Presidency University needs to shift its focus “slightly from brick and mortar” to “developing human resources”, former mentor Sugata Bose reminded the institution at the farewell of one of its only two chair professors.

The four-year tenure of Swapan Chakravorty, Rabindranath Tagore Distinguished Chair Professor in Literature and Cultural Studies, ends on July 31.

Chakravorty’s exit will leave all five government-instituted chair professor posts vacant at Presidency. The university will only have the Infosys-funded chair professor in economics.

A group of mentors, headed by Harvard professor Bose, had conceived the government-funded chair professor posts in 2012 to attract exceptional teachers who could in turn attract bright students, for many of whom Presidency had lost its glory.

The farewell lecture in honour of Chakravorty was organised by the department of English at the Derozio auditorium. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia University, delivered the lecture.

Bose was among those in the audience. “At Presidency, there has been significant improvement in academic infrastructure. For any institution, developing the human resources is the key,” he told The Telegraph.

“We have clusters of central universities. One after the other is being created. But posts of thousands of faculties are empty. So I think we need to shift our focus slightly from brick and mortar, we need to seriously focus on developing human resources.”

Bose made the statement when asked why the university could not fill all five posts, created in 2012 by the Mamata Banerjee government as a signifier of Presidency’s aspiration to reclaim its glory as an undergraduate college and emerge as a world-class university.

The four other posts are Acharya Jagadis Chandra Bose Chair Professor in Natural Science; Subhas Chandra Bose Distinguished Chair Professor in Economics, Political Science and History; Nazrul Islam Distinguished Chair Professor in Inter-Cultural Dialogue and Peace Studies; and Swami Vivekananda Distinguished Chair Professor in Philosophy.

Bose said the posts of chair professors had been created to attract bright students to the fledgling university.

“It does not look good that all the five posts are vacant. I hope that a genuine effort would be made to fill the posts,” he said.

Asked when the posts would be filled up, Presidency vice-chancellor Anuradha Lohia said: “We are making every effort to fill up all vacant positions, including that of chair professors. All the posts have been advertised and the selection process will commence in the near future”.

Responding to Bose’s complaint about lack of effort on developing human resources, she said: “Presidency University has always been committed to academic excellence. Our efforts have been directed towards enhancing every facet of the university that supports academic excellence. For this we have improved the physical infrastructure, recruited professors, assistant professors and research scholars. The teaching-learning process is continuously evaluated and upgraded. Since 2017 all departments have started conducting active research programmes. Other aspects of academic excellence are being pursued in every way possible.”

Swapan Chakravorty asked: “Do you get distinguished people for distinguished chairs?”

He cited pay disparity with the central universities as one of the stumbling blocks in getting really good people.

“There were many people who were not going to Visva-Bharati because Visva-Bharati is not in Calcutta. But now they are going because it is a central university (offering attractive pay structure),” he added.

Sajal Nag, who had joined in March 2015 as Subhas Chandra Bose Distinguished Chair Professor in Economics, Political Science and History, from Assam Central University, quit in December 2015 complaining about the pay disparity between the College Street institution and central universities.

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, who had joined Presidency in September 2014 as Acharya Jagadis Chandra Bose Chair Professor in Natural Science, quit in July 2015 alleging lack of academic independence.