‘As director of Bose Centre, I was like a commander with no shield or sword’

At the start of the current Vice-Chancellor's term, I was appointed Director of the Bose Centre. But soon, I realised I was like a commander with no shield or sword — Nidhiram Sardar.

The Bose Centre is now 51 years old. What has it achieved in all these years? Before answering that, let me describe what a 51-year-old centre actually has.

It has a single office room in the Science Workshop, with two staff members and one director. The director's role is essentially to hand out monthly fellowship cheques to a handful of students and to sign stacks of paperwork. There are no in-house post-doctoral fellows, no dedicated PhD fellows and no resident researchers. 

Fellowship holders conduct their research within their own departments, not at the centre. Beyond distributing money, the Bose Centre has no function. That task could easily be handled by officials in the Registrar's Building. 

What's the point of attaching the name of a scientist like Satyendra Nath Bose to such an institution if this is all it does?

In 1924, Satyendra Nath Bose, then a teacher at Dhaka University, astonished Einstein with his discovery of Quantum Statistics. The Bose-Einstein theory went on to open new horizons of research for scientists worldwide. Today, no physics student can earn a degree without studying it in their third or fourth year. 

That is why I considered the centre's revitalisation essential — otherwise, it dishonours the legacy of Satyendra Nath Bose. 

Isn't it shameful that the centre has not grown beyond a single room and two employees in 51 years? In fact, even this one room was not originally part of it. It was only through the persistent efforts of Professor Shamima Karim during her time as Director. This proves how poorly we honour our distinguished personalities.

Last year, I visited the S N Bose Centre for Basic Sciences in Kolkata. I was struck by its energy and, at the same time, ashamed to compare it with ours. That centre spans a vast campus in Salt Lake. It has an administrative building, a guest house, 30–50 post-docs, numerous PhD students, and around 50 in-house faculty. It has an excellent guest house to host visiting scholars from around the world for collaborative research.

I submitted a comprehensive work plan to the university authorities, proposing to upgrade the Bose Centre into an Advanced Research Centre capable of hosting world-class post-docs, PhD and Master's students, and offering advanced courses. Some parts were understood, most were not, and much of it was simply ignored. The truth is, the authorities are preoccupied with securing votes and factional politics; the fate of the Bose Centre is a minor concern.

A proper centre would need an entire building at Curzon Hall. Instead, it languishes in a shabby one-room office. Eventually, I chose not to continue as Director and resigned.

As I have long argued, Dhaka University does not need 56 research centres. Two or three per faculty would be enough. The number is irrelevant; what matters is quality. And achieving quality requires creating a research ecosystem and providing adequate resources.

I thought reforms might come after the mass uprising. I hoped universities would turn their focus to education and research, instead of partisan and blind student-teacher politics. But nothing changed. Society, students, and teachers all wanted this shift, but everything was hijacked. Our cherished institution remained the same.

Disclaimer: This piece was originally published on Professor Kamrul Hassan Mamun's Facebook profile. This is an abridged version of his post.