With govt dodging responsibility, who will solve JU crisis?

Shikha Mukerjee
When political priorities supersede governance, what follows is a chronic crisis of administration. The continuing impasse in Jadavpur University, where the administration headed by vice-chancellor Abhijit Chakrabarti is carrying on apparently unperturbed by the almost four-month confrontation with the student body, is a case in point.
The affairs of JU after the police action of September 16 against students demanding a change in the composition of the committee probing the reported molestation of a student in August has prompted government response only and only when it was politically necessary.Therefore, police action was justified, the VC has thus far been rewarded for allowing a student agitation to escalate to crisis proportions and every voice that has cautiously disapproved administrative dysfunction or approved the restrained student protest, including refusing the gold medal from the governor, has been told to shut up.
The transformation of an academic space into a political arena of confrontation because the ruling party is not the allegiance of choice of the majority at JU, which includes an overwhelming number of its 8,700-plus students and faculty, is an escalation of politics on campuses, a tradition that has continued uninterrupted in Bengal since Independence. This is not to trash the equally famous tradition of student politics as part of the nationalist movement; it is in fact a reminder that students and politics in the state have had a robust link, which has spawned a generation of leaders, including chief minister Mamata Banerjee and former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
The political connection to the current crisis in JU is obvious; the student protestors who were beaten up in September identified “outsiders” and named them as Trinamool Congress muscle. The post-violence statements from the government all underscore the political dimensions of the confrontation, including the latest gag orders on at least three Trinamool leaders – ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Sadhan Pande and MP Saugata Roy. This is a pointer that there is a political line that cannot be crossed.
It is a puzzle how the Bengal government can end the stalemate.
The VC, who was an interim appointee in September, has been confirmed in his post. The students who launched the protest are holding fast to their demand for Chakrabarti’s ouster. The VC is carrying on business as usual, however unusual it is for the institution head to be denied legitimacy by the community over which he presides.
And yet the denial had not disrupted the apparently normal functioning of JU, evident to any visitor who can walk in through Gate 4. Students attend classes, faculty conducts classes and research, but no student is willing to be marked present. Exams have been held in most departments, though not all, and results have been declared for the summer semester. This has been made possible because the faculty has taken on the onus of ensuring that students do not suffer the consequences of an administration that does not enjoy their confidence.
Having interposed themselves between the VC, state and students, the apparent normalcy at JU is the gift of a faculty that has not allowed the simmering tension between itself and the administration to disrupt the usual business of academia. The protection to students has effectively worked as protection for the administration and a façade that hides the absence of governance in JU. The protection by faculty has also worked to the state government’s advantage. It can sit on the side lines and wait for something to change with fatalistic acceptance or till the politically appropriate moment.
Ducking onus by shifting responsibility to the aggrieved and so turning facts on their head, is a trick Trinamool has mastered. Tumpa Koyal the housewife, Shiladitya the farmer, Tanya Bharadwaj the student, Ambikesh Mahapatra the professor (that too JU) have all experienced this. So too have activists of opposition parties, bundled into police stations even though they were victims of ruling party violence.
The crisis at JU has found an unstable equilibrium. Anything can trigger a change. With the state government dodging responsibility who will deal with the problem, since a solution has to be found within a finite space of time?
(The writer is a veteran journalist. These are her personal views)