Family portrait in college names

Gaya: Seven of 19 colleges that have remained under Magadh University are either named after former chief minister Satyendra Narayan Sinha or his family members.

The university headquartered in Bodhgaya had 44 constituent colleges. Following the creation of new universities in the state, 25 of those institutions have gone to the new Patliputra University.

Four of the colleges are named after the former chief minister – SN Sinha College in Tekari, S Sinha College in Aurangabad, SN Sinha College in Warisaliganj and SN Sinha College in Jehanabad. Two are named after Sinha’s father – Anugrah Memorial College in Gaya and Anugrah Narayan Sinha College in Nabinagar. The seventh institution in Aurangabad is named Kishori Sinha College, after the chief minister’s wife.

“Naming colleges after politicians and their family members reflects the feudal nature of our education system,” said college teacher Arun Kumar Prasad. “Commenting on Bihar’s education system, now central minister M.J. Akbar had said two decades ago, ‘going by the name of colleges, Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav must be the must be Bihar’s top educationist’.”

Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav became minister first in the cabinet of then chief minister K.B. Sahay in 1963. He was also a central minister in the 1990s.

Nageshwar Sharma, former director of higher education, Bihar, said: “The maximum number of colleges named after any politician in Bihar goes to Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav. At least two dozen colleges are named after him.

“Unlike many other top leaders of the state, former chief minister Shri Krishna Sinha and Lalu Prasad actively discouraged establishment of educational institutions in their name,” Sharma added. “The few institutions that are named after Shri Krishna Sinha, like Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital in Muzaffarpur, Shri Krishna-Ram Ruchi College, Barbigha, and Shri Krishna Jubilee Law College, Muzaffarpur, were established after his death.”

Recalling an anecdote, Sharma claimed Lalu had once told him to register a police case if anyone gave a proposal to establish a college in the then chief minister’s name.

“Several colleges were also established in the name of former chief minister Jagannath Mishra. It is another matter that some of them were renamed once Mishra’s political stock registered a fall,” he said.

Courtesy: The Telegraph