Senior Correspondent.TOD.Kumarganj
The paradox confronting Kumarganj College is difficult to ignore: a campus equipped with classrooms, a substantial library, an auditorium and a sizeable teaching staff has fewer than 300 students.The predicament came under renewed scrutiny on Thursday, when Shubhendu Sarkar, president of the Kumarganj College Governing Body, held a series of meetings with college authorities and local administration to discuss the institution’s infrastructure, academic environment and broader prospects for development.
Mr.Subhendu Sarkar first met Principal Dipak Mondal, with discussions ranging from infrastructural deficiencies and the quality of the academic milieu to measures that could arrest the college’s dwindling student enrolment. The meeting also sought to identify the institution’s principal impediments and examine feasible mechanisms for resolving them.Later, Mr.Subhendu Sarkar met Kumarganj Block Development Officer Shubhankar Saha, where the college’s difficulties were placed before the administration. The participants discussed possible governmental assistance and administrative intervention to strengthen the college’s infrastructure and create conditions conducive to its expansion.
The institution’s unusually low enrolment emerged as one of the most conspicuous concerns. According to college sources, Kumarganj College currently has a permanent principal, nine permanent assistant professors and 13 SACT teachers. Its non-teaching establishment includes eight temporary Group C employees, five Group D employees, two guards and a sweeper.Thus, a college serving roughly 300 students has 16 temporary employees alone, placing a considerable financial burden on an institution whose present revenue is reportedly insufficient even to comfortably meet their salaries.
Some education-conscious residents, speaking on condition of anonymity, alleged that during the previous Trinamool Congress government, ruling-party leaders had facilitated the temporary appointment of relatives and associates at the college without adequate consideration of the institution’s actual staffing requirements. These allegations could not be independently verified.
Yet the college is not devoid of academic attractions. Students can currently pursue seven major and two minor subjects. The institution also possesses a well-stocked library, numerous spacious classrooms, a reading room and an auditorium, alongside what college sources describe as a sufficiently qualified teaching faculty.The central question, therefore, is not merely one of infrastructure but of institutional viability: why has enrolment remained so meagre despite the college’s considerable physical and academic resources?
Mr.Subhendu Sarkar, who has only recently assumed the presidency of the governing body, has pledged to confront that question through a comprehensive development strategy.“We have taken a series of plans for the overall development of the college,” he said. “Very soon, Kumarganj College will reach the destination it deserves. We want to hear the clamour of students in classrooms that are now lying vacant.”
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