We go through the ebb and flow of interest and disinterest – when it comes to Visva Bharati and Santiniketan. This is in contrast with my constant tug at the roots of Tagore’s evolution as a man and as an architect of modern India.

So, in one of my weaker moments, and under some coaxing by Leena di (Chatterjee – Mrs. Tan Lee, of Delta, Canada), I had written a four page note and passed it to them.

It became a kind of bother, because Leena di thought it was very good but needed to be tweaked, and then it needed to be sent to the bigwigs. Bigwigs ? I was not going to send it to anyone, big or small wig, because I really did not think it mattered.

Leena di felt otherwise and wished to send the cleaned up white paper to folks.

Meanwhile, the flow of interest has turned to the ebb of disinterest, and a suspicion that it did not really matter what anybody wrote or thought about Visva Bharati or Santiniketan. It would go its way, just like the human civilization is taking the planet to its ultimate course. It does not really matter an iota, what anybody thinks.

However, I do know from talks with Sabujkoli Sen that work is afoot on the issue of the ex-student community, so that a large database can be prepared by their computer department, and used for a global electronic voting for election of future members.

And so, I thought I will preserve my uncorrected and written off-the-cuff white paper here, before I hand it to Leena di for her to do whatever she liked.

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SRINIKETAN 

1. Preservation of Indigenous Rice Strains.
2. Research and promotion of chemical free organic farming.
3. Promotion of sale outlet for organic produce.
4. Revitalize the Samabaya Samitee arrangement for promotion of local organic farming to the University and surrounding areas, with help and involvement of other streams of Visva-Bharati.
5. Consider inviting famous soil preservation and sustainability activists such as Vandana Shiva of Dehradun and Debal Deb of Odisha, to visit Santiniketan, study the state of Sriniketan, and help amend the Sriniketan constitution, to bring it back to health and to perform its designated function.

SANGEET BHAVAN

1. Research on Arnol Bake’s early recordings.
2. Research on revival of Gauria Nritya
3. Consider presenting social dance drama not only for the yuppy upper middle class but also to the real targets of these creations – the rural Bengal. Start with having one dance drama presented in the Poush Mela along with other “Yatra”s, for a start. Emphasize on the message of the dance drama instead of superficialities.
4. Find others means of promoting Tagore’s social messages through dance drama and other plays into the Bengal heartland and beyond. Stop hankering for visiting big cities and foreign countries for stage presentation to the non-plussed elite. Remember, Tagore went with dance drama presentation to big cities to raise funds to run Santiniketan, since he refused help from the British Govt. Today, the university runs with Govt money, and VB does not need to raise funds to this end. The dance drama were designed as social msg for the rural class and Tagore has written about this. Follow his writings and view and use your logic. Let VB be the agent of social change which it was designed to be and deserves to be.

RABINDRA BHAVAN

1. Research on Elmhirst-Kalimohan correspondence.
2. Research on Salil Ghosh-Elmhirst correspondence.

PATHA BHAVANA

1. Review of course syllabus. Consider inclusion of topics such as organic farming, soil preservation, sustainability of development,  and effects of man’s actions on climate change/Global warming.
2. Encourage senior class students in field research on these topics.
3. Include in syllabus (civics section) – the need for an effective civil society in Bengal.

VIDYA BHAVAN

1. Conduct research on social science to assess current situation and future trend of demographic changes undergoing in surrounding territory in the district of Birbhum, West Bengal, and South Asia.
2. Research on the absence on an effective Civil Society in Bengal and effective means of re-invigorating it. Merge this research with ground experiments through other wings of the University and the ex-student body.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

1. Engage in serious socio-economic study of the status of the tribals in villages around Santiniketan, and engage long term live experimentation in order to find ways to save the tribals from their perpetual state of servitude and political social and economic disenfranchisement. Make this among the most pressing themes of the socio-economic studies of the University. Engage other departments to join hands in field experiments and put in place a system by which one can learn on the job and fine tune to see what works long term. Once a successful method has been tested, promote it through the local and federal Government for the rest of the tribal community.

INDEPENDENT AUDIT OF DEPARTMENTS

1. Arrange for an audit of the Engineering department, to help identify and root out corruption with regard to orders given out for construction as well as material orders, as well as vetting of the kind of construction that is to be erected on Visva-Bharati territory and aesthetics.
2. Audit all departments within VB for efficiency, functionality, adherence to the constitution and to identify over-employment and surplus employment. Use this to cut the fat and trim the institution.
3. Have a procedure in place to subject all departments of the University to periodic independent audit from reputed and capable firm.

POUSH MELA COMMITTEE

1. Give preference to rural and artisan products and promote chances of their financial success against urban industrial products. Example, do not allow giant wheels so that rural industry of hand operated “Nagor Dola” can make a come back.
2. Appoint qualified persons to decide what kind of performers are allowed to perform on stage for folk music, kobi gan etc, so that genuine and high quality performers are promoted instead of third grade copy cats and make belief folk mendicants.
3. Appoint a qualified committee to revisit the issue of the purpose of the Poush Mela in todays context, that serves a purpose for Visva-Bharati to support and promote it. Consider the hygiene issues of clean water supply, sanitary facility etc of the visitors.
4. Downsize the mela. This should be easy if industrial product outlets are reduced greatly. This will turn the Mela into something manageable and meaningful and hopefully keep the bad crowd away.

EX-STUDENT BODY

1. Find ways to unify entire ex-student diaspora. Have no illusion, the ex-students have never been able to come together under a single umbrella in the century old history of the institution, and have more often than not been engaged in activities for personal gain in the guise of “Rabindra-prem”. Factionalism within the community plagued Santiniketan even during Rabindanath’s own life, and has pained him immensely. It has also continued till date. The reason it is not discussed is perhaps ex-students are, like most others, in denial of truth. Accepting a glaring fact is the first step towards addressing the problem. This is going to be very difficult, but take this task on a war footing. This should, in my view, be the first task of the Ex-student body, instead of lecturing the University or anybody else.
2. Engage in development of a strong and forward thinking civil society in and around Santiniketan, with inclusion of staff and students of VB-Santiniketan, Sriniketan complex, local shopkeepers, surrounding villages, and the Samabaya Samity movement. Creation of such a civil society was the hall mark of early Bengal reformers, and a lesson that was being fine tuned by Rabindranath around Santiniketan. This is a subject hardly ever talked by the current batch of ex-students. Better late than never. Most of the progress of the concept of Visva-Bharati hinges on a vibrant civil society around the place, and by extension, influencing greater Bengal and India. Engage in introspection on the future of VB, which is affected by greater forces around it such as the decline of a reform oriented Bengal civil society, encroachment of corruption and nepotism in all walks of life, changing demography and population density, and VB’s dependence on financial dole outs from Delhi. This too is a long and hard task, but there is no getting away from it if one wishes to see long term survival and improvement of Visva Bharati to a world class institution for hatching greater visions for humankind, while having very strong socio-economic roots into the rural community surrounding it. This was what VB was, and this is what it was conceptualized to be. If well wishes of VB do not engage in it, nobody else will.
3. Improve upon this list by more cognitive thinking, analysis of ground reality, a more serious study of Rabinranath’s introspections on the need of a future India, fresh analysis of the future awaiting Bengal and India in this rapidly changing and deteriorating state of the society and planet. Get Visva Bharati to engage in these essential studies on a serious footing for proper implementation of Rabindranath’s vision and the meaning behind the word Visva-Bharati. The institution was to be a hot bed of cultural, social and ecocnomic lab experiment of ideas, and not a static body frozen in time and reproducing meaningless dance dramas without their social context.
4. Make all functions of the Ex-student body “COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT”, with every aspect of its dealings open in public domain and with no “SECRETS”. The group must stand the test of transparency.

Tonu