Setting the Bar

Padma SreeProf. N.R. Madhava Menon, Ph.D. is one of the longest serving and popular legal educators in the country. An avowed institution builder, the architect of the 5 Year LLB Program, founder and Vice Chancellor of two leading law universities in India - National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU) and National University of Jurisdictional
Sciences, Kolkata (NUJS) – endeared five decades of hard work to put Indian legal education at par with the developed countries.

Prof. Menon is the recipient of the Living Legend of Law Award by the International Bar Association (IBA) and the Rotary
Club of Bangalore Award for Vocational Excellence. Prof. Menon has taught law in more than dozen universities in India and abroad during his long academic tenure. He is also the author of several books, articles and monographs on a variety of legal subjects. Currently, Prof. Menon devotes much of his time promoting human rights, laws, judicial reforms and professional advancement programs for young lawyers under the aegis of Menon Institute for Legal Advocacy Training (MILAT), Trivandrum which he heads.

Recognizing his contribution to public service, then President of India of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam conferred on him Padma Shree Award on the occasion of India’s Republic Day Celebrations in 2003. This was a first for a person from the legal teaching fraternity. Prof. Menon was on campus recently at the launch of Garden City College of Law. GCC
Correspondents,Vibha Luvenia and Dharmik Shah engaged him in a conversation on the sidelines of the festivities of the day.

One on One
Q: Welcome to GCC. How would you like to be known by our readers ?
A: I am a person who did not work for well paying jobs. I was born to be a teacher, a very different one through
Q: What made you take up the legal profession?
A: It was more by accident than choice. I happen to have lived in a city that had only two options, engineering or law. I chose law because I was a good orator and debater. What choices did I have? My mother had her own limitations and my father died before I was two years old.
Q: It must have been a tough time for you. So how did you make it in the legal domain?
A: It has been a very challenging experience with its ups and downs. But I have taught in more than eight universities.
Q: GCC has now ventured in the arena of legal erudition. What are your expectations from its college of law?
A: I believe in innovation and experimentation. That is the only way out. Law is not the same always. It is dynamic. As a legal educator, you have to dream,speculate and try to provide justice to the best of your ability. GCC must be the laboratory for legal education.
Q: Looking at the justice system in our country can you say there is parity between law and punishment?
A: It is a faulty legal system that ensures ninety percent of the innocent are punished. The authoritarians are in total control and Law has become an instrument of harassment for instance the conduct of police officers at the police stations. It is left for the current crop of graduates to remedy the system.
Q: Share your feelings on being a Padma Shree...
A: I really don’t know how it happened and who suggested or recommended my name for the award. I was in Kolkata when I got the news. It is one of my best moments and I am proud of the honour.
Q: Is it still necessary to have reservation for the backward classes?
A: Reservation must be stopped by 2010 but the government may extend it as they have done earlier.Reservations are necessary based on a number of things such as rural and urban divide, the physically challenged but reservation on
basis of religion is totally a different issue.
Q: Your last word to Gardenians?
A: Work hard!