A visitor checks out the options at the Netaji Indoor Stadium career fair. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Every time the Marxists have tried to meet the market even half way, it’s been pure agony for them. So it was when the Students’ Federation of India, the CPM’s student wing, proposed to hold a career fair, a very money-minded event.

The agony this time led to the career fair, opened on Tuesday by the number two in the state cabinet, Nirupam Sen, being organised not by the SFI but by a non-governmental organisation set up by some of its leaders.

A three-day career fair — E-CUBE 2008 — to promote engineering and technical education and creation of jobs began at Netaji Indoor Stadium.

Associated Group of Management and Networking (Agoman, or Arrival), the NGO, has organised the fair with sponsorship from the organisation of owners of the state’s private engineering colleges, the Association of Professional Academic Institutions (APAI).

SFI members who successfully stopped the union from becoming the prime mover for the fair argued that as any other career fair, E-CUBE would also involve monetary transactions.

“It would be unfair for a student wing like the SFI to associate itself with this kind of an event, particularly with APAI,” they said.

Nearly 80 stalls have been put up at the fair, mostly by private engineering institutions, whose advent the SFI had opposed with ferocity. The organisers are charging Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 for setting up the stalls. The institutions — five state-aided universities are also taking part — are paying an extra Rs 40,000-50,000 to display their banners and billboards.

The ostensible reason for the SFI wanting to midwife a fair such as this was to showcase the array of schemes the government offers to meritorious but needy students and to school and college dropouts, said Koustav Chatterjee, a leader of the SFI’s Calcutta district committee.

Apparently, the union also saw this as a vehicle to connect with engineering students who, it felt, were increasingly slipping out of its grasp.

Just as it had taken Jyoti Basu years of agonising discussions in the party to formulate an industrial policy, where for the first time private capital was made welcome, or like the currently raging debate over land for industry, the planned career fair became the subject of engaging argument.

Chatterjee, however, dismissed talk of a division. “E-CUBE 2008 is being held by an NGO. Moreover, the event is being organised with a noble intention — to showcase the state government’ schemes.”

The opposition to the fair had argued: “Government departments should have their own procedures to publicise their schemes. Why should the SFI take the responsibility?”

Although the opponents won this round, that didn’t mean the death of the fair — such was the keenness of its promoters within the SFI.

The responsibility fell on a year-and-half old Agoman, three of whose conveners are Sarmisstha Basu and Dhrubajyoti Chakraborty, SFI state and Calcutta district committee members, and Rana Sarkar, a former leader of the SFI’s Calcutta University unit.

Dhurjoti Banerjee, the APAI assistant secretary, said they had become the principal sponsors for two reasons: “The summit has a noble aim and Agoman is an NGO.”

Both have official — government and party — blessing. Other than Sen, Sudarsahan Ray Chaudhury, higher education minister, Abdus Sattar, minority development minister, Samik Lahiri,MP, attended the inauguration.

No one was yet ready to divine if, after several years of debate, the SFI would arrive on the fair stage to departing music for Agoman.