Three church-run colleges will come up in the next couple of years, Reverend Paritosh Canning, the bishop of the Calcutta diocese of the Church of North India, said on March 18.
The three colleges are — St James’ College, St John’s Diocesan College and a law college at St Thomas’ (school) in Kidderpore. St James’ College and the one at St Thomas’ will be co-educational, while St John’s Diocesan will be a girls-only institution.
“We are working on St James’ and maybe within the next one-and-a-half years we will be able to start a degree college… for a degree college at St John’s Diocesan, paper has been submitted and I think within a year we will be able to start. And we have identified a place at St Thomas’ Kidderpore to start a law college there…,” the bishop said during a programme on March 18 afternoon. “These places are in the heart of the city…,” the bishop later told Metro.
“In Oxford Mission, Behala, we want to create an educational hub (school and later college and university),” he added.
During the programme the bishop also spoke of starting short courses in hotel management, hospitality on the Bishop’s House campus.
“Our plan is to start from August so that the youth who cannot go for further study can come here and do the short course (six months theory and six months practical). If they qualify they will get diploma certificates,” he said.
The bishop also said if the diploma courses work well, the next step would be to have a degree course on hospitality and hotel management.
“We have huge space and we can utilise it,” he added.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/calcutta/three-church-run-colleges-in-kolkata/cid/1809959
Bishop Paritosh Canning and his team deserve all praise for thinking out-of-the-box in their decision to set up three colleges in Kolkata. It is a step in the right direction as many more Christian students, particularly from economically weaker background, will get admission and pursue higher education. Earlier these admissions were the proprietary rights of a handful for example St Xavier’s and Loreto House.
A separate Corpus Fund for this, to pursue professional courses including Indian Administrative and Judicial Services, would make a sea change in the demography and quality of life of Christians in Bengal. The modalities of this Corpus Fund under professional management can be transparently discussed across all Christian Denominations who are willing to come forward. There should be a provision that Corpus Fund cannot be diluted / broken. It should always go up and not down and interest earned from it is be used to facilitate needy students’ education. This fund should be utilized on a returnable basis (instead of dole) so that it can be rotated among many more meritorious Christian students. For the sake of accountability, some students who avail of educational loan, can be inducted into the Corpus Fund Committee/ Sub-committee. Human Development on the lines of Japan which considers Human Resources its Assets and not liabilities, is the key.
Bishop Paritosh is indeed thinking big in lifting the Christian Community of Bengal from the morass of mediocrity. Setting up of a law college at St Thomas Khidderpur, is indeed a fruit of foresight. We badly need home-grown legal experts from our community. The Bishop seems to be different from his predecessors. He is not afraid to think and act big. But to achieve his goal of uplifting the Christian Community, he needs a lot of support from people of integrity and sound technical knowledge,