Welcome to AIL, where the Competition Act, 2002 isn’t just about regulating anti-competitive practices—it’s a perfect metaphor for life here. A small, cramped campus, a college administration that believes in the sanctity of outdated rules, and a mix of students who are just as likely to Google the answer as they are to read a textbook. The Competition Act aims to foster free competition, but here, it’s more like trying to follow the plot of Inception—confusing, unnecessarily convoluted, and ultimately, exhausting.
Section 3: Anti-Competitive Agreements—The Syllabus Stranglehold
Under Section 3 of the Competition Act, anti-competitive agreements between businesses that distort market competition are prohibited. At AIL, the anti-competitive agreements aren’t so much between businesses, but rather between the college administration and the old syllabus that we’re still stuck with.
The college clings to this outdated exam pattern like it’s their lifeline. The 6-page answers for an 11-mark question? A relic of the past that seems designed solely to test your endurance rather than your actual understanding of the subject. This is not “education,” it’s a test of patience, where you must carefully pad your answers with enough filler to reach the desired page count, often by explaining the same point three different ways, like a bad infomercial on repeat.
You’d think that with the way they structure exams, we’d be mastering law. But no. It’s more like being trapped in Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus”, where we’re condemned to write endless pages, only to submit them into the void of indifference. It’s a game of survival, not knowledge. The administration holds the monopoly on “education,” yet offers a product that’s long past its expiry date.
Section 4: Abuse of Dominant Position—The Tyranny of Rules
Section 4 prohibits the abuse of a dominant position, but here, the college administration has turned the abuse of power into an art form. They control the entire college, from college gates to class timings to compulsory attendance rules that make you feel like a prisoner in an academic gulag. They’ve got us on a short leash, and we, the students, are often just passengers in the backseat of a car that never stops moving, no matter how many potholes we hit.
The grading system feels more like a random act of vengeance than an objective measure of knowledge. Imagine The Godfather—you show loyalty, you follow the rules, and then bam, you’re handed a 16/26 in internals, after all your effort. What was all the hard work for? The underlying message is clear: Don’t get attached to fairness, because in this system, you’ll rarely get what you deserve. Absurd would be an understatement.
Section 19: Investigation, Inquiry, and Search—The Quest for Knowledge
Section 19 of the Competition Act focuses on investigating anti-competitive practices. In our college, we’re constantly in search of meaning. We attend lectures, hoping to find some sort of clarity, but more often than not, we leave with even more confusion than when we walked in. It’s a perpetual quest for knowledge that feels more like the existential crisis you read about in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness—trying to make sense of an absurd world that refuses to offer up any coherent answers.
We try our best to absorb what’s being taught, but we often find ourselves struggling to decode legal texts, only to realize they’ve been misinterpreted by a syllabus that’s outdated by at least a decade. It’s like Neo in the Matrix, trying to wake up from a simulation that everyone else seems to think is perfectly fine. Why are we still stuck in this old system, pretending it works?
Section 27: Penalties for Anti-Competitive Practices—The Cost of Mediocrity
Section 27 of the Competition Act outlines penalties for anti-competitive behaviour, but here in law school, the penalty for everything seems to be mediocrity. If apathy were a crime, I’d be serving a life sentence by now. The 6-page answer requirement is itself a penalty—a cruel joke for students who just want to pass but don’t have the stamina to churn out another academic novel every exam season.
The penalty for striving to break free from this cycle? Failure. You try to aim for a higher grade, but the grading system is so arbitrary that all you get for your efforts is an even more crushing reminder of how this game works: just survive, don’t thrive. The real cost? Losing the passion for learning amid the treadmill of outdated syllabi and nonsensical rules that exist for no reason other than tradition.
The Price of Admission: Resale Price Maintenance in Law School’s Economy
Under Section 3, the Act prohibits resale price maintenance, which could apply to the fixed price of hope in law school. Every semester, you pay the price—tuition, books, assignments—and buy into the illusion that this time, you’ll break through to excellence. But by the end of it, you’re left with a distressed product: professors who only half-teach, and exams that don’t seem to measure anything real.
It’s like you’ve bought a ticket to a show, but halfway through, you realize it’s the same old tired performance. And yet, we keep coming back for more, despite knowing that the return on investment rarely meets expectations. Nietzsche’s Ubermensch might have conquered the system, but here, we’re just doing our best to survive the corporate bureaucracy of a law school that refuses to change.
The Game of Survival, Not Competition
The Competition Act aims to promote healthy competition, but here in AIL, the only competition is for survival. The system doesn’t exist to help students reach their potential—it’s designed to keep you running in circles until you’ve got nothing left to give. The Punjabi University is just another part of the game, where absurdity reigns, and the most we can hope for is that we make it out with some shred of our sanity intact.
At the end of the day, we keep playing the game because, well, what else is there? Kafka’s Castle is real, and we’re all just trying to make it past the gates, one pointless exam at a time. Some of us will make it. Some will leave for better opportunities—perhaps to join the forces. But for now, we endure, hoping the credits roll and we can all walk off set with our degrees—and maybe even a little meaning.
–This article has been written by Adarsh (4th year).
