Mamata Banerjee: credibility challenge

A series of teacher recruitment scandals have plagued three-term West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee since 2011 when her Trinamool Congress (TMC) party famously routed the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led LDF coalition which had ruled the state continuously for 34 years.

Employment in government schools in which salaries for primary school teachers start at Rs.33,000 per month after implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission (2020) recommendations, is highly prized in West Bengal (pop.91 million). During 34 years of uninterrupted Marxist rule (1977-2011), the state suffered continuous capital flight and de-industrialisation. Therefore, jobs in industry, business and commerce have been scarce for decades. Unemployment (7.6 million registered unemployed youth) is pervasive and in small and medium-scale industry, salaries are rock-bottom. Therefore government school teacher jobs are so prized that families desperate for sons and daughters to be employed as teachers in government-run schools — private school salaries are several multiples lower — sell property and take huge loans to pay bribes upto Rs.20 lakh to government officials to land these jobs.

Therefore, an April 21 judgement of a Calcutta high court division bench nullifying a 2016 teacher eligibility test (TET) conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) and written by 2.3 million aspiring school teachers, of whom 25,753 were selected and appointed in 15,302 government and aided secondary and higher secondary schools, has generated huge statewide shock.

In its ruling, the high court directed the state government to initiate a new TET within a fortnight of declaration of Lok Sabha election results on June 4. Meanwhile, all 25,753 “illegally recruited” teachers have to return their entire remuneration earned within six weeks. The bench also directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe into the appointment process and submit a report within three months.

Two days later on April 23, the state government moved the Supreme Court contending that the high court’s cancellation of 25,753 teacher appointments would create a huge vacuum in government schools in the coming academic year. After an urgent hearing on May 7, the apex court has stayed the Calcutta high court’s April 21 order while permitting a CBI probe against government officials.

Meanwhile, over 200 candidates who had written and passed TET 2014 and TET 2016 but hadn’t received appointment letters, have been staging protests before Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in Esplanade in Kolkata’s central business district since 2019. They are protesting the court’s order directing new TET exams as they have become age ineligible (40 years) to write TET again.

West Bengal’s government schools teacher recruitment and appointment imbroglio has a long back story. In May, 2022, a single bench of the high court ordered a CBI investigation into alleged irregularities in the recruitment process following writ petitions filed by some candidates who passed TET 2016 but were not recruited. On July 23, 2022, CBI arrested education minister Partha Chatterjee, who during a long innings as education minister (2014-21) had presided over SSC. Chatterjee’s arrest after a huge stash of Rs.100 crore was found in the flat of his mistress, was followed by a spate of arrests of top officials involved in the SSC recruitment process.

As if the scam in recruiting school teachers isn’t enough, 50,908 candidates who wrote the College Service Commission (CSC) test in 2018 but didn’t qualify, moved the Calcutta high court in 2020 alleging massive irregularities in the selection process. They alleged that in exchange for bribes aggregating Rs.3,000-4,000 crore, those with poor marks in written tests were given extra marks in interviews to enable them to qualify as college lecturers. Moreover, age ineligible candidates and those without required educational qualifications were selected. Now the high court’s sweeping April 21 ruling on TET 2016 has aroused apprehension about cancellation of the entire cohort of CSC 2018 appointees.

With teacher recruitment stalled, an estimated 3.5 lakh teaching positions in West Bengal’s 82,748 government schools are vacant, particularly in rural Bengal which is suffering a severe shortage of teachers. The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023 paints a grim picture of primary education in the state with 79 percent of 14-18 year-olds unable to solve simple 3-digit by 1-digit division sums, and 61 percent of 14-18 year-olds unable to read simple sentences in English, the link language of India.

“The SSC 2016 teachers’ appointment cancellation poses a serious challenge to chief minister Banerjee’s credibility while reinforcing perceptions of corruption and misgovernance. This may well affect voter loyalty, more so with opposition parties likely to exploit the issue to discredit TMC particularly in constituencies where the SSC recruitment controversy resonates with voters,” says Suman Sengupta, a well-known newspaper columnist and social activist.

With West Bengal which has produced a large number of eminent litterateurs, economists and intellectuals having sunk so low, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s ghost may well be turning in its grave.

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)