Bengal Education System: A Shocking Crisis
Sep 21, 2026 - By Ashutosh Roy PoliticsCurrent AffairsEducation & TechRegional UpdatesWest Bengal Politics
Bengal Education System: What Went Wrong?
When the Vice-Principal’s room has to be “purified” with Gangajal, when violent students can drag a Principal out of his office, and when a Vice-Chancellor is pressured by the highest authority to postpone examinations simply because they clash with a student union’s anniversary programme, what is left of the Bengal Education System?
These are not isolated incidents of indiscipline. They expose a deeper collapse of institutional authority, academic dignity and basic administrative independence. An education system cannot survive when political pressure, student violence and humiliation of academic authorities become normal features of campus life.
How Bengal Lost Its Educational Legacy
West Bengal has inherited one of India’s strongest educational traditions. Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Presidency College, Calcutta University, Jadavpur University and a long line of scientists, economists, writers, doctors and academics created a culture where education was much more than a route to a government job.
It was connected with intellectual freedom, social reform, scientific temper and the confidence to question authority. That tradition has not vanished completely. Bengal still has excellent teachers, talented students and institutions capable of producing world-class work.
Still the overall condition of the West Bengal Education System is increasingly difficult to defend. Political interference, recruitment controversies, examination irregularities, campus violence, administrative delays and weak institutional accountability have steadily damaged public confidence. The uncomfortable truth is that no single government or political party can be blamed for the entire decline. The political colour has changed several times, but the temptation to control educational institutions has remained.
Along with political elitism, the old intellectual confidence of Bengal has also fallen sharply.
When Did Bengal Education System Start Declining?
There is no single date from which the decline of West Bengal education system can be measured, but some episodes from the past give us enough warning signs.
Ashok Mitra, a distinguished economist, academic and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, resigned from the Left Front government in 1986 after differences with Jyoti Basu and the government. Still Ashok Mitra had to resign from Jyoti Basu’s cabinet because of an ideological disagreement. He had openly opposed nepotism in education. He did not want loyalty to the party to become a criterion for recruitment.
There was another issue on which the two senior Left leaders differed. Mitra advocated institutional reforms, including a differential fee structure in higher education. He believed that students from wealthier families should pay higher fees so that the additional revenue could be used to strengthen public education.
There could certainly be a legitimate policy disagreement between two senior Left leaders on the second issue. But the first issue was far more fundamental: political patronage and recruitment based on loyalty to the party.
Jyoti Basu, for his part, understood another important problem. Teachers could not be expected to perform properly if their salaries and service conditions remained uncertain. The Left government’s efforts to improve teachers’ financial security gave the profession greater stability. But financial security and political control are not the same thing.
The danger begins when party loyalty becomes more valuable than academic merit in recruitment, appointments or institutional influence. Once people inside a system believe that political connections can improve their professional prospects, the formal rules may continue to exist on paper while an entirely different set of informal rules starts operating underneath. That is the point at which education begins to lose its institutional character. I would describe that phase as Anilayan—the gradual entry of political loyalty into areas where academic merit should have remained supreme.
When Merit Starts Losing to Influence
The recruitment system is perhaps the clearest example of what happens when institutional safeguards collapse. The West Bengal school recruitment controversy has already caused extraordinary damage to public confidence, with the Supreme Court’s intervention and the cancellation of thousands of appointments turning what was once an administrative process into one of the state’s biggest educational scandals.
The wider controversy involved allegations of manipulation of merit lists, irregular appointments, blank OMR sheets and inflated scores. The scale of the controversy was so large that the ordinary distinction between a genuine candidate and a tainted candidate became a matter of prolonged legal scrutiny. For a student who has prepared honestly for years, the message is deeply discouraging. If money or influence can interfere with the result, then hard work itself begins to look foolish.
Still the Primary Teachers are spending sleepless nights as their case remains pending in the Supreme Court.
The visual explanation published by Brut India under the title “The biggest recruitment scandal in West Bengal” is useful in understanding how the controversy was presented to a wider audience. The video discusses the allegations surrounding blank OMR sheets, inflated scores and the dismissal of more than 25,000 plus teachers and non-teaching staff members following the recruitment controversy.
It is worth watching alongside the legal record because it shows why the issue became far bigger than a dispute over a few appointments. The legal proceedings and investigative allegations must, of course, be distinguished from final convictions, but the institutional damage is already obvious. A recruitment examination does more than fill vacant posts. It tells an entire generation whether preparation and competence still have any value. If honest candidates begin to believe that political connections or money can decide their future, the education system is teaching them a lesson that no textbook can correct.
Long History of Bengal Education Crisis
Examination malpractice is also not a new disease in Bengal. During the politically turbulent decades of the past, particularly in the 1970s, there were periods when copying and the use of prepared slips became common in some examination centres, while weak enforcement allowed the practice to continue. In certain places, the system seemed to tolerate what should have been treated as a serious violation.
Cheating almost became a democratic right for some sections of students. That may sound like a minor examination problem, but it is actually a much deeper institutional failure. A child learns very early whether rules have meaning. If one student spends months studying while another carries prepared material into an examination hall and receives the same reward, the lesson is brutally simple: effort is optional if the system can be managed.
The allegations surrounding RG Kar Medical College showed how dangerous this mentality can become when it reaches professional education. Investigators recovered medical examination answer sheets from a residence linked to former RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh, while junior doctors alleged that marks could be manipulated and that students could benefit from money-based arrangements.
Reports also referred to allegations surrounding a so-called “North Bengal lobby” and questions about Ghosh’s return to the prized RG Kar principal’s post after earlier transfers. These remain allegations and must be established through investigation and due legal process. But the underlying issue cannot simply be dismissed. In medical education, an unfairly awarded mark is not merely an injustice to another student. A medical degree carries responsibility for human life, and therefore the integrity of medical examinations is a matter of public safety as well as academic ethics.
From Anilayan to Mamatayan
The end of the Left government did not end political influence over education. The political machinery changed, and new networks developed. During the Mamata Banerjee era, allegations concerning political influence over recruitment, postings, campus administration and institutional decisions became increasingly prominent, and the term Mamatayan can be used to describe this later phase of political control.
That does not necessarily mean every teacher, student, professor or administrator became politically compromised; such a sweeping claim would be unfair and factually indefensible. Bengal still has thousands of honest education professionals who continue to work despite political pressure and administrative shortcomings. The larger problem is the environment in which they have to work, where political networks can sometimes appear more powerful than institutional rules.
The Calcutta University examination controversy of 2025 provided another uncomfortable example. The university held fourth-semester examinations on the foundation day of the Trinamool Congress student wing, TMCP, despite demands for postponement, while Burdwan University postponed examinations to allow students to attend a TMCP programme. There is nothing wrong with students participating in political activity.
TMCP has a legitimate place in democratic student politics, just as SFI, ABVP and other organisations do. The trouble starts when a political programme can influence an academic calendar.
Examination dates involve thousands of students, teachers, invigilators and families; they cannot be treated as a flexible political timetable. A university should be able to tell every political organisation the same thing, irrespective of which party is in power: The academic calendar must follow academic requirements, whoever is asking for a change.
What Happened to Student Democracy?
Bengal also has an unresolved contradiction in student politics. Formal student-union elections have remained suspended for years, with student elections having been in abeyance since 2013, even though there have been exceptions and different arrangements at individual institutions.
At the same time, allegations have periodically surfaced about former students continuing to operate around union rooms and using informal political influence to collect money from students, intervene in admissions or pressure college authorities. These allegations must be investigated rather than casually converted into facts, but the government should not pretend that permanent suspension of elections has solved the problem. In reality, removing formal democratic mechanisms can leave behind informal power structures that are even harder to monitor.
A sensible system would bring back student elections under strict rules. There should be transparent eligibility criteria, spending limits, restrictions on outsiders entering campuses, clear disciplinary provisions and immediate consequences for violence. Students should be taught democracy by actually experiencing it.
If elections are suspended indefinitely while political organisations continue to operate informally, the result is not political neutrality; it is an unaccountable political grey zone. Bengal does not need either violent campus politics or an endless suspension of student elections. It needs student democracy with clear rules like the left regime.
Could Jadavpur University Be A Warning?
Jadavpur University deserves special attention because its reputation was built over decades through engineering, science, humanities and research. It has produced scholars, scientists and professionals who have contributed far beyond Bengal, and therefore every serious disturbance inside the campus carries consequences beyond the immediate confrontation.
The clashes involving ABVP and Left-leaning student groups, along with allegations about outsiders and rival claims regarding responsibility, should be investigated strictly on evidence rather than political convenience. The important point is not which political organisation wins the argument on television. It is what happens to students when a university repeatedly becomes a battlefield for political confrontation.
Students lose academic time, teachers are forced to work in uncertainty, parents become anxious and the institution’s reputation suffers. Political organisations can move on to the next demonstration, but students cannot move their laboratories, libraries and academic schedules somewhere else. The West Bengal Education Crisis cannot be resolved unless educational institutions are given genuine autonomy.
The new government should therefore treat Jadavpur not as a political trophy but as a test case. If the BJP wants to demonstrate that Bengal has entered a new era, the university should be able to function with academic freedom, lawful student politics and zero tolerance for violence or intimidation, regardless of whether the pressure comes from the Left, TMC, ABVP or any other organisation.
After May 2026, Has the Political Culture Really Changed?
The BJP’s victory in Bengal in 2026 created enormous expectations because the party had spent years attacking the previous government over political interference, corruption, recruitment irregularities and syndicate culture.
It now has the opportunity to prove that those criticisms were not merely election slogans. But the real test will be whether BJP supporters are allowed to become the new political gatekeepers on campuses. A political organisation becoming stronger through lawful democratic participation is perfectly legitimate. The danger is whether the new ruling establishment gradually develops its own network of political influence over educational institutions.
This is where the phrase “Trinamoolisation of BJP“ becomes relevant. If the BJP removes one group of politically connected people and replaces them with another group loyal to the new ruling establishment, Bengal will have experienced a change of political management rather than educational reform. The same principle should apply to student organisations. ABVP should not receive special treatment simply because the BJP is in power, just as TMCP should never have received special treatment when the TMC controlled the government. The new government must be careful not to repeat the same politicisation under a different flag.
A principal should be able to reject a political demand without fearing retaliation; a professor should be able to disagree with the government without worrying about his or her career; and a student should be able to support an opposition organisation without losing access to legitimate academic opportunities.
Teacher Transfer Bill: Reform or Another Layer of Control?
The new Teacher Transfer Bill 2026 has opened another important debate. The West Bengal Assembly passed the 2026 amendment enabling teaching and non-teaching employees to be transferred between state-run universities for administrative reasons. The legislation provides for preservation of seniority and gives transferred employees options relating to lien or absorption, while the government has argued that experienced faculty can be deployed to newer or under-resourced universities.
Teacher organisations including JUTA and CUTA, however, have raised concerns about university autonomy, job security and the possibility of excessive centralised control, and representatives from several universities have announced plans for sustained protest and legal action. If the dispute escalates, Bengal’s universities could face another prolonged confrontation within months.
There is a legitimate administrative argument behind the government’s position. If a newly established university in a district has inadequate experienced faculty while another institution has suitable manpower, some mechanism for rational deployment may be necessary.
A professor may spend years building a laboratory, developing research projects and guiding students. A transfer policy therefore needs objective criteria, institutional consultation and safeguards against arbitrary decisions. Otherwise, a measure introduced in the name of administrative efficiency can gradually become another instrument of control. Bengal should not discover that it has merely replaced one form of political pressure with another.
Why Open More Universities When Schools Are Struggling?
Before announcing another university or another grand building, the new government should answer a much simpler question. We have seen the previous government under Mamata Banerjee built up many Universities but hardly took any action for proper infrastructure and manpower.
What is happening to the schools that already exist? Recent UDISE+ reporting put the number of West Bengal schools recorded with zero students at 4,133, alongside 19,502 teachers, while thousands of single-teacher schools were also reported.
The government has indicated that some zero-enrolment figures may reflect data-related discrepancies, so the headline number should not simply be treated as a list of schools that physically have no students. Yet the underlying teacher-distribution and school-management questions remain serious.
The answer cannot be to close schools mechanically or to create universities simply because a new institution sounds politically attractive. Bengal needs proper school mapping, demographic analysis and rational teacher deployment. If one school has almost no students while another struggles to provide adequate teachers, public resources are clearly not being used according to educational need. The same principle applies to higher education to come out of the prolonged West Bengal Education Crisis.
Before opening another university, the government should publish the condition of existing universities: how many teaching posts are vacant, how many students are enrolled, what research is being produced, how much infrastructure is being used and how many graduates are actually finding meaningful employment. A new signboard is not an education reform.
A proper planning and strict implementation can only bring a real education reform in Bengal.
Can The Admission Delay?
The undergraduate admission delays of 2025 exposed another weakness in Bengal’s education administration. Admissions to around 460 state colleges and universities were stalled amid the controversy over OBC certificates, affecting nearly 4.83 lakh students after the Higher Secondary results. The problem was not merely that students had to wait a few extra weeks. Students have academic calendars, admission deadlines, family budgets and career plans.
A student who waits too long for a government college may eventually move to a private institution or leave the state, and reports during that period highlighted exactly such concerns. Later reports also showed a very high proportion of vacant seats in state-run institutions after counselling rounds. The higher education in Bengal faced its hardest blow in 2025.
This should force the government to examine the entire admission system rather than simply blaming one administrative problem. Technology can make admissions easier. It cannot rescue a system that keeps changing its own rules. Bengal needs a predictable academic calendar in which students know when results will be published, when applications will open, when merit lists will appear and when classes will begin. A government notification should never become the reason why a student loses an academic year or leaves the state in frustration.
Does Bengal Really Need More Graduates Every Year?
There is another question that governments usually prefer to avoid. Every government naturally wants to announce more colleges, more universities and more graduates because the political language of expansion sounds progressive. Unfortunately we hardly hear about plans that can Revive Bengal Education System. Can education policy really stop at counting the number of degrees issued?
Bengal needs educated young people, but it also needs to ask what those young people will do after graduation. If a student spends three or four years obtaining a degree and then spends several more years waiting for a government recruitment examination, the education system has not necessarily produced productive human capital. The early launch of Yuva Sathi just before the election has shown us the disastrous condition of youths of Bengal.
Government jobs will remain attractive because they offer security, but the entire economy cannot be designed around government recruitment.
Bengal needs stronger links between universities and industry, better vocational education, apprenticeships, research opportunities, entrepreneurship, technology training and practical skills. Courses should increasingly reflect the changing needs of the economy rather than simply continuing because they have existed for decades.
The government should know how many graduates the state actually needs in different disciplines and what sectors can absorb them. Producing graduates without producing opportunities is eventually another form of unemployment. Why not focus on quality instead of quantity?
Does Bengal lack Educational Expertise?
The state does not lack experienced administrators who can help design such reforms. Dr. Subrata Gupta, IAS (Retd.), appointed Advisor to the Chief Minister in May 2026, has held senior responsibilities in the state and Union governments, including a role under the Ministry of Food Processing Industries.
Bengal has many experienced civil servants, academics, researchers and professionals who understand how large institutions function. The government should use that expertise to build a long-term education strategy instead of allowing every reform to become an extension of day-to-day political competition.
But expertise alone is not enough. Committees can write reports, bureaucrats can design frameworks and ministers can announce policies. None of that guarantees reform.
Reform succeeds only when the political leadership is prepared to accept institutional autonomy even when that autonomy becomes inconvenient. A university that is genuinely autonomous may sometimes criticise the government.
A professor with academic freedom may sometimes disagree with a minister. A student union may organise a protest against the ruling party. These are not failures of democracy; they are evidence that democracy is functioning. The government’s strength should be measured by its ability to tolerate such disagreement while maintaining law and order and academic standards.
What Should A Real Revival Model Look Like?
The Bengal Education System needs a structural revival rather than a collection of announcements. Recruitment should become completely auditable, with a digital trail from application to appointment and independent monitoring strong enough to make manipulation difficult. Examination systems, particularly professional examinations, need secure question-paper handling, answer-sheet tracking, strict invigilation and meaningful punishment for malpractice.
The state should also publish institutional performance reports covering vacancies, recruitment, examinations, finances, student outcomes and major administrative decisions. Transparency should be part of normal administration, not something the government discovers after every scandal.
School education requires equally serious attention. Government schools should be mapped according to actual student numbers, demographic trends, infrastructure and teacher availability. Where schools have genuinely lost their student base, the government should examine the reason instead of simply maintaining them indefinitely; where students are present but teachers are inadequate, resources must move there.
At the higher-education level, the government should stop judging success by the number of universities created and start measuring teaching quality, research output, employability, student retention and institutional reputation. Student elections should return under a transparent regulatory framework, with strict rules against violence, outsiders, excessive spending and coercion. Political participation should be permitted, but political capture should not.
Education Reform Must Rise Above Political Control
A political party and a university serve completely different purposes. A political party needs organisational discipline and loyalty; a university needs intellectual disagreement. A party campaign promotes a particular political position; research often begins by challenging accepted positions.
A party may want a cadre to follow instructions; a university must teach students to question instructions when evidence demands it. Bengal has repeatedly made the mistake of mixing these two very different cultures.
There is nothing wrong with students holding political beliefs. In fact, universities should encourage young people to understand competing ideologies and participate in democracy. But political participation must never become political dependency.
A student should not require a party connection for admission or other legitimate academic opportunities. A teacher should not need political protection to disagree with a policy. A principal should be able to reject a political demand. An examination date should be decided by academic requirements rather than the programme schedule of a political organisation. These safeguards should apply regardless of who occupies the seat of power.
Why Should the System Also Change?
The Left had its period of influence. The Trinamool Congress developed its own networks. The BJP now has the opportunity to create a different institutional culture. That opportunity should not be wasted. The electorate did not vote merely for a change of faces in government offices; the expectation was that the old system of corruption, patronage, syndicate influence and political pressure would be dismantled.
If the BJP simply removes one group of politically connected people and replaces them with another group loyal to the new ruling establishment, Bengal will not have experienced educational reform. It will have experienced a change of political management.
The strongest reform would be one that creates rules which remain intact even after the BJP eventually leaves office. If the government builds universities with genuine autonomy, transparent recruitment and predictable academic calendars, a future government will find it harder to misuse those institutions.
Lasting reform comes from reducing the government’s ability to capture institutions, not from teaching a new government how to control them better.
Knowledge Mart Final Thoughts
Changing a few faces will not change the Bengal Education System. Changing vice-chancellors, appointing new administrators, opening new campuses and increasing budget allocations may all have a role, but none of them addresses the central problem if political influence continues to determine how institutions function.
Bengal needs a much deeper institutional reset in which merit is restored to recruitment, examinations become trustworthy, schools receive resources according to actual need, universities enjoy meaningful autonomy and students regain genuine democratic representation.
The BJP government has a special responsibility because it came to power promising a break from the previous political culture. Education provides one of the clearest opportunities to demonstrate that change.
If the government can resist the temptation to build its own permanent political machinery inside colleges and universities, it will have achieved something far more valuable than defeating its predecessor’s student wing. It will have created institutions capable of surviving future changes of government.
Bengal does not need Anilayan followed by Mamatayan followed by another version of the same political control. It needs institutionalisation alongwith a system where a student’s future depends primarily on ability and preparation, where a teacher’s career depends on competence rather than connections, where a professor can conduct research without political permission and where a university can disagree with the government without being treated as an enemy.
Governments will change. Political colours will change. The basic principles of education should not.
10 Key Takeaways
- Bengal Education System has a proud intellectual heritage, but political interference and institutional weakness have damaged public confidence.
- Ashok Mitra’s political independence remains relevant to the larger debate about intellectual freedom and political administration.
- The teacher recruitment controversy demonstrated how badly public faith can be damaged when merit-based appointments become surrounded by allegations of manipulation and corruption.
- The Brut India video on the recruitment scandal provides a useful visual account of the blank-OMR and inflated-score allegations surrounding the controversy.
- Examination malpractice is an old problem, but allegations involving medical examinations show why academic corruption can eventually become a public-safety concern.
- The BJP must avoid replacing one political network with another; Trinamoolisation of BJP would not amount to educational reform.
- The Teacher Transfer Bill may address manpower shortages, but implementation must protect academic autonomy and prevent arbitrary administrative control.
- West Bengal needs to examine its school network carefully before announcing more universities, particularly in light of zero-enrolment records, single-teacher schools and uneven teacher distribution.
- Delayed undergraduate admissions and vacant seats demonstrate that administrative efficiency is itself an important part of education policy.
- The ultimate test of revival is simple: merit, preparation and hard work must matter more than money, political connections or organisational loyalty.