Mamata Banerjee has put together a panel of eminent intellectuals to revive Kolkata’s prestigious Presidency University. Mohammed Safi Shamsi finds out what the task will entail.
All the chairs were on one side of the conference table; except one on the other side. The lone chair, the participants knew, was meant for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Not that people on the other side were lightweights — amongst them were Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and economist Isher Judge Ahluwalia. But Banerjee surprised everybody by taking a seat on the crowded side and asking Sen to occupy the VIP chair. She was here to listen to their counsel, Banerjee said. The issue under deliberation was how to restore Presidency University to its old glory. Banerjee may not have a quick-fix solution, but she knows it is a matter close to the heart of the Kolkata intelligentsia that orchestrated the Paribartan Chai (we want change) campaign that saw her end 34 years of Left rule in West Bengal. If Presidency is not attended to quickly, the same group may turn against her.
On June 3, Banerjee announced a panel of Presidency alumni who would chart a course of recovery for the once pre-eminent institution. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University, is its head, and Sen is the patron of the panel. Members include Ahluwalia (chairperson, Indian Council of Research on International Economic Relations), Abhijit Banerjee (professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Swapan Chakravorty (director, National Library), Sukanta Chaudhuri (professor emeritus of English, Jadavpur University), Himadri Pakrasi (professor of biology at Washington University in St Louis) and Ashoke Sen (eminent physicist). “My colleagues and I are expected to make a set of short-, medium- and long-term recommendations [to make Presidency a world-class institution] over the next two years and to monitor the implementation of these. Our terms of reference range over 15 points, including appropriate search procedures to recruit outstanding faculty and ways to improve the academic infrastructure and environment,” says Bose.
After a long pause, Presidency is being talked about in the city for the right reason. During the years of Left rule, it had gained notoriety for the rivalries between the various student unions, the decline in academic standards et cetera. In fact, the rise and decline of Presidency mirror those of West Bengal itself.
Presidency College was established in 1817 to impart Western-style education in English to Indians, primarily Hindus; Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the social reformer, was one of its founders. Called Hindu College then, it was re-christened Presidency College in 1855. The college was closely associated with the Bengal Renaissance, the flowering of intellectual and creative activity in the state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over the years, the college has turned out public leaders, academicians, scientists, authors, businessmen and administrators in copious numbers. Among these are Subhas Chandra Bose (Sugata Bose, the head of the mentors’ group, is his great-grand-nephew), whose nationalist career most historians trace back to his pushing Professor Oaten down the stairs of the college’s main building as a student in protest at some racial remark; Rajendra Prasad, the first president; Sen; Satyajit Ray and P C Mohalanobis, the architect of the Five-year Plans. West Bengal’s past and present finance ministers — Asim Dasgupta and Amit Mitra — sitting on two sides of the political divide share Presidency as their alma mater.
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Today, however, the reality is very different and Presidency no longer counts among the top liberal-arts institutes in India. The decay began, say the alumni, in the 1970s. “The Naxalite movement disrupted, and even destroyed, the academic environment in the college,” says Supriya Chaudhuri, professor of English at Jadavpur University, who was a student at Presidency from 1969 to 1972 and then taught there from 1975 to 1985. The Left Front’s coming to power in 1977 accelerated the decay. Chaudhuri explains how this happened: “Presidency attracted notable scholars and teachers...Both before and after Independence, it was given special treatment by the government — even though its teachers were recruited from the government educational service with its system of routine transfers, the best teachers were allowed to stay on and build departments. Although it was primarily an undergraduate college, its library and laboratories allowed for path-breaking research to be carried on by teachers, especially when they were free of the threat of automatic transfer to other government colleges.”
“The first thing the Left government did when it came to power was refuse to accept any elite institution in the state... They failed to understand that excellence is not elitism,” recollects Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay who was the principal of the college from 1991 to 1997.
“The Left government restored the principle of routine transfers,” says Chaudhuri. “At the same time, party favouritism allowed — in some cases — second-rate teachers to remain at Presidency for long periods. Further, over a period of time, posts were not filled up, and departments became progressively short of staff. Because the college remained directly under the control of the government and teachers had to take permission from Writers’ Buildings even to publish a book or attend a conference abroad, there were numerous bureaucratic obstacles to research and academic exchange. As a result, the best teachers left.”
Autonomy, both academic and administrative, was felt to be the only way to stop the slide, and demands for autonomy started to gather force in the last 20 years. But nothing much came of it until July 2010 when the Left government headed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, a Presidency alumnus, granted the college university status. From Presidency College it became Presidency University. What does this mean for Presidency? Simply that, says Mukhopadhyay, “like any statutory university, it is being allowed to formulate its own syllabus and recruit its own teachers. The government has some say, but it does not interfere in day-to-day affairs.”
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For Mamata Banerjee, forming the Presidency mentors’ group has helped garner some goodwill since many feel that the group is an important step towards reviving Presidency. There are also many who are less optimistic, fearing that the mentors’ group could become a ploy to retain political control and that unless the university is shielded from political influence, things are unlikely to change for the better.
Take the recent media reports about a stand-off between the Presidency University Council and the mentors group over the introduction of post-graduation courses. The mentors’ group was not in favour of introducing these, it was reported, but the council defied them. To clear the air, Presidency University Vice-chancellor Amita Chatterjee issued a statement, saying: “Till date we have not received any government order or notification that the university council must abide by verbal or written directions of PMG [Presidency mentors’ group]. Besides, while the decision about introducing post-graduate course was taken on July 22, the council did not know about the suggestion of the mentors’ group, as it was communicated to the vice-chancellor verbally on July 23. To prevent all such miscommunication it has been decided that all resolutions taken in council meetings will be forwarded to the mentor group.”
The issue, feels Amartya Sen, is not about Presidency alone, but the entire higher education system in the state which needs an overhaul. Sugata Bose echoes him: “Presidency does not figure today as an institution in the world’s top universities, but that is true of all Indian institutions of higher education. There is a general crisis in Indian education that needs to be addressed... We need to build institutions in which talent can flourish.” Adds Mukhopadhyay: “The mentors’ group believes that in seven years Presidency will be one of the great universities of the world. That is simply utopian.”
There are, of course, many challenges to the grand plans. The infrastructure, for instance, is inadequate for a university. About 30 per cent of teaching and non-teaching posts are vacant. Then there is the library. Says Swapan Chakravorty, the National Library director who studied at the college in the ’70s: “Presidency inherited a large collection of books. But the West Bengal government had no money for their upkeep. A majority of posts of specialised library staff is vacant.” Also a larger area will be required to house the university, which has prompted a search for alternatives — either rented premises or an alternative campus.
Much of the Presidency dream rests on the flow of funds. The college’s alumni (industrialist RP Goenka is one) have offered donations, but that is not a long-term solution. “All developmental activity will depend on the release of grants from the government and this may not happen in the next financial year or so,” says PK Sengupta, registrar of Presidency University. According to Amita Chatterjee, around Rs 60 crore is needed to upgrade Presidency, with more needed for developments in the future. In the state’s vote on account budget presented in March, nearly Rs 5 crore was set aside for Presidency.
The students at the centre of all the drama are waiting for the changes to set in. Around 550 students, the first batch to study under the new university, started classes last month. Unlike earlier years, there’ll be semesters and students will get grades. Suavo Mukherjee, one of the freshers, says: “It will be the same because the faculties are the same. It is a new syllabus, but I don’t think that it will make much difference." Arkapratim Ghosh, in third-year and the last batch to get a degree from the University of Calcutta, says, “It’s a boon for new students.”
