Anywhere in the world, the 150th — or sesquicentennial — anniversary of a greatly respected academic institution would be celebrated with acclamatory cheers, pomp and circumstance. Except in West Bengal, whose 31-year-old CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government’s priority is to maintain rigid control over the education system, from primary to doctoral. Quite clearly it has no time for bourgeois emotions like pride and glory.
Kolkata’s highly respected Bengal Engineering College — promoted on November 15, 1858 and affectionately known as B.E. College in West Bengal — which proclaims itself as Asia’s first tech school of its genre, suffered a severe loss of morale when 184 clerical, non-technical, non-teaching staff affiliated with the CPM-run Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) launched an agitation that led to an indefinite college shut-down on and from November 13, forcing postponement if not cancellation, of its sesquicentennial celebrations.
The story of this agitation demonstrates how in the pursuit of trivial political objectives, the Left Front government has destroyed — and continues to destroy — education in West Bengal, the epicentre of India’s academic renaissance of the 19th century. On March 13, 1993 B.E. College was awarded deemed university status in recognition of its outstanding contribution to the nation. On October 1, 2004 it was further upgraded to the rank of university and christened the Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU).
Moreover on January 1 this year, at the start of its 150th year, BESU was conferred the honorific of Institute of National Importance (INI) — only the seventh engineering education institution in India awarded this accolade. Consequently, the National Institutes of Technology Act 2007 was amended and BESU was anointed the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), placing it on a par with India’s seven globally renowned IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology). As an INI, IIEST qualifies for a handsome grant of Rs.450 crore from the Central government to fund its upgradation. Exults vice-chancellor N.R. Banerjea: “We will take the institute to new heights.”
But with BESU now transformed into a Central university wholly funded and answerable to the Union HRD ministry in Delhi, the CPM-led state government has lost little time in raising questions regarding governance and admission of students. The state’s higher education minister, Sudarshan Ray Choudhury recently expressed appre-hension that “students of the state will fail to compete at a national level for admission” and raised a demand for “region-specific reservation of seats”.
Comments an IIEST professor who requested anonymity: “If the state government expects farmers in Singur to give up their two-crop land for the sake of industrial growth, why is it so difficult to give up its control over IIEST for the sake of better education?”
The consensus of opinion within Kolkata’s academic community is that the CPM leadership is apprehensive about the example IIEST will set for the 19 state government-run engineering colleges in West Bengal. The centrally run and funded IIEST, modeled after IITs with complete academic autonomy, is bad news for 6, Alimuddin Street, Kolkata (headquarters of the CPM). It could prompt faculty and students of state government-run engineering colleges to make similar subversive demands for academic autonomy.
Therefore the CPM commissars have retaliated by instigating CITU to take up the cause of IIEST’s 184 state government employed clerical staff (and CITU members) who are reportedly paid less than IIEST employees. “We will continue with our agitation until our demand is met,” says fiery Anil Majhi, leader of the CITU affiliated IIEST union, who refuses to accept that his demand should be directed at the Left Front government, rather than the IIEST management. Inevitably clashes have broken out on campus, forcing IIEST to be closed sine die.
Comments Dr. Sujit Basu former vice-chancellor (2001-06) of Vishva Bharati University, Shantiniketan, promoted by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1921: “A development which should have been an occasion for celebration in West Bengal has been politicised to become a cause of despair. In West Bengal, politicisation of faculty and non-teaching staff is a grim reality. Consequently universities and institutions of higher education are losing their credibility.”
According to Basu the CITU-inspired agitation at IIEST is much ado about nothing. “The rules are very clear that all staff of a Central university will be paid uniformly as per Central pay scales. In any case, the Centre foots the entire bill, so what’s the problem?” he asks.
What, indeed?
Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)