And there no money for educating the poor?

STATUS QUO

Rs 4L spent on entertaining academicians

Anahita Mukherji I TNN

Mumbai: Ice-creams from Gelato Italiano, US Pizza on the Pune Express Highway and meals at Cream Centre and Legacy of China—these are just a few of a long list of hospitality bills at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Contemporary Studies in Mumbai University that ran into over Rs 1.5 lakh and were footed by the University Grants Commission.
A Right to Information (RTI) application filed by Madhu Paranjape, a senior teacher at Kirti College, showed that from March 2006 to December 2007, the hospitality and travel expenses of the centre crossed Rs 4 lakh.
The bulk of the hospitality expenses were on some of the city’s poshest restaurants including Bombay Blue at Khar and Copper Chimney at Bandra where guest speakers as well as visitors were entertained. The travel expenses included thousands spent on taxi rides to meet the Vice-Chancellor, air fare to Delhi and private car rides in Mumbai and Delhi. This even includes the expenses incurred on a private car during the Vice-Chancellor’s conference in Delhi.
“I travelled a lot in Delhi on work related to the Rajiv Gandhi Centre. I have generated crores for the university’’ says B Venkatesh Kumar, the in-charge director of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre, who defends the expenses. As for the huge hospitality bills, he says the guest speakers were of a high calibre and merited fivestar treatment. Speakers included HRD minister Arjun Singh, leader of the Lok Satta movement Jayprakash Narayan and professor Kaushik Basu from Cornell University.
“Every department at the university has guest speakers travelling to the university from across the country. But such lavish spending for hospitality is unheard of. These are funds meant for academics,’’ says Paranjape.
“Official meetings should be held at the university and not at restaurants,’’ she adds. “Lavish spending to this degree is very unusual. In our department, we struggle for funds. Spending on posh restaurants has never been a priority for us,’’ says a senior teacher from a humanities department at Mumbai University.
Mumbai University Vice-Chancellor Vijay Khole, however, said that when a Nobel Laureate or a central minister comes to visit the university, it’s obvious that he would receive five-star treatment. As for holding meetings and taking visitors to posh restaurants, he said this was proof of how vibrant the centre was. Travel expenses in Delhi, said Khole, were meant to generate funds for the Rajiv Gandhi centre and it was impossible to travel by public transport within the city.
Incidentally, the information that Paranjape received from the university’s accounts department shows that the travel expenses for the Rajiv Gandhi Centre from March 2006 to December 2007, were over Rs 2.54 lakh while Venkatesh Kumar has said, in the reply to another RTI filed by Anjali Kanitkar, a senior teacher at Nirmala Niketan, that the travel expenses from March 2006 till date are a little over Rs 1 lakh.
“The annual travel budget for the centre is Rs 1 lakh. I had to travel a lot in order to organise public lecturers for the centre. These bills are included in the budget for seminars and conferences,’’ says Venkatesh Kumar.
The Rajiv Gandhi chairs have been set up across the country to promote academic research and create a thinktank on various areas of contemporary study. The chair in Mumbai is concerned with globalisation, democracy and development, higher education, corporate social responsibility and empowerment of women.
The RTI file by Kanitkar shows that the bulk of the academic activities comprise public lectures by guest speakers.
While the UGC has specified that each Rajiv Gandhi chair should be occupied by a professor, Venkatesh Kumar, is not a professor but a reader.
“This is a blatant violation of UGC norms. How can a man who is not qualified to hold the chair be in charge of the functioning of the centre and allocate such large sums of money, meant for the purpose of strengthening higher education, on entertaining guests at expensive restaurants,’’ says Paranjape. Kumar refused to comment on the issue.
“A search committee was sent out to find suitable professors for the chair. Though they provided us a list of seven such candidates, none of them accepted the chair. I had to appoint an in-charge director for the centre to run,’’ says Vice Chancellor Vijay Khole.
anahita.mukherji@timesgroup.com