With Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) back in power in Writers Building, Kolkata, for a second consecutive term in the eastern seaboard state of West Bengal (pop.91 million) after winning 211 of the 294 seats in the recently concluded state legislative assembly elections, the West Bengal intelligentsia has mixed feelings about the electoral verdict.

While it cannot be denied that during the first five years of TMC rule, the state’s crumbling infrastructure — a legacy of 34 years of rule of the Communist Party of India (CPM) in the state (1977-2011) — has improved, freebies such as rice at Rs.2 per kg, corruption scandals, and ‘syndicate raj’ (cornering of public contracts by TMC cadres) have driven government finances deep into the red. This apart, an issue troubling the bhadralok (educated middle class) is the continuous decline of West Bengal’s once hallowed education institutions now infamous for rampant campus violence, political interference, exam malpractices and scams.

Taking cognizance of these apprehensions of the influential bhadralok, on June 18, the second TMC administration announced several new initiatives to boost higher education. Among them: free wi-fi service in the state’s 400 colleges, stringent rules to prevent ragging and common syllabuses for all colleges and universities to give students from the state proper preparation for all-India competitive examinations and job interviews. While these initiatives have been welcomed, a June 22 declaration by state education minister, Partha Chatterjee, that the government is mulling a proposal to recruit retired teachers to fill teacher vacancies in government schools, has proved a damper.

This is because teacher recruitment for 92,000 state government schools has been stymied since 2012 following a series of scams in recruitment tests and pending court cases, marring the employment prospects of thousands of youth who aspire to become government school teachers. The irony is that currently, there are 70,000 notified vacancies in government primaries and 18,000 for class IX-X teachers. With recruitment at a standstill, the average teacher-pupil ratio in government schools has risen to 1:59 against the 1:35 prescribed by the RTE Act, 2009, which is worsening the already poor quality education delivered in government schools.

Consequently, even though the newly sworn-in TMC government’s June 18 initiatives have been welcomed by academics in Kolkata, the teacher recruitment imbroglio has cast a cloud over the state’s education sector. Clearly, if retired teachers are re-inducted into the school education system, the hopes of thousands of young, open-minded and presumably more innovative teachers will be dashed. Therefore, educationists in Kolkata are demanding a clean-up of the TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) exam system.

According to Tulsi Masant, convenor of the DL.Ed (Diploma in Elementary Education) Students Forum, which has played a pivotal role in exposing TET malpractices, there’s no need for the government to recruit retired teachers as there are 180,000 trained TET (2013)-qualified teachers still unemployed. “The state government should immediately clear the appointments of these qualified teachers whose eligibility has not been questioned in the pending court case. With 180,000 trained and eligible candidates awaiting employment, recruiting retired teachers is utter deprivation of the rights of eligible youth of the state,” says Masant.

If it’s not managed promptly, and the ordeal of thousands of eligible young TET-qualified teachers in the state continues, the rising exasperation of young aspirant teachers could spoil the celebrations of the newly-elected second TMC government.

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)