By media accounts, the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal headed by fiery leader Mamata Banerjee — who ended 34 years of Communist rule in the state by sweeping the assembly election of May this year — has got off to a rocky start. A spate of train accidents, attacks on police and paramilitary forces by Maoist-Naxal insurgents, and a large number of child deaths in the state’s decrepit public hospitals have rapidly eroded the massive fund of public goodwill that greeted her appointment as chief minister last summer (May 20).
Now there’s emerging evidence of academic disillusionment with her individualistic style of governance. On November 23, Prof. Sunanda Sanyal, a highly respected academic and head of the school syllabus restructure committee, which was constituted by the chief minister soon after coming to power in May, resigned his office. Earlier in July, Sanyal had resigned as head of the higher education committee.
The resignation of Sanyal, a staunch supporter of Banerjee, and a “zealous participant” in campaigns against the CPM-led Left Front government since the 1980s — especially over the Left Front government’s ban on teaching English in primary schools — has come as a huge shock for the Trinamool Congress government.
Education minister Bratya Basu says officials in the ministry have requested Sanyal to reconsider his decision. “The education ministry will urge him to carry on as chairman of the committee. I hope he will reconsider his decision,” he told the media.
Although Sanyal claims he has resigned on health grounds, the timing of the resignation immediately after the state government’s decision to introd-uce a no-detention policy until class VIII, is being interpreted as further disillusionment of pro-change intellec-tuals with the Trinamool Congress government. Earlier, some other intell-ectuals — Tarun Sanyal, Bivas Chak-raborty and Pratul Mukherjee — who initially supported Mamata Banerjee, publicly voiced their disapproval of her personalised style of governance. But the octogenarian professor denies speculation that he was “unhappy” about not being consulted on the “vital issue” of no-detention. “Although I am of the opinion that the pass-fail system should be retained, this isn’t the cause of my resignation. I took the decision purely on health grounds,” he insists.
Incidentally, the state government fast-forwarded the no-detention policy until class VIII even before the expert committee — formed to examine the issue — submitted its report. A 19-member committee comprising educat-ionists, experts and government officials submitted a draft report to education minister Basu on November 21, approving the government’s decision to do away with the pass-fail policy. Sanyal did not attend the meeting citing health reasons. “An interim report of the committee was submitted to the school education department. Now I think a competent person can carry forward the task for preparing the final report,” Sanyal was quoted as saying, even as acting on the interim report, the state government decreed the no-detention policy.
Accepting Sanyal’s resignation at face value, the state’s academics reserve their comments. However, voicing his disapproval about sudden changes in education policy brought in by the new government, Sudhin Chatterjee, former president of the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, feels the no-detention policy was changed abruptly and arbitrarily. “A change in syllabus is a major issue and should have been introduced after consulting with the Teachers’ Association of Bengal and after weighing the policy followed by other states,” says Chatterjee.
After a summer of hope, a winter of discontent seems to be casting a pall over West Bengal about to be renamed Paschimbanga.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)