Returned to power in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) for the second time in the 16th state assembly elections held in summer this year, Trinamool Congress (TMC) party supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee is now shifting her attention to the education sector which experienced neglect during the TMC’s first term (2011-16) in office. Prior to 2011, West Bengal experienced 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government (1977-2011) during which the state’s once vaunted school and higher education system was almost destroyed. With a complete freeze in teacher recruitment, incidents of rampant campus violence, mass copying and teacher recruitment test scandals, the TMC exacerbated the situation.

However, with the buzz of disapproval becoming louder and transforming into growing street demonstrations, the TMC government is turning its attention to introducing the much-proclaimed poribartan (‘change’) in the state’s languishing school and higher education systems. To start with, results of the primary and upper primary Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), which have been long pending due to court cases, were declared following an order passed by Justice C.S. Karnan of the Calcutta high court.

On September 14, immediately after the high court’s order, the School Service Commission (SSC) and the West Bengal Board of Primary Education published the scores of 492,000 candidates who wrote the upper primary TET held on August 16, 2015, and of 2.2 million who wrote TET primary on October 11 last year. The declaration of results was followed by prompt attempts to recruit TET toppers to fill the 41,559 teacher vacancies in the state’s 75,000 primary schools. A circular inviting 125,000 primary teachers who had cleared the primary TET was issued on October 12, for interview, scheduled between October 19-28. At the time of filing this dispatch, the state’s education minister Partha Chattopadhyay said that in the ongoing interviews being conducted and monitored by District Primary School Councils, preference will be given to trained TET toppers followed by teachers undergoing training, reserved category candidates and finally untrained toppers, in that order.

Though initiation of the recruitment process has given a much needed boost to the standing of the TMC government with the influential bhadralok (educated middle class) who were fast losing faith in Banerjee and the TMC government, a writ petition filed by Rita Haldar, mother of a seven-year-old government primary school student, challenging the circular for recruitment of primary teachers, has aroused fears that the recruitment process will be stayed again. According to the petitioner, by agreeing to recruit untrained TET toppers, the state government is compromising the learning outcomes of primary school children.

While admitting the petition on October 20, the Calcutta high court ruled that the state government can continue with the recruitment process, but observed that appointment of teachers will be subject to the verdict of the court on Haldar’s petition. Tulsi Masant, convener of the DL.Ed (diploma in elementary education) Students Forum, which represents teachers who failed TET 2015, believes there’s considerable merit in Haldar’s writ petition. “The state government’s act of calling untrained candidates for interview is ultra vires as it violates a resolution of the Delhi-based National Council for Teacher Education stating that untrained teachers cannot be recruited after March 31.”

However, Swapan Mandol, assistant general-secretary of the Bengal Teachers and Employees’ Association, sees nothing wrong in summoning untrained teachers who have cleared the state’s TET for interview. “An interview call to all candidates who have cleared TET is mandatory. There is nothing irregular about it,” he says.

The Calcutta high court’s admission of Haldar’s writ petition, which if successful could once again stymie West Bengal’s teacher recruitment process even as the number of educated unemployed registered with employment exchanges is rising, has cast a pall of gloom over the state’s youth. With minimal private investment flowing into the state, joblessness is growing. If the mass teachers’ recruitment programme of the TMC government is delayed again, the party’s second term in office will get off to a rocky start.

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)