THE STRONG showing of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election suggests that the electorate of West Bengal (pop. 91 million) continues to repose faith in the party and its mercurial leader chief minister Mamata Banerjee — TMC improved its representation in the Lok Sabha from 19 in 2009 to 42 in 2014. However academics in the state are alarmed by the shenanigans of TMC cadres and youth wing who seem to have been given a free run of schools and colleges in West Bengal.
In December 2012, a spate of protests and agitations rocked school campuses in Kolkata with teenage students demanding ‘grace marks’ in selection tests qualifying them to write board exams. On February 12, 2013, a policeman was killed during a shoot-out between Congress and TMC workers who clashed over filing of nomination papers for student elections in Hari Mohan College in South Kolkata. Later in April, a posse of TMC cadres ran amok on the campus of Presidency University (estb. 1817), Kolkata, widely acknowledged as West Bengal’s best arts, science and commerce university. On September 11, 2013 the state board-affiliated Christ Church Girls’ Higher Secondary School in North 24 Parganas district, was vandalised following the death of Oindrila Das, a ten-year-old student of the school who allegedly suffered trauma after being locked in a toilet by senior students.
In a recent incident on March 14, Arabul Islam, a “leader” and former TMC member of the state assembly (2006-11), reportedly barged into the Narayanpur Higher Secondary School, North 24 Parganas where the school-leaving class XII examination was being conducted, and “directed” invigilators to write answers of the English language paper on behalf of higher secondary students.
When Gopa Roy, a school teacher and supervisor of the Narayanpur Higher Secondary examination centre, challenged his directive, Islam “became furious and started hurling abusive words” at her. Curiously when the matter was reported to the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE), president Mahua Das denied getting any complaint from Roy or the headmistress of the school. On the contrary, WBCHSE pulled up Roy for permitting “an outsider to enter the exam hall”..gif)
An enquiry committee was duly set up but on March 19 — five days after the incident — council president Das informed the media that Roy had tendered a written apology stating that the “higher secondary exam at her centre was going on peacefully on that day and she was sorry for the disturbance caused by the incident”. “We did not ask for her apology. But now that she has apologised on her own, we are treating Roy’s letter as a statement withdrawing her allegation,” says Das.
These and other depredations of TMC cadres on school and college campuses across the state have disillusioned committed academics looking for respite after having suffered similar acts of commission by cadres of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) which ruled the state for 34 uninterrupted (1977-2011) years. Therefore in the state assembly election of 2011, West Bengal’s intelligentsia massively endorsed TMC to end the nightmarish rule of the CPM-led Left Front government. Three years later, they have yet to experience the poriborton (change) promised by Banerjee.
“Colleges and universities have become the happy hunting grounds of the rowdy youth wings of the CPM and TMC euphemistically described as students unions. Earlier, colleges were the theatres for all sorts of violent shenanigans, but today even school students debase, jeer and even beat up teachers. The future of education in West Bengal continues to remain bleak,” says Dr. Prasenjit Chattopadhyay, professor of English at the Sree Chaitanya Mahavidyalaya in North 24 Parganas.
Clearly a tradition of hooliganism established over a period of 34 years is hard to break.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)