I keep on hearing and reading about Presidency College getting university status. But perhaps still it will take many years to get it materialized. If the leftists would not have come in the way, the institutions would have become a benchmark for the country with its great history. Almost all the great personalities of West Bengal got educated in this institute. I wish the politics would not have damaged it and would shun doing it any further.

Perhaps today also if the West Bengal government just provides the autonomy, Presidency College. Kolkata can grow to its potential. One way will be if a group of its alumni takes it over and runs it. The huge number of alumni of this institute in every branch of knowledge domains and many with lot of material resources can make the institute one of the best in the world.

I wonder Presidency as university could become a conglomerate of many schools of various subjects of science and humanity with a director for each of the schools. I dream a huge university campus of such schools for mathematics, statistics, physics, chemistry, geology and geo-physics, biology and biochemistry, history and English and scores of other subjects with latest nomenclatures each vying with other to become the best in the world with researchers from around the world in its world class infrastructure.

With thousands of rich alumni of Presidency College in last 150 years or more, can the university face a monetary or faculty shortage? If the alumni-of IIT-B can donate 1% to their institute, why can’t Presidencians?

I still remember those two years in Presidency and the galaxy of the eminent Presidencians that I came to see and meet, be it Dr. Rajendra Prasad or Sir Yadunath Sarkar, Maghnad Saha or Sateyen Bose.

As the Nobel laureate Presidencian Amartya Sen heads the mentoring task of reviving Nalanda University, someone can lead the task of realization of the dream of Presidency University as one of the grandest and best of the world universities.

Are some few of the Presidencians with a fire to do some great service to this old institute of learning listening to my views?

Can Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and a number of other eminent personalities of Bengal, such as Raja Radhakanta Deb, Maharaja Tejchandra Ray of Burdwan, David Hare, Justice Sir Edward Hyde East and Babu Buddinath Mukherjee get their rebirth to make it happen?

I wish some younger Presidencians take the leadership of the project and get it realized. Let the college come out from the shackles of the leftist union and be known for something worth its name.