Hope has come back to life in Kolkata’s Presidency University. There’s a new-found exhilaration in the air; a much-needed rejuvenation of the iconic college is around the corner.
Thirty-five years of Left rule saw Presidency College, which became a university only last year, slip from being a centre of academic excellence to a base of mediocrity. All that is about to change now, thanks to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s paribartan (transformation) drive. A 10-member mentor group, headed by eminent Harvard Professor Sugata Bose and advised by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, is brainstorming on ways to restore Presidency’s lost status in time for its 200th anniversary in 2017-18.
This is not the first time that one of the oldest colleges in the country has witnessed winds of change. Established in 1817 by a group of 20 eminent scholars headed by social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the Mahapathshala wing of Hindoo College was started to provide a platform for Hindu men to study English. In 1855, it was christened Presidency College, thus opening its doors to non-Hindu students. The college became a beacon of liberal thinking; it was the first in the country to admit female students in 1897. A few years after the Left Front swept into power in 1977, Presidency College witnessed another slew of changes.
The Communist government started interfering in the policies and functioning of the institution from the 1980s onward. Professors were transferred arbitrarily with the justification that all the colleges of the state should benefit from their expertise. Several eminent professors left to join Jadavpur University while others quit the state all together. “After the Left came into power, they wanted to do away with elitism, so they introduced the policy of transfers. The college offered no scope for post-graduation and research and soon became a centre of mediocrity,” says Minister of State for Urban Development Saugata Roy who studied Physics at the college from 1964 till 1967.
A long decline began. The syllabus and recruitment of teachers were controlled by the ruling party. The Left Front also made sure student politics got prominence. When the Left Front-affiliated Students’ Federation of India (SFI) captured the students’ union in 1966, they started a movement against the college authorities’ decision to stop student politics, forcing the college and even Calcutta University to remain closed. Roy along with Finance Minister Amit Mitra revived the Presidency College Students’ Organisation. “We realised that we couldn’t rely on protests alone. Classes were started in a house on Lee Road which lasted for almost two to three months. Even the teachers helped unofficially. We were able to reopen the college in 1967 and even submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister Prafulla Chandra Sen,” says Roy.
That was but a minor victory; student politics continued to disrupt classes for years to come. Former Naxal and college legend Ashim Chatterjee, who was the SFI leader at that time, agrees that the Left Front was guilty of taking myopic steps. “It can’t be denied that the Left Front gave more emphasis on loyalty to the party rather than to merit. Having said that, I don’t agree with the recent plans of rejuvenation. In my opinion, they are just a bunch of high-profile people making tall claims. Presidency or any other institute can’t be treated as an isolated island. The need of the hour is to revolutionise the entire education system in the state,” he says.
In 2010, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, a former Bengali literature student from the college, went against party sentiment to usher in a new era in the history of the college. The Presidency University Act, 2010 was passed to allow the autonomy of the institution. Mamata Banerjee has taken up where he left. The mentor group, handpicked by Bose, has hit the ground running. “There needs to be proper search procedures to recruit the most outstanding faculty. We need to upgrade infrastructure including laboratories and IT-capability,” says Bose, an alumnus from the 1973-76 batch.
But the road to revival is tough. The institute is in dire need of funds. There are proposals to set up alumni cells and encourage former students to actively participate in the rejuvenation. “Every university has a good database through which we need to reach out to the alumni. Alumni cells can be established to tap former students and corporate houses and it could be ensured that the contributions are considered philanthropic and hence could be calculated on a tax-deductible basis,” says Bose.
Sociologist Surajit Mukhopadhyay who taught at the college in 1992-94 is sceptical. “In a world where MBAs are more important than physicists, it is difficult to revive a college which will only deal with pedagogy in fundamental disciplines. Hunting for the Presidency of the 60s is a hunt for Utopia. That a Presidency will produce the likes of Amartya Sen and Amiya Kumar Bagchi is difficult to imagine,” says Mukhopadhyay. But more than the reproduction of iconic minds, Mukhopadhyay can’t accept the dream of complete autonomy for the institute. “Operational autonomy in terms of syllabus and content is most important. I have no doubt that the state government will interfere in the working of the institute. It is too precious a project for the government to leave alone,” adds Mukhopadhyay. Bose points out another problem area. “Salaries offered in state universities are also low. We can’t attract the best brains with low salaries,” he says.
Devapriya Roy, a 27-year-old English Honours Graduate from Presidency and author of The Vague Woman’s Handbook, hopes that the new version of the college doesn’t specialise in only sending students to Ivy League colleges abroad. “The emphasis on homegrown research and an interest in contributing to the nation—something that the idealistic politics of the college had always respected—should not be eschewed in favour of creating a middle-class or upper middle-class ‘plasticky’ Indian version of top foreign institutes. In other words, Presidency should not be an Oxford or a Harvard. Those institutes have their own traditions; Presidency should be the best version of Presidency!”
Amartya Sen has said that Presidency can’t develop academic standards in seclusion. Bose has his disclaimer. “We only have powers of moral persuasion. We can suggest ideas but their implementation is up to the people who are running the institution.”