West Bengal: Institutional amnesia fallout

The Kolkata-based Rabindra Bharati University (RBU, estb. 1962) has earned the dubious distinction of being chastised for outrageous behaviour by the Calcutta high court. On January 21 Justice Tapan Dutt declared all bachelor of education (B.Ed) degrees awarded by RBU from 1996-2001 illegal and invalid, because the RBU management had failed and neglected to obtain approval of its B.Ed study programme from the Delhi-based National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE). The court ruled that since the RBU management had obtained NCTE approval in 2001, only its post-2001 B.Ed degrees are valid.Under the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993, the supervisory mandate given to NCTE is very broad and covers the whole gamut of teacher education programmes for pre-primary, primary, secondary and senior secondary teachers. The Act clearly stipulates that all institutions offering inter alia B.Ed degrees have to be recognised by NCTE. Shockingly the RBU management, which had complied with this mandatory requirement in the first year forgot about this stipulation for five years and woke up only in 2001. During the five year interregnum, it awarded hundreds of B.Ed degrees to students who were unaware that their degrees were not valid.
This anomaly came to light when Durba Sanyal-Bhattacharya, a teacher of Sahapur Girls High School, Kolkata, who was awarded her B.Ed degree by RBU in 1999, applied to the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) to write an examination for recruitment of principals of state government high schools. WBSSC rejected Durbas application in March 2008 on the ground that the B.Ed degree awarded to her by RBU in 1999, was not recognised by NCTE. Sanyal-Bhattacharya moved the court arguing that a university recognised by the University Grants Commission (UGC) should have ensured that its B.Ed degree had the requisite approvals.
The Calcutta high court agreed but did not — perhaps it could not — validate her degree. It merely asked RBU to refund the teacher her tuition fees and awarded her damages of Rs.5,000 for loss and hardship caused to her.
This is cold comfort for Sanyal-Bhattacharya and 600 other teachers who enrolled in RBUs B.Ed degree programme from 1996 to 2001, and are now teaching in schools across the state. They are apprehensive about their jobs and fear loss of special financial benefits such as an extra annual increment stipulated for B.Ed-qualified teachers.
Paramita De who was awarded her B.Ed degree by RBU in 1998 and has been teaching in the Canning Secondary School in the coastal town of Canning, 50 km south of Kolkata for the past three years after clearing the WBSSC selection exam, is not as worried about her employment contract as she is about being obliged to return her special increments to the state government. I am a B.Ed-qualified teacher and have enjoyed special increments for the past two years. Now I will be treated as a non-B.Ed and may be called upon to refund previous special increments, says De.
Rupan Chakraborty, RBU B.Ed degree holder of the class of 1999, says that the 600 affected teachers will come together under one umbrella and sue RBU for negligence. Unsurprisingly, RBU authorities dont have a word of sympathy for the disqualified teachers who invested a sum of Rs.4,500 and ten months to acquire their now de-recognised degrees. We are waiting for a copy of the courts order. Nothing can be said right now, says Dr. Tapati Mukherjee registrar of the university.
Kolkatas major dailies front-paged the RBU imbroglio and excoriated the management. Commented The Times of India (January 22): Teachers training in West Bengal is in a mess. Likewise, The Statesman lambasted RBU for issuing degrees of deceit. The RBU contretemps echoes a similar case of bureaucratic apathy and neglect in relation to primary teacher training qualifications of state govern-ment-run primary teacher training institutes (PTTIs) not being recognised by NCTE (see EW November 2008 p.16).
Although the CPM (Communist Party-Marxist)-led Left Front government has two separate ministries for school and higher education, their employees, quite evidently, have been sleeping on the job. And the price of their negligence inevitably has to be paid by the unfortunate teachers who signed up with RBU and the PTTIs. But considerations of working class solidarity rule out any action — other than a slap on the wrist — against the RBU management.
Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)