Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) After procrastinating for several months over the issue of implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has signalled a rejig of its strategy. In what is being interpreted as a sudden softening of its opposition to NEP 2020, on March 17, the higher education department wrote to registrars of all state universities to introduce the “new curriculum and credit framework” in compliance with NEP 2020 recommendations for four-year undergraduate programmes in the forthcoming academic year starting July. The state government’s decision came after the secretary of the University Grants Commission (UGC) wrote to it on January 31, asking it to implement NEP guidelines. Currently, West Bengal’s 20 state-aided universities, 49 government-owned and 433 government-aided degree colleges and 11 private universities offer three-year undergraduate programmes. Soon after the announcement, on March 27, the state government set up a 10-member committee comprising Bankura University VC Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay, North Bengal University VC Om Prakash Mishra, Rabindra Bharati University VC Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty, under the chairmanship of Jadavpur University VC Suranjan Das, to get feedback about NEP and formulate a higher education policy tailored to the needs and interests of West Bengal. The committee will submit its report by May end. The sudden U-turn of the state government in accepting the BJP government at the Centre’s diktat has startled the stakeholders of education in West Bengal (pop.91 million), including teachers’ associations, educationists and students. They are miffed that the announcement was made without teachers and professors being taken into confidence, ambiguity in the directive over what will become of the two-year Master’s programme, and also that learning compulsory yoga has found place in the directive. Additionally, there is concern that the four-year undergrad programme could result in more dropouts, corporatisation of the education sector, and reduced role of state governments, enabling the Centre to acquire more power in education, contrary to the spirit of the Constitution of India. Academics of leading colleges of Kolkata are also voicing concern regarding implementing NEP from July as they feel that faculty shortages — according to them, nearly 2,000 assistant professors and 100 principals posts are vacant in government colleges, along with lack of adequate infrastructure including availability of classrooms to accommodate students for two extra semesters — will stymie introduction of the four-year undergrad degree programme. Academy dons express surprise that the same TMC government which was opposed to NEP 2020, and described it as an RSS agenda to impose Hindi and standardised curriculums on all states against the spirit of federalism, is suddenly in love with NEP 2020. “NEP 2020 will encourage corporatisation of the education system and destroy the state-funded education sector from school to university levels. In a vast country like India, which has diversified socio-economic conditions, a common yardstick cannot be applied to all states,” thundered former but now disgraced education minister Partha Chatterjee. Moreover last year, Bratya Basu, who replaced Partha Chatterjee as the education minister in 2021, had said that…
