder committee of Allahabad Bar being beaten by Allahabad Bar President.
These are not the ways in which other technical and management based professionals behave in public.
"Technical and management-based professionals" have been quite openly casteist, abusive and bigoted in public.
They have founded enterprises such as Byju's where staff-members are threatened, been accused of rape and been let off due to "being the state's future assets" (Guwahati HC) and so much more.
The mind-drain into engineering colleges is responsible for the current state of affairs in India for a large part - where a large number of engineering graduates have been misled into believing that their education as an engineer allows them to make highbrow commentary on all public policy matters as well as society, art and culture.
1) https://qz.com/india/2001747/iit-kharagpur-professor-abusing-sc-st-students-is-not-a-one-off/
2) https://thewire.in/caste/interview-merit-iit-caste-discrimination-vipin-veetilg
3) https://sabrangindia.in/article/how-do-casteism-bigotry-continue-thrive-iits
So Sudhir Krishnaswamy's indifference to other NLUs should be seen in that context. Ask his former students at NUJS how he behaved with them. Has Sudhir even hired a single new law prof who is not from NLSIU?
Thus, if we want to unite all NLUs then the boomers have to be kept out. To some extent millennials too. Gen Z has to drive it entirely. Only Gen Z can make it happen.
You are from NUJS, have founded a CLAT coaching, and have published a book, right?
https://www.legallyindia.com/home/dsnlu-student-drafted-nlu-bill-now-introduced-in-lok-sabha-for-national-importance-status-to-nlus-20170804-8706
NIRF has ranked NLSIU, NLUD and NALSAR as the top 3 NLUs for 4 years in a row, while the the fourth position and below has always changed. It means that there is a clearly demarcated tier 1 brand and tier 2 brand of NLUs. Also, JGLS is going to debut in NIRF this year and if it gets the fourth spot then it will further show the gulf between tier 1 brand NLUs and tier 2 brand NLUs.
Thus, it is foolish to think that NLUs can be unified like IITs. Let us at least wait till the NIRF rankings and see at what rank JGLS makes its debut. That will confirm or rebut my hypothesis.
Now contrast that with NLUs. Only NLSIU, NALSAR and NLUD have truly good faculty. As for placements, only the top 7 (adding NUJS, NLUJ and GNLU) are at par. So where is the common ground?