There is more to Santiniketan than Visva-Bharati. This is the belief in the first place that was the driving force behind my efforts to put Santiniketan up on the cyberspace. My first website Santiniketan.net was put up back in 2000 and then that was the only of its kind. Later when the varsity put up their own (partly because of my instigation, and disputes regarding news that we served), the necessity of carrying info regarding VB was no more there. So we could concentrate on other things, like bringing the alumni under one umbrella. I was supported by many, among whom there were some elderly persons who passed out of VB even before I was born, by some foreign nationals who are madly in love with Tagore and his world. A free email service was put up, a forum, chatroom, gallery and even a Bangla webzine were there. Most of these components are in order till date, but not integrated with the site Santiniketan.biz. The reason of falling apart was mainly a kind of reluctance on he part of my immediate contemporaries, whom I urged several times to take part in the development of this e-alumni, not by contributing money, but by contributing contents, and paying due attention to it. Barring two-three-four people that I can name right away, there were hardly any former students who ever tried to communicate with this site. Instead, what I was getting regularly were inquiries about admission, appointment and all sorts of things that VB official website should have taken better care of. I even set up a forwarding mechanism for such queries to their website, but they are even more reluctant you know. So I stopped receiving such mails.
Now, what is there in Santiniketan apart from VB? I would say, even apart from the natural beauty etc., there was and still is a huge business potential dormant in this area. Tagore's Sriniketan experiment was abandoned by VB, however the same syndication model that Tagore proposed there is returning in modern business praxis. Moreover, when modern business is neither capital-intensive nor labour-intensive, is rather knowledge-intensive, how can one overlook such a wonderful place where knowledge resources are available for free (well, almost). Interaction between the professionals of different disciplines is handled so casually, and so easily, that it comes almost naturally here in this place. All of the above could have been the major resource mobilizing factors for the varsity, but then they are reluctant to move.
So we took up the responsibilities to open the dialogue with various institutions, and even cultural forms in greater sense. But then, none of these are going to generate immediate profit for the portal. And like anybody else around here, I have limited resources. Money is not a great factor though unless we engage in serious research works or employ several people to manage the works, but how many volunteers can you name? And, at this stage, if it is not working seriously in some direction, no point in dragging it on at all. So I set up a lite version of the site to cater to the music lovers (Rabindrasangit, of course) and to host the email service, on which many people actually depend. However, to host the music playing service too, we need a high bandwidth server etc.
Few of my friends are demanding something more from it, demanding that it should fulfil the promises it made earlier, which means I/we have to reinstate the entire idea and the mechanism again. This is not possible without active participation from your end. A portal is a property of those who use it. Let's see what you can do in order to maintain your property. I am assured. I am hoping again.
Parthapratim editor@santiniketan.biz
