The project to demonise students of public universities as rootless elites falters on one count though. Like one Pramod Sain did, nearly eight years ago. Having been elevated to university status in 2010, Kolkata’s Presidency College, founded in 1818, was then struggling to deal with the pangs of transition. Just when the institution of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, one of the principal forces behind the Bengal Renaissance, was beginning to fail us, Pramod Sain, simply Pramod-da for generations of Presidencians, stepped forward. Sain, who ran the college canteen, had come to Presidency as a 13-year-old during the peak of the Naxal movement.

Source: Indian Express September 29, 2019 21:45 UTC