-Baishali Mukherjee
The education ministry under Government of India GoI has withheld the grants to West Bengal under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). This includes the third and fourth installment for 2023-24 and the first installment for 2024-25. In West Bengal, nearly 64,000 schools are selected for receiving the SSA grant of Rs 500 crore for vital expenses like infrastructure repairing, procuring classroom supplies and other miscellaneous costs. The decision to withhold funds was allegedly taken after the TMC government refused to execute the centrally sponsored schemes like Pradhan Mantri Schools for Rising India (PM-Shri) scheme and the one that makes adding “Prime Minister” to the names of selected schools. SSA is the primary scheme for implementing the Right to Education Act, supporting the holistic development of school education, while PM-Shri is a Modi government’s initiative to upgrade selected schools with advanced infrastructure, sustainability features like that of using green energy and promoting ethical lifestyles, and align them with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
Officials at the education ministry of GOI have attributed the delays to the state’s refusal to sign the MoU for PM-Shri, whereas the Bengal government has raised concerns about the covert political aspirations behind PM-Shri, particularly that of the requirement to prefix schools’ names with “Prime Minister, which according to chief minister Banerjee are Modi government’s ways of imposing central branding, which undermines the state’s autonomy.
Of the 36 states/UTs, 33 have signed the MoU for PM-Shri. Bengal, along with Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, remain a holdout. The Mamata Banerjee state government of West Bengal has long been in loggerheads regarding implementation of centrally sponsored schemes, particularly the Pradhan Mantri Schools for Rising India (PM-Shri) initiative. Unsurprisingly, despite the Centre approving ₹7,853.65 crore for Bengal under SSA between 2019-20 and 2023-24, only ₹6,049.56 crore has been released so far. State education department fund disbursement was particularly erratic in the last two years.
This is bad news for the state which is undergoing an acute crisis in the education sector with multiple scams. The multi-crore teacher recruitment scam has stymied the teacher recruitment process of the state for the last one decade as hundreds of court cases are yet to be solved. Moreover, the recent tablet fund scam in which state government funds allotted for students of class eleven to buy tablets have been fraudulently transferred to different accounts, depriving more than 1900 students and the irregularities regarding admission to B.Ed courses have left the education sector of the state in shambles. For a cash trapped state like West Bengal delay or denial of central funds, especially those allotted for its limping education sector, can have serious implications on the education standards of students.
Also read: West Bengal: Emerging reforms consensus