Shuvajit Sarkar
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high” — Rabindranath Tagore
Today, as the entire country faces an onslaught on its democratic spirit and a cementing of fascistic ideals, West Bengal braves a dual attack – unleashed by the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the centre and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government at the state. The Left in the state has been the target of severe violence by the TMC for over a decade and a half. This has only intensified after they formed a government in 2011. However, resistance to the TMC is being built consistently and the recent activities of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) in West Bengal are a reflection of this.
All India Jatha 2022
The All India Jatha of SFI crossed over 3,200 kms with more than a thousand street corners, big and small rallies, and gatherings. In the state, two jathas – one from Bakshirhat, at the West Bengal-Assam border, and another from Digha – culminated at Kolkata’s College Street with a historic gathering of over 15,000 students from across West Bengal, from Darjeeling to the Sundarbans.
The most striking aspect of this gathering was that students were able to relate to the slogans and issues raised by SFI, besides the central slogans highlighting local issues pertaining to different campuses. In Alipurduar, in the city of Falakata, even though the march was attacked by TMC members, SFI activists and others from the area resisted and the march moved towards Kolkata. Throughout the march, SFI activists engaged with the public from different walks of life. They also paid homage to martyrs and leaders of people’s struggles in the region, including Birsa Munda, Panchanan Barma, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Khudiram Bose, Matangini Hazra, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, and several others who have resisted authoritarian regimes and oppressive rulers. SFI activists laid a stone at the Kolkata Port, naming it ‘Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’. It must be noted that the port, previously named after Bose, was recently renamed by the BJP-led union government as ‘Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Port’, facing no opposition from the TMC state government. SFI’s decision to honour Bose in this manner has been met with widespread appreciation among West Bengal’s youth and the larger public.
Student Movement
Even though students’ union elections have been irregular in West Bengal in the past decade, the SFI has been able to set up units in various new colleges due to the zeal and fervour of its comrades. The last time campus elections were organised in the state was in 2019 and 2020, but this took place only in three universities. Out of the three, the SFI gained the majority at Presidency University and Arts Faculty, Jadavpur University. Meanwhile, the TMC’s students wing, the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) could not even gain a single seat in these colleges. At Rabindra Bharati University though, SFI activists were forced to withdraw their nominations due a situation of terror, in which they were threatened and beaten up. When SFI activists refused to give up, their filed nominations were tampered with.
It must be highlighted that TMC has made sure that student union elections are no longer compulsorily held in the state’s educational institutions. Students union rooms lie empty, and we see no scope for discussion and debate on most college campuses. However, with the support of students and active campaigns regarding education, the SFI has been successful in organising and setting up new units in many campuses. The task before the SFI today is to intensify these campaigns and movements, in order to ensure that the democratic ethos of West Bengal’s campuses are preserved. Previously, SFI has been successful in forcing authorities to withdraw fee hikes in many schools in the state. This was possible due to a united protest, where the organisation joined hands with parents and other stakeholders.
NEP and Bengal
The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020, introduced by the BJP-led union government, focuses on exclusion rather than education. Interestingly, the state government of West Bengal, which has been claiming that it is against the BJP and its policies, has not voiced its opposition to the NEP in the state, and instead, has introduced a similar policy called the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Model in education. Both these moves directly hand over the education sector to private entrepreneurs. State funded primary schools are set to face the worst of these policies. They will gradually cease to exist, forcing people to sign children up in private schools.
The SFI has been vocal against such policies since day one, and its activists have protested against these undemocratic and anti-education policies, facing the state’s torture. Such resistance is enough evidence that the plan to implement such anti-people policies will not be accepted by West Bengal.
Job Seekers
The student-teacher ratio in several government schools in West Bengal is grossly inappropriate. The present government has not conducted qualification exams needed to recruit new teachers in schools, like the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), State Level Selection Test (SLST), School Service Commission (SSC), and the like. According to various reports, there are about 3,50,000 vacancies for teachers and non-teaching staff in the state. Job seekers have been organising sit-in protests that have lasted almost for 650 days, but the government hasn’t paid any heed to their demands. On the contrary, several cases of corruption regarding recruitments have been emerging every day, and the Minister for Education, Partha Chatterjee, and the Head of Education Council have been arrested. The investigating agencies seized crores of money from the houses of Chatterjee’s close associates. He has now been removed from his post, after a long drawn out campaign by the Left and other progressive forces. Meanwhile, the Chief Minister’s ‘advice’ to the youth has been to not worry about government jobs and focus on selling puffed rice or “jhalmuri” to earn a living. In fact, it was the honourable Prime Minister who asked the country’s youth to sell snacks. Regarding the recruitment of new teachers, the West Bengal High Court has finally acted and ordered a judicial probe, while also directing that new recruitments be conducted. This should be considered a partial victory for the state’s job seekers.
RSS and TMC
Following the TMC’s ascent to power, West Bengal has witnessed the emergence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its schools across the state. It was reported by The Hindu in February 2017 that the number of RSS schools has rapidly grown under the TMC regime. It must be noted here that the present government has never rejected the RSS. In fact, the head of the TMC has stated that all RSS people are not bad. Several reports including those from The Times of India and The Indian Express have clearly pointed this out in their issues from September 2022. On October 15, 2022, The New Indian Express reported:
“The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has claimed that the number of its branches in West Bengal has increased by 25% in the past year, despite a decline in the BJP’s vote share in the state after the 2021 Assembly elections. There has been a significant increase in RSS branches in East and West Midnapore, the northern Hooghly region, and rural Howrah in the past one year”.
This shows that the RSS has been successful in getting a good grip of the state, even in districts far away from the political centre. Even though this has not reaped any electoral benefits for the BJP as yet, RSS’s agenda of hatred will surely gain space via the TMC government’s role as a mute spectator. This, however, is not surprising, as the TMC was supported by the BJP and RSS in its initial days. SFI, the larger Left, and other progressive & democratic forces in the state are determined to not let the RSS dominate the state, and to ensure that the land of Tagore and Nazrul is free from hate mongers.
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