The Modern Review/Volume 29/Number 4/Waste in Calcutta University

Waste in Calcutta University.

It is a matter of common knowledge that Calcutta university is in dire pecuniary straits. At the same time there is waste. As there does not seem to be any thoroughly independent audit of its accounts and a thoroughly independent inspection of its affairs, nobody can ascertain the extent of wasteful expenditure of which it is guilty. But as samples, we mention a few small items. We are informed and write subject to correction that ten thousand copies of the report of Post-graduate Teaching in the university of Calcutta are printed, and numerous copies of it are sent to foreign countries by post. We do not know how the object of “The Advancement of Learning” is promoted by this waste of money, nor according to what rule or regulation and under whose orders so many copies are printed. Three thousand copies of a book on sociology were printed and published by the university, and then the edition had to be suppressed. We read in the Minutes of the Syndicate, dated the 4th March, 1921, that the charges of feeding the delegates of the Indian Science Congress, who put up at the Hardinge Hostel, have been ordered by the Syndicate to be paid out of university funds. The charges amount to only Rs 300, but why should the university pay for feeding the delegates to the Science Congress? The two bodies are in no way connected with each other.