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v1.1 (Nov 28, 2005)

Prashant Iyengar

IPF Fellow 2006-2007

The Proposal

In November 2004, my final year in college, I began a project to put up research papers of students from my University on the internet via a wiki site[1]. The idea was to build a free archive of Indian legal research which could be used and extended by students coming after us instead of their having to redo our efforts. Furthermore, it was to act as a foundation for students across law universities in India to share their research and, possibly, collaboratively generate more research. Most importantly however, it was an attempt to step away from the rabid competitive ethos that governs student research both within and between Law Universities across India.        
The selection of a wiki model was therefore meant to achieve two purposes – Firstly, it was, because of its ease of use, to provide the requisite architecture that would enable collaboration. Secondly in its espousal of an open information access model, it was to serve as the site for critique and self reflection by students about the restrictive information policies that Indian universities have followed so far.

 The project was warmly received within my college and I received close to 150 research papers from students eager to share their work. Due to other academic constraints I was forced to discontinue development of that aspect of the website. However, an associate project that I run from the site – a daily legal e-newsletter which delivers news from 6 national dailies – continues to this date and has kept the site from lapsing into irrelevance. It remains a lasting testament to my keenness in carrying forward the open information project I’d begun.

 This is a proposal that attempts to take stock of open collaborative knowledge production practices elsewhere and to use those insights in evolving an information policy for universities in India to adopt. Side by side, as a continuing praxis, I hope to revive and extend the project I’ve described above and to draw upon its successes and failures to guide me in my research.

Background

In the last two decades, legal education in India has undergone radical changes in its methods of delivery. An unflattering account of the conditions of legal education that were prevalent in India prior to this change has been provided by Prof. Upendra Baxi[2] in what he himself terms as a “bleak” account :

“The concept of full-time law studies was virtually unknown. Full-time law teachers and students were a rare phenomenon; LL.B. degrees the easiest to obtain; no noticeable application of the mind was required to graduate, even with distinction…. The tradition of legal writing, beyond textbooks, was still nascent. Colonial patterns of legal education, firmly in place for decades, made any alternative way of doing legal education almost inconceivable..” (emphasis added)

The need for a more full-time, systematic and multidisciplinary approach to legal tutelage has been met over the past two decades with the establishment of specialized Law Universities in India, beginning with the Indian Law Institute and followed by National Law Universities each at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and Bhopal[3]. By offering a hitherto unavailable high standard of legal education, these institutions have been able to bring about a change in the kind and quality of entrants to the profession and the way that the legal profession is perceived in society.

 However, the success of these universities in the project to revive Indian legal scholarship, has been far more measured. From the standpoint of one who has undergone the journey through one of these institutions, this may be attributed at least in part to an overriding competitive ethos that forecloses opportunities for students to engage with one another meaningfully. From the entrance exam to the university – a national merit test which is highly competitive – to the grade point evaluation system and highly prized “moot court” competitions within these universities, there are systemic pressures that pit student against student in a continuous zero-sum game into which they are co-opted whether they choose to be or not.   

 On the other hand, the high degree of “professionalism” of these universities has led to the adoption of specialized techniques of imparting legal knowledge which, paradoxically enough, disfavour a broader and more fluid understanding of the law which is essential in order to be able to critique it. Over a five year course where a student must clear up to 50 neatly divided courses, although there are many disciplines she may learn, her experience need not necessarily for that reason be cross-disciplinary. This is because the occasion to coalesce experiences gained from a study of different subjects is rarely supplied unless the student seeks it out on her own. Praxis – something you only do as a hobby - is always at a discount.

As a result of this professionalism, the rift between theory and everyday practices has somehow become routinized.[4] We are compelled to study the law as an abstract concept, as an adjective of society rather than as being organically rooted within it. This leads to a culture of automatic harmonization of contradictions between the practices students follow and the theory they must learn. For instance, while we might make wholesale use of photocopying techniques and the free information available on the internet to complete our course papers throughout college life, the odds these practices are at with our inherited copyright law, are hardly ever a matter of genuine concern.

 The purpose of this project is thus to animate this contradiction in the realm of information policy – and to so conscientize people - by making people aware of alternate practices and  of alternate information policies..

 The completed proposal would have three main components

1)      A tool-kit for an information policy that universities in India, and possibly other developing countries, may customize to their liking and adopt.

2)      A free web-platform through which law students across India may collaborate and share their research.       

3)      A free Law Entrance Exam tutorial software.          
Entrance to the law universities I have discussed above is through an annual written test which is highly competitive. This has led to the sprouting of a number of “coaching institutions” which collect high fees for the dedicated courses they offer. The result has been that the prospects of students who are not able to afford these services materially decline.      
Some of these coaching institutions also issue elaborate confidentiality threats to students forbidding them from disclosing any of their material. They tend to promote a culture of reservation and secrecy.      
As a component of this proposal, I intend to program a high-quality software that would serve as a free tutorial/testing software for students.         

During the course and in the context of each of the above projects, I propose to inquire into the following two research themes

1)      Collaborative models of knowledge production      
While collaboration by itself is not a new phenomenon, distributed collaboration, - made possible by strides in information technology - is. Although distributed collaboration throws up many hitherto unavailable knowledge production options, it coughs up management problems of its own. What are the old rules of collaboration that may be safely emulated through technology for this distributed scenario to succeed? What new rules must be invented or to what extent can code counterbalance the challenges that this distributed model poses. Particularly are there patterns that help cope with the problem of scale?

2)      Open Content and Standards         
The IPF fellowship guidelines frame the issue as one of open content models running the risk of dispensing with editorial standards. Instead of pursuing the two research questions posed thereafter (How can quality standards emerge in a distributed environment? Are they robust enough to be relied upon?), I’d like to recast the issue and test a hypothesis of my own.    
In his excellent essay “Recycling Modernity – Pirate Electronic Cultures in India”[5], Ravi Sundaram demonstrates how in the realm of physical infrastructure, electronic recycling practices prevalent in India had been successful in expanding computer culture, by making it inexpensive and accessible. “Most importantly”, he says, “recycling provided a practical education to tens of thousands of people left out of the upper-caste technical universities.”.  
Brian Larkin demonstrates this hypothesis by showing how the physical infrastructure put in place by a rampant pirate media market in Nigeria was a critical precursor to the evolution of an indigenous media industry in that country.[6]     
Although Larkin’s thesis does not comment on the quality of the content flowing from this new “pirate” infrastructure induced media industry, I want to try to put this model to test in the realm of content production. Would making an infrastructure of free legal research available, have the effect of improving the overall quality of research all round?   
In a third world context where English is not the native language and indigenous content is still at a discount, to what extent do inflexible “editorial standards” enact formidable barriers against legitimate attempts at presenting original views?
The hypothesis here is that the question of open content standards sounds a bit exotic in the face of the absence of open content in India. That question must be postponed in order for the open content infrastructure to be established.

 Methodology:

The proposal aims to employ both doctrinal as well as empirical methods. Doctrine would form the basis of particular strategies which I would attempt to incorporate in each of the projects above. I would then evaluate each of the doctrines against the successes or failures of those projects.

Plan of Action

Information Policy Tool-Kit

Through the course of the fellowship, I would be studying the following

1)      Existing information policies both in western counties as well as in India.

2)      Existing information practices both in western counties and in India.

3)      Collaborative knowledge production models

4)      Practices of online communities

5)      Open Content Licenses

The end “product” would be a customizable information policy which academic institutions could mould to suit their requirements.

Collaborative Web Platform :

I intend using the site I’d designed during my final year at my university, (http://wiki.nalsartech.org) for this component of the proposal.

The software that runs the site, by itself, is robust and my familiarity with PHP enables me to code in any features that are not installed with it. This would give me the freedom I need to experiment with theories I might wish to test in the course of my research.

The Alternative Law Forum has kindly accepted my offer to situate the site within the ALF framework. This would allow me to harness their goodwill and insights whenever required towards carrying the project forward.

I would spend the first two months of the fellowship program in redesigning the site in preparation for the requirements of this proposal. During this initial period I would be adding content to the site by myself and with the aid of any volunteers interested in the project..

By July when universities normally start their terms, I aim to have already put in place a defined structure for students to be able to contribute content to the site. (Ideally, by then I would have broken every process down into definite “tasks” which students could volunteer to fill) I would then send letters to student associations soliciting involvement from law students of various universities. This could be accompanied by visits to those universities which would be used for further advocacy of the goals of the project. Wherever possible, the support of faculty members of these universities would be secured.

If necessary, I would enlist the assistance of the Alternative Law Forum, India to issue certificates of recognition to those who had filled in a certain number of tasks.

Over the entire period of the proposal i.e. from July 2006 to April 2007 I aim to have added up to at least 500 pages of content.

 If successful, the project would in turn generate network effects, prompting a greater section of the legal community in India to look to the internet for their research needs. This in turn would drive the demand for innovative (low-cost if not free) web-services.

 The Law Entrance Examination Software :

This is also the continuation of an earlier unfinished project. I have begun the process of coding a testing software using HTML/Javascript. The choice of coding language was owing to the fact that it is the easiest method to ensure cross-platform compatibility. While 40% of the coding of the software has been completed to date, the mammoth task of filling in a question bank remains. I also intend the software to contain large quantities of reading material to provide a context to each of the questions.

I aim to release a first version of the software around the end of June 2006 with 1000 questions. Thereafter, I aim to release bi-monthly updates with 2000 question each. The software would be integrated with a website on which I plan to provide bulletin board facilities. I would also be examining the feasibility of compiling the question bank into a cheap print form to cater to the needs of those without internet access.

 The success of the free software I am trying to code could, at the very least, mean the lowering of fees charged by these coaching institutions. It is also an attempt at injecting a culture of sharing into law students as they embark on their respective legal careers.

 

How can the results be applied in practice?

The successful completion of the plan according to its specifications would, it is hoped, lay the base for collaborative research across universities. It would introduce the “open” tradition to these universities in a very functional manner - a necessary prelude to it’s widespread incorporation within academia in India. By entrenching the open model into the universities it is hoped that this influence would trickle “upwards” to policy making circles paving the way for adoption of open models in implementation of electronic governance programs.

 More than assisting aspirants to the various law universities, the Law Entrance Exam Software would, it is hoped, hold a mirror up to these universities which are increasingly becoming unaffordable to most but the upper echelons of society. By demonstrating a viable free model, it is hoped that they would be made aware of their enhanced responsibilities in ensuring their admission standards do not inadvertently end up favouring certain classes to the exclusion of others.