THE MAMATA BANERJEE-LED Trinamool Congress (TMC) government of West Bengal, which was voted back for a second consecutive term in 2016, has yet to fulfil its electoral promise of bringing “positive change” in the state’s languishing education system ruined by continuous government interference and infiltration during 34 years of uninterrupted rule (1977-2011) of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government. 

Unfortunately, instead of introducing orderly education reforms during its two terms in office, the ad hoc and arbitrary reforms of the TMC government have generated disgruntlement and disenchantment within the intelligentsia. However, the aggressive cadre recruitment drive of the BJP in West Bengal (the next legislative assembly election is scheduled for 2021), has reportedly spooked chief minister Banerjee to address the upward mobility aspirations of the middle class. On March 6, she announced that the state government plans to establish English-medium government primaries in 19 districts of the state.

“These new English-medium primary schools will also offer Bengali as the medium of instruction, and are in addition to existing government schools, which we have no plans to wind up,” state education minister Partha Chatterjee informed the legislative assembly on March 5.

This announcement brings the 35-year-old language controversy in West Bengal full circle after English teaching and learning in government primaries was abolished by the CPM-led Left Front government in 1983. The almost total prohibition of English language learning in Bengal for over three decades has long been the subject of heated socio-political debate in the state. To this day, the academy faults withdrawal of English language learning from primary classes of government schools for the decline in the ‘employability’ of the state’s youth and the brain drain phenomenon.

Although following public outcry, learning English as a language was reintroduced in class V in 1992, in class III in 1998 and finally in class I in 2003, most bona fide academics trace the intellectual decline of West Bengal, 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, to that fateful decision of 1983 which also ensured the number of youth from the state clearing the all-India competitive exams for the Central civil services declined. 

The state’s government school teachers — most of them former card-carrying members of the CPM — have reacted cautiously to the TMC government’s belated medium of instruction policy reversal. “The teacher-pupil ratio in government primary schools which is currently 1:59 against the 1:35 prescribed by the RTE Act, 2009, must be improved and English-fluent teachers must be quickly recruited by the education ministry,” says Dipak Das, general secretary of the West Bengal Government School Teachers Association.

The consequence of prolonged neglect of English language learning in government primaries is that an estimated 10,000 budget private schools which provide — or claim to provide — English-medium primary education have mushroomed across West Bengal. While the middle class has the option of enrolling its children in the state’s well-reputed vintage English-medium schools, low-income parents make great sacrifices to sign up their children in budget private schools which levy affordable tuition fees rather than send them to English language-averse government schools because there’s a widespread — and justified — belief that knowledge of English assures their children better jobs. 

According to Tushar Samanta, principal of the Hindu School, a well-known government boys school founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1817, the TMC government’s decision to increase the number of English-medium schools will greatly benefit bottom-of-the-pyramid households. “Parents, who are now forced to enroll their children in Bengali-medium government schools because they cannot afford private school fees, will have the option of enrolling their children in free-of-charge government English-medium schools,” he says.

Yet although TMC’s reversal of its predecessor CPM-led Left Front government’s disastrous 1983 policy — driven by foolish sub-nationalism and bankrupt ideology — has been widely welcomed in West Bengal, the decision won’t bear fruit in a hurry. Prolonged neglect of English has led to a drought of English language teachers across the state, especially in rural Bengal. 

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)