Reflections | Blow to Teachers Might be Biggest Crisis for Mamata | Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

The current crisis in West Bengal casts a long shadow over the future. It’s not Hindu-Muslim violence or the future of Waqf (the Islamic charitable endowment) that causes concern but the crippling blow to education in a state that despite its reputation for scholarship, has reduced learning for the multitude to a mockery and examinations to a farce. West Bengal’s schools may never recover if 25,753 teaching and non-teaching employees are suddenly sacked.

For the beleaguered chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, this is an existential challenge. With Assembly elections due in March-April 2026, she faces a backlash of middle-class discontent as school and college leavers find employment opportunities closed. On April 3, the Supreme Court cited extensive fraud in the recruitment process to sack thousands of state-run and state-aided school employees.

No satisfactory solution has been found since then for the stark threat of destitution despite Ms Banerjee’s boast that Bengal’s unemployment rate is 4.14 per cent against the national 7.93 per cent.

Surprisingly, this long-term threat to progress and prosperity has not invited many comments from Ms Banerjee’s critics, among whom must be counted C.V. Ananda Bose, the state’s governor whose CV calls him “an eminent civil servant, management guru, housing expert, innovator, writer and orator, retired from the Indian Administrative service at the rank of chief secretary”. What is more revealing is that he succeeded Jagdeep Dhankhar, now India’s vice-president, as governor. The two appointments confirm that Prime Minister Narendra Modi carefully selects trusted stalwarts to keep a watchful eye on West Bengal’s Trinamul Congress administration.

This may not be only because the Bengali film star, Mithun Chakraborty, now a BJP stalwart, scathingly calls Mamata Banerjee “a threat to the Bengali Hindu community”. Chakraborty’s further demand for President’s Rule confirms Ms Banerjee’s political consequence: with Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul seemingly trapped in a legal web involving the National Herald, the leadership of the 28-party Opposition INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) group may devolve on Ms Banerjee’s TMC. No one doubts her yearning to occupy the top political job. Nor does she doubt her ability to lead the world’s biggest democracy.

But there might be a distraction. A West Bengal BJP legislator and former fashion designer, Agnimitra Paul, suggests that the chief minister aspires to rule a new entity called “Banglasthan” encompassing Bangladesh, West Bengal, North Bihar, India’s northeastern states and parts of Jharkhand, Nepal and Myanmar. The Bengali newspaper, Bartaman, even published a map of this fantasy state. Whether Mamata Banerjee has — or can muster — enough support to realise this grand dream is quite another matter. She is still a regional politician with limited command of Hindi and English, whose strong point of having built up a Muslim lobby can be a disadvantage in an India whose Prime Minister resembles the head priest of a Hindu temple. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh — whom many suspect of polishing his Hindu credentials to succeed Mr Modi and who complains that Ms Banerjee glorifies Muslim rioters as “messengers of peace” — may be proud that UP’s ruling BJP doesn’t boast a single Muslim legislator even though 19.3 per cent of the state’s population — over 38 million people — are Muslim. In contrast, 42 out of 292 TMC legislators are Muslim. Meanwhile, the militant Hindu hawa is converting more and more areas to vegetarianism while lynching people suspected of eating beef (forbidden to Hindus) is becoming something of a sport in the countryside.

No wonder Ms Banerjee insists that the law that brought in key changes in the Waqf law will not be implemented in West Bengal. She accuses the BJP and the paramilitary forces under Delhi’s command of fomenting the violent protests in the state’s Murshidabad district, where three Hindus were killed and Hindu property extensively damaged.

Whether or not there is any basis for her conspiracy theory, Mr Modi’s government does seem to be in a fix over administering a mixed nation in which nearly 200 million Muslims comprise almost 15 per cent of the total. Should they be allowed their personal laws or should matters like marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc be governed by a Uniform Civil Code, as Uttarakhand has decreed? Should the burqa and the hijab be optional for Muslim women? Should Waqf institutions be left as they are (as many Muslims want) even if they do not distribute wealth equitably? Would it help integration if the authorities encourage mixed marriages instead of treating “love jihad” as a crime?

Such questions need to be investigated and answered free of orthodox bigotry.

The secular matter of academic standards is even more crucial to social progress and stability. Responding to complaints, a Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, decided on April 3 that many school employees had obtained their jobs through unfair means. Not only would they be sacked but they were ordered to refund all payments they had received. (This part of the order was subsequently withdrawn). Though the court conceded that most teachers do not practise fraudulent means, and an attempt should be made to distinguish between “tainted” and “untainted” teachers, it held that “the entire selection process has been vitiated and tainted beyond resolution”.

This isn’t all. There was the case of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who ordered a CBI investigation into the recruitment process in November 2021, resigned on March 5, 2024, joined the BJP two days later, and was elected to the Lok Sabha within three months. Some writ petitions claim that the authorities ignored meritorious candidates and picked candidates with lower marks. Partha Chatterjee, West Bengal’s education minister till 2021 and a prominent TMC leader, is still in jail for his alleged role in the scam. Even the West Bengal School Service Commission has admitted to several kinds of corruption in recruitment.

People are confused. The court agrees that “it would be wrong to set aside the entirety of the process” if genuine appointments can be separated from tainted ones. At the same time, it mentions “manipulations and frauds on a large scale, coupled with the attempted cover-up”, to conclude that the process has been dented “beyond repair and partial redemption”.

People wonder whether honest wheat can be separated from dishonest chaff. The instruction currently imparted in many state schools that lack most teaching aids as well as serious teachers barely impacts on illiteracy. Now, they might as well drop even the pretence of educating children who have no option but to attend these flawed institutions.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author