As noted in the first part of this report, Visva Bharati has had a glorious past and a controversial present. In the recent past, one of its former vice chancellors, Dilip Sinha, had to go to prison on charges of malpractice. Around the same time, Sabujkali Sen, a professor and head of the department of philosophy and comparative religion was compelled to complain to the chief minister after she was allegedly roughed up by a student leader.
In the past decade or so, successive VCs, keen to buy peace with the students, teachers and employees, often yielded to their irrational demands. Relaxation of admission criterion to allow local students with less than minimum qualifications was commonplace. VCs were also known to cancel examinations and ordering fresh ones because that’s what the students wanted, throwing all norms to the winds and ignoring the department head’s opinion.
Visva Bharati, though a central university and blessed with the great heritage of Tagore’s initiatives, gradually became a hunting ground of local vested interests, catering mostly to local people. Barring a few departments like Kala Bhavana, most of the other departments were reduced to churning out degrees of little or no significant value. Shocked at these developments, eminent personalities like artists K G Subramaniyam, Somnath Hore, Riten Majumdar, writer Mahasweta Devi, academicians Amlan Dutta, Amiya Deb and many others had, some years earlier, jointly appealed to the President and Prime Minister to put a stop to the anarchy that had descended here.
Responding to similar appeals, then President Abdul Kalam finally ordered a High Level Committee to go into the problems. Headed by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, now governor of West Bengal, and consisting of members like Amlan Dutta, Romila Thapar and others, it had prepared a lengthy report and recommended ways to make it a centre of excellence.The Centre was also quick in granting aid amounting to Rs.95 crore to help the university to take some initiatives along those lines.
Compared to other state universities in West Bengal, Visva Bharati is much better off on funds. In the 11th five-year plan, it got Rs 57 crore as grant under the head of general development, Rs 79 crore to expand the existing facilities to accommodate more students from the OBC category, another Rs 5 crore to renovate and upgrade the Tagore museums, and finally, the one-time grant of Rs 95 crore to pursue the goals set by the HLC report. As a senior professor comments, “The lack of funds is not the issue here, we have got plenty of money. The challenge is how to make good use of it.”
Indeed, the sudden grant of funds and quick utilisation of it once made a senior professor subject of a CBI investigation. It was in the mid-1990s, around the time Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee was the VC. The HRD ministry granted an ad hoc funding to all central university to augment their library stocks, with a promise of more to follow, provided this could be utilised within a stipulated time.
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Visva Bharati also got a few crore rupees. But the post of the chief librarian had been vacant for quite some time. So, the VC turned to Shyamal Sarkar, a senior professor of English, for help and asked him to take up the additional responsibility to oversee the purchase of the books. Prof Sarkar completed the task within the stipulated period. As a recognition of his good work, the university got a further grant from UGC to set up the computer network for the entire library. But, a section of employees and local suppliers of books, were up in arms against Prof Sarkar, alleging corrupt practice, as the books were purchased directly from publishers, bypassing local vendors.
So, when Bhattacharjee left midway through his term, his successor, Dilip Sinha, immediately obliged the employees and the local vendors by ordering a CBI inquiry against Prof Sarkar. The CBI officers investigated the matter for some time and finally closed the case, clearing Prof Sarkar. However, a heartbroken Prof Sarkar died after some time.
This time, the employees have demanded a CBI inquiry into the doings of the incumbent VC, Rajat Kanta Ray. They have alleged that he often resorted to nepotism while recruiting people. But the same bunch were recently busy canvassing the case of one of their candidates for a post in the Rabindra Bhavana museum and putting pressure on the authorities for his appointment. The candidate in question, a local lad, had been a student leader for some time and was applicant to as many as five posts in the Rabindra Bhavana. Eventually, his candidature was rejected.
Similarly, the recent trend in purchases by the university has caused much reason for the established suppliers to be upset, as is evident from the complaints aired by employees. As one insider comments, “perhaps the present agitation has its roots in this sort of incident.”