A lecture that was to be delivered by noted economist Prabhat Patnaik at Visva-Bharati on March 12 is most likely going to be called off because university authorities are not in favour of it, sources in the institution said.
Professor Patnaik was to deliver the Ashok Rudra Memorial Lecture and had been invited about a month ago. The lecture was instituted last year when Amartya Sen was the chief guest and Pranab Bardhan, professor of economics at the University of Berkeley, was the key speaker. It is organised by Visva-Bharati’s department of economics and politics.
“The Vice-Chancellor’s secretary called up the principal of Vidya Bhavana [of which the department is a part] and told him to ‘withhold’ the lecture. Nothing was given in writing. It is becoming a practice now for orders to be issued orally,” said a professor involved in the organising of Professor Patnaik’s lecture. The professor did not want to be named because a recent order — a written one — prohibits all staff, except the university PRO, from speaking to the media.
The PRO, Anirban Sircar, did not respond to calls when contacted for a comment.
“If the lecture is not held in March then the fund allotted for it will lapse once we move to the new financial year,” the professor said. According to him, the department’s board of studies had a meeting on Monday afternoon and it decided to ask the Vice-Chancellor, Bidyut Chakrabarty, whether he was in favour of another date in the month of March.
If the lecture is actually called off, it would hardly come as a surprise because Professor Patnaik, who has taught at JNU, is a known Marxist; whereas Visva-Bharati, under the stewardship of Mr. Chakrabarty, has been inviting right-wing ideologues to deliver lectures. Most recent speakers at the university include Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy and BJP MP Swapan Dasgupta.
Visva-Bharati, founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1921, is a Central University and has the Prime Minister as its Chancellor.
When asked how, under the current dispensation, Professor Patnaik came to be invited in the first place, the professor said, “He is one of the tallest economists in the country, therefore the department was keen on having him over. When we had proposed his name, the Vice-Chancellor appeared to nod in agreement. Obviously we misread the nod.”