Just by that one piece of news…

Just like the famous monologue in the play ‘NataSamrat’, ‘Ghar deta kuni ghar…’ (Could anyone provide a home?), now it is the turn of the Directorate of Art and the Department of Higher and Technical Education to say ‘Could anyone provide an Art Director?’. What was sown by the corrupt officers of the Higher and Technical Education Department in the last thirty-five years has now sprouted. Satish Naik, the editor of ‘Chinha’, will be writing a special series reviewing the numerous scandals in the Directorate of Art, every Monday to Friday for a month starting September 1st . Here is the third part of the series.

That news in Loksatta daily sponsored by Dr Aroon Tikekar created a lot of excitement in the art world of Maharashtra. It was an era when news in newspapers was effective. Journalism had not deteriorated as it is today. But in the case of Maharashtra, the coalition government’s policy of ignoring journalists started only then. Do what you want to do, print what you want to print, we don’t bother ! Such a language was started by the rulers during this period.

The news published by Dr Tikekar and his camp was a blatant lie, and that news put pressure on the Maharashtra government. As the news was full of ‘masala’ about how injustice is being done to the backward class officer by the Maharashtra government, the higher and technical education department officials went on back foot and the arrest of Nangare was averted. In fact, it was the then Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister Gopinath Mundhe who ordered Nangare’s arrest. BJP leader from Pune late MP Sudhir Bapat (he was MLA from Pune then) and BJP MLA from Mumbai Kirit Somaiya had scuttled the entire matter. As a result, Munde had taken that action. But Dr. Tikekar and his camp with the help of an even higher BJP leader and using the news in the Lok Sabha, stopped the arrest of Nangare.

This despicable act of Dr Tikekar may have taught a lesson to Satish Naik (I was working in the editorial department of the weekly Lokprabha at that time), but the Directorate of Art, which has been leading in the field of art education since 1965, in the field of painting education in all the states of India, literally crumbled. Not only the Directorate of Art but over time due to the appointment of incompetent officers created an atmosphere of chaos in the art education sector of Maharashtra!

Because of that fake news of Loksatta, Nangare was saved and he then literally started an ‘Ashwamedha Yajna’ (a horse sacrifice ritual conducted by kings in the vedic periods to prove their supremacy). From 1965 to 1980, the 19-20 aided art colleges which were very sincerely engaged not only in art education but also in art propagation, their number increased by about 150 to 175 unaided art colleges in just a year. In all these art colleges only two classes were opened namely Foundation Course and Art Teacher Diploma. The students and their parents were lured to believe that the students would easily get a job of art teacher once they complete the foundation course and enrol in the art education training course (Art Teacher Diploma). Parents got lured to this false claim and they admitted their children in large numbers to such art colleges. More than 10,000 students are said to have studied annually during this period.

But when the education of those students started, there was a great disillusionment. The passout students started job hunting going door to door, but no art school was willing to employ them. Their parents had paid their fees in these art colleges by either taking loans and selling family jewellery. Naturally, there was great disappointment on their part. Since these art colleges were un-aided, they raised a lot of funds in the form of admission fees, donations etc. But they ruined the lives of these students. The unemployed youth began to wander from village to village, some sensitive students even committed suicide.

Gradually, the false propaganda of these art colleges began to crumble. Students and their parents realized that the education in such colleges had no value in the field of art education. And these art colleges started to close down gradually. The expectations of the market-savvy people who entered this field with the expectation that something magnificent will happen in the field of painting like the way engineering colleges were started in Maharashtra once upon a time, were destroyed. They landed into such a worse situation that they could not even get good teachers to teach in their colleges. Then what did these smart people do.. They appointed the previous year’s passed out students as teachers! The same teacher was also made the principal of the institution the following year. So the students studying there could not even identify who is a student and who is a teacher. All this rusticity increased to such an extent that a teacher who was a student a year before, who became a teacher in the second year and became a principal in the third year began to get away with printing ‘Professor’ indiscriminately on his visiting card. Actually the post of ‘Professor’ has a lot of respect, a lot of weight in Maharashtra. But these people literally made a joke of that post. Although this story is from 30-40 years ago, even today this kind of malpractice is going on openly in all the art colleges of Maharashtra. Why give an example of art colleges outside, let me give an example from the famous JJ School of Art in the capital of the state of Maharashtra. The Ad-hoc, contractual and permanent teachers here also pose as professors when they are actually not professors. Take a look at the visiting cards of all these, each one has JJ’s logo on it and each card has Professor written on it. Is this possible in any university of Maharashtra? The course curriculum of JJ is under the Mumbai University, but still these horrible practices have been going on happily for years, thanks to Mr Sable. It is a fact that no one in the government is paying attention to this very serious matter.

That’s all for now!!

(I am aware that there is some repetition on my part, but I can’t help it. Everything from the last 30-40 years has accumulated so much in my mind, that I am channelising it through ‘Chinha Art News’. So wherever it may seem like a repetition, please ignore.)

Satish Naik

Editor, ‘Chinha Art News’