Civil servants in Bengal to get acquainted with state's geography, history & culture

Kolkata: The civil servants posted in the state will now be acquainted with the basic contours of Bengal's geography, history, art and culture at Netaji Subhas Administrative Training Institute (NSATI). The Institute that has undertaken a complete restructuring of its syllabus have published a little booklet "Banglar Parichay: Introducing Bengal", where outlines of geography, history, culture etc of Bengal have been delineated.

The booklet and a permanent exhibition titled 'Art of Bengal: History, Tradition and Transition to Modernism' will be inaugurated on Wednesday at NSATI by Chief Advisor to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Director General of the Institute Alapan Bandyopadhyay and chairman of the West Bengal Heritage Commission Suvaprasanna.

The trainee officers/probationers in Bengal will have to undertake select readings (as suggested by domain experts) and some of the top names in Bengal literati have agreed to join NSATI as guest members of faculty.

"When IAS/IPS/IFS officers or WBCS officers come to Bengal administration, the institute gives them an induction-level training at the state level for understanding the state. In NSATI till date, we were giving general training about administration, rules and regulations, administrative law and practices. It was presumed that they would all have knowledge about public life in Bengal. However, gradually we realised that in the all-India services, the representation of the insider Bengalis was getting challenged," Bandyopadhyay said.

Most often, it has been found that officers from outside and even some from inside Bengal lacked basic knowledge about Bengal's art, culture, history, politics or geography which is essential for an administrator working

in Bengal.

"The basic aim is to introduce these young entrants to Bengal as a land, Bengal as a people, Bengal as a culture," a senior official of NSATI said.

The exhibition will have some original patachitra, dasavatar cards, kantha works and shoras on display. High-quality digital prints of some 85 important works of the Bengal school and contemporary artists will also be on display.

It is presumed that the practice of viewing art will enable the entrants to get a fair idea about Bengal.