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STUDENTS OF KOLKATA’S SHOWPIECE Jadavpur University (JU, estb. 1955) have won a major and improbable victory with the resignation of vice chancellor Abhijit Chakraborty in early January. With the West Bengal assembly elections scheduled for next year and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party, which ended 34 years of rule in West Bengal of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and its allies in a spectacular electoral victory in 2011, now embroiled in the Saradha chit fund scam and experiencing the desertion of prominent members to a resurgent BJP in the state, fiery chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited the JU campus on January 12 to announce Chakraborty’s “voluntary” resignation.
A majority of JU students backed by a section of teachers had been continuously agitating for Chakraborty’s removal, following a brutal September 17, 2014 police assault on students demanding an independent investigation into the molestation of a woman student on the JU campus on August 28. Ironically, the TMC government had confirmed Chakraborty’s appointment as vice chancellor — he was interim/acting vice chancellor at the time of the police crackdown on students — on October 6 for a five-year term.
Chakraborty’s resignation is a big climb-down for chief minister Mamata Banerjee because informed opinion is unanimous that he had been hand-picked by the TMC to counter the CPM-affiliated faculty and students’ unions which are still powerful in JU. In 2012, Chakraborty was the TMC government’s first director of the Indian Institute of Engineering Science, Shibpur, and was recommended for the post of vice chancellor of JU. But an independent search panel appointed Dr. Souvik Bhattacharyya as JU’s vice chancellor in July 2012. However, when Bhattacharyya resigned in October, 2013 after a mere six months in the VC’s office — the fifth vice chancellor to resign after the TMC government was sworn-in in 2011 — Chakraborty was appointed interim VC of JU. But a year later, incidents of molestation of the woman student and police crackdown on protesting students shattered the peace on the JU campus. Despite this, Chakraborty was appointed vice chancellor last October for a five-year term.
Although Banerjee has acceded to the JU students’ demand for Chakraborty’s resignation, it’s unlikely an independent academic will succeed him. Banerjee and the TMC top brass are determined to appoint another loyalist as JU’s next vice chancellor, and it’s unlikely that any of the academics shortlisted by the search panel prior to Chakraborty’s appointment — Dr. Anupam Basu of IIT-Kharagpur, Sujoy Saha of BESU, and Dr. Rajat Acharya, dean of JU’s arts faculty — will be considered. Academic opinion is unanimous that following the example of the opposition CPM which thoroughly infiltrated — and ruined — West Bengal’s higher education institutions, the TMC is intent on establishing “partycracy” in educational institutions with vice chancellors serving as servants of the party.
“There is no movement, no activity inside the JU campus that does not have a political agenda — either overt or covert. The faculty and student unions are politicised and there is continuous interference from the state government and politicians in JU. Chakraborty’s appointment and his eviction were political acts and his successor will be a political appointee,” predicts Prithwis
Mukherjee, programme director of business analytics at the Praxis Business School, Kolkata.
If administrative standards and learning outcomes decline, that’s acceptable collateral damage.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)