WEST BENGAL’S TRINAMOOL CONGRESS PARTY (TMC), which swept to power in the state three years ago on party leader and chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s “integrity” promise ending 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government in the state (pop. 91 million), is reeling under a host of scams which have exploded in the past two years.
A TMC member of Parliament, Kunal Ghosh, is behind bars for involvement in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund case; the state’s CAG (comptroller and auditor general) has passed adverse remarks against the state government in the Rs.350 crore Trident lighting scam in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (October 2012), and another multi-crore scam within the Siliguri-Jalpaiguri Development Authority of north Bengal which hit the headlines in December, has resulted in grave charges filed against the district magistrate and TMC MLA (Siliguri) Rudra Nath Bhattacharya. More recently, a Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) scandal exploded in January which is likely to severely damage the reputation of Banerjee who has developed prime ministerial ambitions on the eve of the general election scheduled for summer.
On march 31 last year, the west Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) conducted a Teacher Eligibility Test to recruit 35,000 teachers for the state’s 75,141 primary schools. The results declared last November indicated that a mere 1.07 percent of college graduates who wrote the examination passed.
Initial reports leaked from WBBPE sensationally indicated that a record 5.5 million candidates had registered to write TET 2013. Later the number of candidates was scaled down to 4.5 million. Finally on November 23, WBBPE declared that 1.72 million candidates — all graduates — wrote the exam last March. On November 23, WBBPE declared that 18,792 candidates — a mere 1.07 percent — had cleared the test. Since then media investigations have revealed that the list of successful TET candidates was “analysed” in Trinamool Bhaban, headquarters of TMC in central Kolkata, prior to official publication and that it was allegedly “tampered”.
Reports of the magnitude of the latest scam to hit the TMC government and the brazenness of TMC party functionaries have angered students and youth in the state. Protest rallies were organised throughout West Bengal on January 28 when a concerted demand was made for the resignation of education minister Bratya Basu.
Meanwhile in December, dissident Trinamool Congress MP Somen Mitra wrote to Union human resource development minister M.M. Pallam Raju requesting a CBI inquiry into “corruption and malpractices in the recruitment of primary teachers in West Bengal”. In his letter to the minister, Mitra alleged that TMC MLAs and MPs had doctored the TET list of successful candidates in consideration of huge bribes paid to them.
The TET scandal has disillusioned and angered West Bengal’s academics and intellectuals who three years ago had massively welcomed the end of stifling Left Front rule for over three decades. “A large-scale protest by all sections of society including academicians, civil society organisations and intellectuals is required to halt political interference in education institutions. This is a serious issue with crucial implications for the future of children and youth, and the economic development of West Bengal whose education system has been under siege for over half a century,” says Sudin Chatterjee, a former president of the West Bengal Board of Higher Education.
But with the Communist and Left parties in disarray and chief minister Banerjee rising in national esteem following a ringing endorsement from anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, little attention is likely to be paid to education issues until after the general election this summer.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)