College in wrong hand by an accident of birth : Part-II

'To answer ture's call girl students and teachers have to go either to the boys' hostel or Bashistha Mandir'

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Dec 27: As many as 150 art and craft students of the State have been groping for their destitions. Thanks to the State Cultural Affairs Department that has all along been spelling doom students' future. So much so that some 25 boarders staying in the college hostel have to bear the cost of drinking water in the college, for themselves and other students and faculty members as well!       

One of the major problems afflicting everybody in the Government College of Art and Crafts, Guwahati is potable water. The water of the only well inside the college campus cannot be seen when looked down from the ground. That is not all. The well goes dry if water is pulled for half an hour.

Talking to The Sentinel, students' union general secretary Pulak Rabha said: "The well is of no use for us. Twenty-five students stay in the college hostel. They've to buy water worth Rs 400 a day for themselves and all others in the college, including faculty members. The trend remains that without agitation the State Cultural Affairs Department is not ready to make any facilities available to the college. We've got the well only after rigorous agitation in 2009. The slogan of Swachch Bharat Abhiyan rends the city air, but it has no effect on the campus of this college. The only latrine in the college campus has been filled with earth, rendering it not usable. It has no uril either, not even for girl students and lady faculty members. To answer ture's call girl students and teachers have to go either to the boys' hostel or the Bashistha Mandir. There's no girls' hostel in the college. This is not all. Only ten per cent of the boundary of the college has been fenced. The campus is fraught with insecurity, for students and faculty members as well. The boarders had to fence the hostel just to keep cattle away. Wayfarers are seen to urite and defecate in the college campus that looks like a jungle."

Rabha added: "At a time when there has been technological boom in the state and the country, the college has to make do with age-old practices that are obsolete nowadays. Still now manual typewriters are heard making sound as the computer sets installed there are out of order. As if to cap it all, the students' scholarship is not a regular matter. Only one or two lucky ones get it annually."

Ankur Hazarika and Chinmoy Deka, two other students of the college, said: "During her tenure as Cultural Affairs Minister, Bishmita Gogoi did visit the college only once. She was too generous in giving assurances to the college. However, none of the assurances has been fulfilled. If this government also treads the same path trodden by its predecessor, this institute will continue to remain a campus to spell doom for students' future."   

                                                    *Concluded                               

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