Vice by proxy A secret, it is said in the cloisters of Oxford, is something one can share with one person at a time. In West Bengal under the dominance of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a secret is something everyone knows. Since it came to power, the Left Front in West Bengal has been perpetrating the idea that it is the preserver and upholder of democratic practices in institutions. But anybody who knew how the CPI(M) functions was aware that this claim was a sham. In reality, the CPI(M) did not care in the least for democracy and the autonomy of institutions: it wanted its own way in the running of important institutions and its own nominees in crucial places. This way of functioning, it thought, was its own well kept secret. Finally, the lid has been taken off and by no less a person than the chief minister, Mr Jyoti Basu. Commenting on a somewhat controversial appointment to the post of pro-vice-chancellor (academic affairs) of the University of Calcutta ? perhaps the most important job in the university after the vice-chancellor ? Mr Basu said that the appointment had been ratified by him and the education cell of the Left Front. Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr Basu has admitted, in a mood of unwitting candour ? that the appointment was made directly from Alimuddin Street, the headquarters of the CPI(M). The record should, in this regard, be set straight. The University of Calcutta is not an extension of the CPI(M). It is an autonomous body with its own constitution and its own elected decisionmaking bodies like the senate and the syndicate. Neither the education cell of the Left Front nor the chief minister has any locus standi in the affairs of the University of Calcutta. But the chief minister has now gone on record saying that he and the education cell of the Left Front interfere decisively in the running West Bengal?s premier institution of higher learning. The Left Front ? read CPI(M) ? by its own admission has no respect for the elected bodies of the university and treats its autonomy with less than scant respect. In one stroke, the CPI(M) has reduced the vice-chancellor of the University of Calcutta and members of the senate and the syndicate to mere rubber stamps. Nothing could be more humiliating for a university that is more than 100 years old. This mode of functioning is not restricted to the university. Even at the level of administration, the left has collapsed together the party and the government. This has eroded the morals and the morality of bureaucrats. The matter is a little more serious than the appointment of an incompetent person to a key position. It concerns the left?s shameless subversion of democratic practices and the autonomy of institutions. It is a measure of the CPI(M)?s arrogance, born of power, that it can cock a snook at all norms of democracy and, one might add, decency.