NLSIU vice-chancellor (VC) Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy has had his hands full since finally joining the college where he had completed his undergrad just over 20 years ago.
An NLU grad becoming VC at their own old law school is undoubtedly historical but with the weight of NLSIU alumni on his shoulders (who also assisted him in speeding up his quagmired appointment, it’s probably fair to say that the pressure on and expectations of Krishnaswamy are immense.
He confirmed he was aware of those expectations yesterday by phone, in his first full interview since taking office. But said that change would happen “slowly”, and not be an overnight affair.
In addition, the future was more important than the past for him right now, he said. “I draw a bright line here. I’m not too interested in the past, [apart from what is required to move forward], but I’m not only going to dredge the past.”
As for the future, we understand from sources that Krishnaswamy had also submitted a pretty detailed and ambitious point-by-point vision for NLSIU to the VC selection committee, and this has informally been circulating amongst some alumni circles.
However, Krishnaswamy said that he was “not going to focus on some large vision document right now”.
Engage
Instead, he said, he’s had his hands full since joining last Wednesday.
He has met all faculty and staff and focused on preparing for the five governing body meetings on Saturday, and the convocation on Sunday (at which one of the speakers made some interesting statements).
But “effort number one” was meeting the students. “I have just gone from student cohort to cohort and met all barring two (whom I [met yesterday] afternoon since they’re writing exams),” he said. “The last thing I wanted to be is disruptive of that.”
The priority to engage with students and address the recent discontent in the student body was important, according to him. “I suppose that there are many things going on, but it has a common root in that people don’t make an effort with people. If you think you can hector these young kids into submission - which has somehow become a dominant form of interactions.”
He said he didn’t give any promises or speeches to students, but instead asked them: “You tell me what are your priorities. You ask me anything you want to know.”
“I had a very decent exchange with them,” Krishnaswamy said, noting that there had been no protests, black bands, placards or posters during their interactions.
Of course the protests were partly about Krishnaswamy becoming VC, though, right? “True in part,” he responded, “but they have been protesting, if you pay careful attention, in an extended way for eight weeks.
“The issues have been different and the last three to four weeks may have been very intense. But I think my appointment and the VC appointment process got added as an attachment at the very end of what was a very simmering protest for four weeks.”
Initiate
At the outset, several issues would need to get done “immediately” and had been placed before the executive council (EC), said Krishnaswamy.
Such as the issue of Rs 50,000+ fee hikes, which we had first reported in July.
“I think we’ll come to a reasonable close in a short while,” said the new VC. “What was important was for the students to be heard. The EC committee met the student representatives and have hammered out something of a solution, which I will promptly implement from tomorrow [later today, Tuesday].
“We’re not going to roll back the fee-hike but moderate its negative effects.”
The announcement will be made later today.
Emanate
When asked whether it was a priority for NLS to become a national Institution of Eminence (IOE) (which NLS, Nalsar Hyderabad and NUJS Kolkata did not apply for in 2017 but that JGLS won last month), Krishnaswamy said: “I think I’m certainly going to explore that right away. I need to work through the micro detail of regulations for that we did it at Azim Premji as well, we were on that list of initially certified organisations.
“I kinda know it, but I want to go over it in detail.”
The IoE rules are complicated and so far have tended to favour multi-disciplinary universities. “It appears other [non-multidisciplinary institutions have made it],” he said, “but if we are not multi-disciplinary enough, we can promise in that direction.”
Facilitate
Will part of his plans for NLSIU include faculty hires? Very much so, according to Krishnaswamy. “The EC has authorised to begin the process,” he said, with that authorisation including a lot of freedom on numbers and budgets. “It means all those things. I can prioritise where I want to - start, entry-, senior- or mid-level positions. And that also means I work out a financial plan that supports that, and also means I follow rules and regulations of notifying it and moving it along.”
None of those factors would be “long term or mid-term hindrances”, which were not “sharply externally constrained by factors”, except for finance perhaps.
Monetise
Talking of finances, things are not looking good, he explained, having pored through them in some detail.
“We have presented a deficit budget this year, I understand that we have for the last two years as well. That is the rude status at the moment. It’s not happy,” he noted about the deficit that amounted to Rs 4.89 crores in the last financial year. “I think we would have to rationalise a good plan.”
Going through how this plan could work, he said: “First and foremost - the fee-hike: that should help us net about Rs 2 crores out of this Rs 4.89 crores. And then there are two or three expenditure heads I’m looking at that we must seriously moderate, that might help us net another 1- 1.5 crore. That would still give us 1.4 crore to cover through other sources.”
Could those other sources also include alumni funding, as is so common in US universities? “Yes, alumni and other sources,” he said. “We don’t know yet, it’s not like fundraising from alumni has been that successful so far. But hopefully we’ll get some such model going.
“And if we do, my intention is that we need to look ahead, even with the deficit, we need to push ahead positively.”
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www.deccanherald.com/state/top-karnataka-stories/law-school-eludes-students-guv-yet-to-clear-quota-bill-749912.html
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Unfortunately, NALSAR, NLUD, NUJS, NLUJ and NLIU are all in non-BJP states right now. The will have to jointly stage a protest to pre-empt NLSIU's application, as their state govts will not be paid attention to by the central govt.
There is no time to lose. Unite now!
Also people should be given multiple options to contribute like for the general fund or sponsoring particular scholarships or activities which resonates personally with them. I think it will not generate a lot of money initially but if it is kept up for a number of years with an annual focus it will be an important contributor of funds in the medium to longer term.
It is also worth focussing on batch gifting particularly the ones which are having reunions that year on 5/10/15/20/25 year anniversaries. This is a common and sucessful way that US universities raise money. They almost make it a competition where each batch tries to raise more money than the previous years batch. Maybe they should also publish the names of all the donors every year in the year book and on the website.
It would be a better idea to go for state funding and reserve some seats for Karnataka domicile-students than making a government institution susceptible to vested private interests.
1) Alumni donation: Rs 10 crore is doable.
2) Law firms and companies: Another Rs 10 crore doable
3) Chair professorships funded by government, NGOs and industry: Can take care of salary of 10 profs for 5 years.
4) Get alumni to give lectures for free. Entire courses can be covered this way.
5) Sack the 5 or 6 most useless profs and replace with young assistant profs at 60% of their pay.
6) In holiday season, lease campus for private functions.
7) Distance learning/executive programmes
8) 5 NRI quota seats admission @ 10 lakhs a year fee (CLAT score must be in top 300)
9) Start a 1 year corporate law LLM and charge Rs 8 lakhs fees.
10) Invest in bonds.
Under RVR regime the CLAT Consortium got prime real estate on campus. How much is the univ getting and under what terms was it given? Also MBL and distance edu courses have brought in a steady stream of funds. Also I have heard that our NLS got a prestigious contract to conduct courses in a GoI sponsored tax academy in Nagpur where faculty earned whopping amounts. RVR and Nandi must have played favourities there. But the point is that our univ must have earned a fair share. This is different from the Rs 6 crore endowed Dept of Revenue Chair.
CCL, CWL and CEERA have had a stream of prestigious projects. Institutional fees must have brought in a fair amount of funds. We also got quite a few GoI endowed Chairs as also AO endowment. How are we still running on massive deficits for the last few years?
Usually admin flab and pilferage causes the mess. Creative accounting hides things. We don't need to do witch hunting but surely we can all do with some special audits. And certainly with how things happened inside EC, transparency should be a non-negotiable.
At a time when opacity has ensured breakdowns in corporate, banking, financial and even judicial sectors, we should certainly demand access to all EC, FC, AC minutes and agenda notes, historical and going forward. As they say honeymoons don't last forever.
www.deccanherald.com/city/top-bengaluru-stories/trying-to-restore-years-of-decline-says-nlsiu-vc-765599.html
www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/fee-hike-will-not-be-revoked-nlsiu-executive-council/article29571140.ece
Sure Sudhir is "new". While he may not have had access to (all) the records, it was well known among alumni, faculty and even folks in other NLUs that we were running on a deficit for more than a year.
In almost all the NLUs where students have protested, large-scale financial mismanagement was always involved. And every time enhanced student fees were used to finance most of the cover up. No one wants a witch hunt. But why is Sudhir already signalling that he would let bygones be? This wasn't a one-off deficit caused by the creation of white elephants as Sudhir seems to suggest.
The elephant in the room that needs to be addressed is that those so-called avoidable expenses were not decisions taken innocuously. RVR couldn't have done financial chicanery without a fair degree of institutional support from elements inside the university administration, faculty and the governing bodies.
Make no mistake. I am very happy to have Sudhir-Sarasu combo. But I am beginning to realize that us having staked so much on Sudhir certain things have now become "thought crimes". But I must speak my mind.
Are we now going to see some Keshavananda jugglery here involving so-called prospective application of transparency while leaving its "basic structure" open to Sudhir's interpretation? How is this different from what other NLU VCs are known to do?
Let the sleeping dogs (and buried financial logs) lie in the odd bushes that will not be poked. Is this the policy now?
www.deccanherald.com/city/top-bengaluru-stories/trying-to-reverse-years-of-decline-says-nlsiu-vc-765599.html
www.deccanherald.com/city/top-bengaluru-stories/trying-to-reverse-years-of-decline-says-nlsiu-vc-765599.html
We have all seen the non-transparent ways that the EC and other governing councils work. Even the internal administration runs on opacity. Why should we depend on "leaks" (motivated or not) and personal relations etc? Why shouldn't we get complete and total access to all minutes and agenda notes of EC et al till date? Going forward the SBA (and by extension the entire student body) must get automatic access to all agenda notes and minutes within 24 hours of being signed off.
Also it shouldn't be too radical to have non-voting observer status for SBA in these governing councils. After all nothing about us, without us. Sure they can also give similar non-voting observer status to PG, doctoral and MPP students as well.
The old guard despises in transparency. Sudhir is supposed to be the polar opposite.
We all worked on the promise called Sudhir. Time to put that faith and the man under some stress tests. Why this huge reluctance to paper over past and just talk of acche din like someone we all know so well.
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