After a period of chaos with a complete freeze on teacher recruitment, incidents of rampant campus violence, mass copying, and recruitment test scandals during its first five years of office, the TMC government of West Bengal seemed set to introduce the much-proclaimed poribartan (‘change’) in the state’s languishing education sector. After clearing the long-stalled primary teachers’ recruitment process last year, the state government conferred deemed university status to several private colleges including Techno India, JIS, Brainware, Amity, IISWBM, and St. Xavier’s College.

However, a recent notification of January 16 issued by D. Nariala, principal secretary of the state education department, has resurrected misgivings about the real objectives of the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government. The notice says all state-run schools barring those constructed in the past five years or painted in the past three years, whose number is estimated at 59,000, will soon get a fresh coat of paint. But to give uniformity to all government and aided education institutions, their colour has to be according to “government norms”.

Partha Chatterjee, education minister of the state, has sanctioned Rs.500 crore for this initiative with the tacit understanding that schools agreeable to the party’s blue and white colours will be given preference. That chief minister Mamata Banerjee has a personal preference for blue and white, is well known. She routinely wears white sarees with a blue border and matching blue-white sandals. In fact, the state government has attracted widespread criticism because TMC local governments have gone on a spree painting bridges, parks, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings blue and white over the past seven years since the TMC was voted to power in 2011 after ousting the Communist Party of India (CPM)-led Left Front government which ruled — and ruined — West Bengal uninterruptedly for 34 years (1977-2011). In 2014, Kolkata’s mayor Sovan Chattopadhyay announced a one-year waiver on property tax to homes painted in the chief minister’s favourite colours. 

Given the pathetic condition of Bengal’s 92,000 government schools directly run by the state or financially aided, the allocation of Rs.500 crore, i.e, Rs.84,745 per school for repainting, has drawn heavy flak. Most government schools lack basic infrastructure such as blackboards, classrooms, libraries and laboratories. Moreover, more than 60,000 primary teachers’ posts are vacant.

Unsurprisingly, Abdul Mannan — a senior Congress legislator and opposition leader in the West Bengal assembly — describes the schools repainting directive as an indicator of the state government’s ridiculous priorities. “Infrastructure facilities in government schools are abysmal with 40 percent lacking libraries, 36 percent without separate toilets for girls, and 96.5 percent schools without computers. Instead of focusing on these serious deficiencies, the government is imposing cosmetic and motivated changes upon them. It’s a disgrace,” says Mannan.

Adds Rahul Sinha, former president of the BJP’s state unit: “There is an acute shortage of teachers, incumbent teachers aren’t getting dearness allowance arrears, and the quality of mid-day meals is deteriorating. Against this backdrop, how can a government spend valuable resources on painting up crumbling schools?”

Meanwhile, West Bengal’s finance minister Amit Mitra presented the state’s budget for 2018-19 on January 31. Education has been given a substantial Rs.24,722 crore as sectoral allocation. The Kanyashree scheme under which the government deposits Rs.750 for girl children in class I in a cumulative deposit scheme to be dispensed when they complete class XII has been raised to Rs.1,000 per year, announced Mitra, adding that the scheme has so far benefited 4.5 million girl children statewide.

But budget promises notwithstanding, genuine academics of the state, which prides itself for having nurtured some of India’s most renowned scientists and scholars such as Jagadish Chandra Bose, Satyen Bose, P.C. Roy, Meghnad Saha, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis among others, are expressing serious apprehensions about the future of education in West Bengal where ad hoc diversion of funding is made for party propaganda and cosmetic face-lifts.

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)