This story is from July 13, 2020

Fate of Jadavpur University’s Tagore repertory project hangs in balance

A Tagore repertory in the city conceived to cater to a multilingual audience and modelled after the Royal Shakespeare Company in London may not see the light of day.
Fate of Jadavpur University’s Tagore repertory project hangs in balance
National Instruments Building in Jadavpur where Tagore Cultural Complex project was supposed to come up
KOLKATA: A Tagore repertory in the city conceived to cater to a multilingual audience and modelled after the Royal Shakespeare Company in London may not see the light of day.
The Union ministry of culture has recently asked JU to return the Rs 4.5 crore it had released as the first instalment for the Rs 15-crore Tagore Cultural Complex project in 2015. The Centre’s letter has fueled fears that JU might lose the project.

TIt had been gathering dust for the past three years despite fund support from the Centre and the state. Jadavpur University, the nodal agency for the project, could do little during this time other than selecting the site, preparing the architectural plans and doing the primary soil testing. The university was busy all this while replying to queries from the Centre.
JU English professor Ananda Lal had conceived the project, presented the plan to the committee in Delhi and headed the project till he retired in 2017. The project had as centerpiece a state-of-the-art thrust-stage auditorium, an open-air amphitheatre and two smaller studio theatres for flexible and experimental productions. “Such spaces do not exist in Kolkata and there are not many even in India. This complex could have been an artistic hub and a popular hangout in south Kolkata. The architecture plan was done by Fatehpuria and Bose Associates following the principles of Tagore’s stagecraft,” said Lal.
Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh has added to the fear accusing JU of sitting on central funds for years together. Ghosh in his recent tweet has uploaded a content stating that the Union government wants the money back and has imposed 10% penalty cost on the university, for its failure to implement the dream Tagore project. The fear is not without reason. JU sources said the university has asked the plan executing agency Mackintosh Burn Ltd to suspend work till the Centre gives a go-ahead to the project. The university hasn’t had a meeting of the working committee set up for the prestigious project after November 2019. The meeting prior to that was held two years before November 2017. The university hasn’t progressed an inch in executing the plan on the open space of the JU third campus at the erstwhile National Instruments Ltd opposite the main campus. JU Comparative Literature professor Samantak Das and head of the TCC working committee didn’t deny the delay but held that it was an outcome of “complications” both within and outside. “The ministry of culture has been sending queries from time to time. JU has been replying to all the queries. Even an independent team from the Centre came to the university in September 2018 and did a fact check. Our vice-chancellor went to Delhi in September 2019 to thrash out the problems before the work begins. We got a verbal assurance from the Centre that it will give the go-ahead soon. On the contrary, the Centre wrote to JU asking to return the money. I can only say we are ready with the plan. We can complete the first phase of the project within two years,” Das said. The university isn’t giving up. “The Union Ministry of Culture has sent some queries on the project. The vice-chancellor has replied to those queries. I am not aware if the Centre has written to the VC after that. As far as I know the project is on,” said JU pro-VC Pradip Kumar Ghosh. The university has sought the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s sanction for the construction plan and also for the fire safety clearance.
The Union Ministry released Rs 4.5 crore as the first instalment of the sanctioned funds to the West Bengal government in 2015. For reasons unclear, it reached JU a year after in 2016. The state government also released Rs 1 crore along with the central transfer for the project. Problems started after the university appointed Mackintosh Burn to execute the project plan. “The second firm made major changes to the original plan with little regard to Tagorean vision,” Lal said. He pointed to 16 such deviations from the original plan that had earlier received praise from the Union Ministry of Culture. However, there is a view to the contrary. “The first firm after getting the initial approval from the Ministry of Culture submitted a plan far above the Rs 15-crore sanction for the project. Mackintosh Burn then appointed a second architecture firm whose execution plan has been vetted by the JU architecture department,” a JU officer said.
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