Our Law Examinees

 

The law examinations in universities of Orissa show an interesting trend since the last many years. All the answer papers are not only identical, word for word, but coincide geometrically in comma, hyphen and full stop. The printer’s devils in the law question answer books are faithfully carried over to the answer papers. 

Some examinees begin their answer papers in answering the first question in the preceding year’s question paper. In some answer papers, the examinees mention the page, volume and editions of Laws of England quoted verbatim in paragraphs, while others don’t forget to state the name of the firm of attorneys that conducted the case before the Privy Council. Notwithstanding these features, there has been no report of any malpractice in the examination. Examiners find their task of assessing the papers reduced to merely counting the numbers of questions answered. 

The merry-go-round of the law examinations seemed to have been drastically stopped, perhaps, to accord with the atmosphere that the Emergency has brought in. When the authorities brought in the police to guard the examinees and prevent mass copying, the examinees protested and stuck their right to copy from ready made answer books as a time honored practice, if not of prescription. The result has been mass scale abandonment of law examination of the Utkal and Jabalpur Universities due to be held in July- August. 

            The authorities assert that the demand of examinees is too prosperous to be considered. But one feels like asking; Are the students entirely to be blamed for this?

 

Books

The university has prescribed as text books volumes of practitioners’ editions. For instance, Mulla’s “Transfer of Property Act” - a student who has the foolhardiness to stick to this prescribed textbooks is sure to get confused and plucked. The University Board of Studies never takes the trouble of prescribing textbooks that students can reasonably manage. The University has not brought out suitable textbooks for law student who mean to study, in all sincerity. The result has been that student goes in for readymade answer books.

 

Teachers

Legal education has been quite lucrative for universities. Yet they do not spare money to hire able teachers for law classes. For the contemptuous sum of rupees three hundred per month for 8 months in a year, the university attracts either young lawyers or writers who hardly exert themselves because of paltry remuneration offered. Consequently, student hardly get any assistance from their teacher or have notebooks to fall back on.

 

Question Setters

Not only do the students take the help of the readymade answer books, the question setters also go in for those very books to copy down the questions verbatim. The questions are set as they appear in the answer books, oblivious of the fact that some of them are outside the syllabus of the universities, if the prescribed remuneration is not adequate. They should provide more for intelligent question setting. Questions should be so framed that answer books will be of no assistance to the examinees if they have not put in proper study. The system of answering questions with the help of books can even be averted.

 

Educational Background

Our educational system has gone down to such an extent that most of the students know no better than cramming readymade answers to some typical questions. This is prevalent right from the primary to the university stages the teachers do not build up the foundation of the students for the higher study. This compels the students to rely on readymade answers. Devotion to learning is not cultivated in them.

I venture to say that, unless proper education is imparted to the students and proper background is built, mere police action and strict vigilance in the examination halls would not eradicate unfair practice from the field or restore a healthy order of things. It is high time that the educational authorities, who are at the helm of affairs, do a bit of brain –racking and blame themselves for this sorry state of affairs instead of putting the responsibility on the students for the ugly shape of things in the intellectual life of our land.

 

(Published: The News of the World, September 9, 1975)