After the Jindals withdrew the Rs100 crore grant for the Bangalore School of Economics (BSE), vice-chancellor Dr N Prabhu Dev said that now, he has no intention of taking the School of Communication forward. A few months ago, he had announced that before he completes his term as V-C, he wanted to set up the school, for which he required a grant of Rs50 crore.
A visibly hurt V-C on Tuesday said that that “it is not worth doing anything for Bangalore University.”
“People here won’t allow anything good. The events that have taken place are quite sick. The BSE was my dream. I didn’t want to give up. The members of the academic council and syndicate are capable of going to any length to stop the project,” he said. He added that the BSE had gone through “several rounds of discussion.”
“Plans were made to set up the school on global standards. However, the donors were insulted when the academic council members behaved badly during the meeting,” said Dev.
Politics galore
To many who have been associated with the Bangalore University, the turn of events were ‘as expected’. “The registrar and the V-C were at loggerheads for no reason. The team was not managed well by the V-C and the registrar too was not allowing any business. The appointment of heads should be made based on their educational background. Otherwise, the academics will suffer,” said a senior academician from Bangalore University, adding that there is no hope for the School of Communication now.
He added that even in the case of BSE, many BU professors were not included in the plans. “Something on such a grand scale has not happened earlier. This was the first time a private party had planned on offering such a huge grant. However, a group of people were hell-bent on undoing what the V-C was trying to do. If this is the case, none of the projects will succeed,” said a BU professor.
Moreover, the members of the academic council had initially approved the BSE. “But none of the members understood the deal. However, with an orchestration regarding the land scam and other issues, none of which were true, they backed out,” added the professor. The donors’ name was also dragged into this, he said.
A former associate with BU said that the mode of functioning by some university heads was not appropriate.
“It’s important to take some people within the university into confidence when planning such projects,” he said.
