Volume -3-2 December'2014 SOCIETY TODAY| AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 28 Article Student Radicalism in Contemporary Bengal* Anirban Banerjee 1 Abstract In the present paper the author seeks to examine the present state of student radicalism in West Bengal. Since mid May 2011, there has been a political change in West Bengal which has been hailed as paribartan. The ruling Left Front government was ousted from power and the Trinamul - Congress combine stormed into power. Paribartan has had a wide ranging impact on the social, political and cultural life of West Bengal. The education system has been also affected by political change. And this has also affected the student movement. The major research questions posed by the author are-1) In what direction is the student movement going? 2) Do today’s students have the same ideas about radical social change as their predecessors? These questions prompted the author to do a UGC sponsored Major Research Project entitled "Student Radicalism in Post-Left Bengal”. The project is now in its early stages. On basis of some primary and secondary data, collected for the project, the author seeks to answer these questions. Key Words: Student Radicalism, UGC Major Research Project,Paribartan, Pilot Survey. *The paper is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Indian Statistical Institute , Kolkata, on 6th June, 2014.The original lecture was posted in Research Gate. I thank the audience of Sociological Research Unit, ISI, for giving me a patient hearing and for making comments on this paper. I also thank my good friend ,Sri Asok Ray ,who was Visiting Fellow of OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati, for his valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper. 1 The author is at present Professor & Head of the Department of Sociology at The University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India. Introduction I have been studying student radicalism since 1986 when I started my Ph.D. research as an ICSSR Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata, under the supervision of Prof. Surajit C. Sinha. The present research is based on an ongoing UGC Major Research Project which was awarded in 2013 (Vide F No. 5- 449/2013(HRP) dated 25.03.2013). The main objective of my study is to examine the impact of règime change on political attitudes of university students. On May 13, 2011, the Congress-Trinamul combine stormed into power in West Bengal, thereby ending the 34 years old rule of the Left Front. This change of guard has been hailed as paribartan (change). Since then much water has flower down the Ganga. The right-wing turn in government had its impact on society and politics in contemporary West Bengal. It has also had an impact on education, especially higher education. Our major research questions are as follows: 1) In what direction is the student movement moving? 2) Are students in favour of radical social change? 3) Are males more radical than females? 4) Do students of contemporary rural Bengal differ in their attitudes from their urban counterparts? 5) Do students of different income groups differ in their attitudes? 6) Are there any differences among students holding different ideologies with regard to joining politics? 7) Finally do students of today differ in their social and political attitudes from their predecessors? More specifically, what impact