Friday, 25 April 2025
Friday, 25 April 2025
It was 34 degrees, with a few ice-cream, sugarcane juice and aam panna vendors milling around, but no remorse in sight for the thousands of agitating teachers who gathered at Salt Lake’s Third Avenue in front of the West Bengal School Service Commission office, Acharya Sadan.
Looking for some shade, the teachers sat and protested. Why?
“We have nothing else to do, this is our last hope,” said one of the protesting teachers.
In pursuit of their own demand for justice, protesting doctors have become the biggest support for the teachers in troubled times. Food, fruit and bottled water were made readily available by the joint efforts of the Junior Doctors Front, Senior Doctors and Abhaya Mancha.
The Telegraph Online spoke to a few protesting teachers about their demands and struggle.
Mukleshar Rahaman, 35, was an English teacher at Natidanga Amiya Smriti Vidyalaya, Nadia. Rahaman said, “Our house runs primarily on my salary. I have to take care of my parents’ medical bills and other expenses.” He said that he had arrived on Monday (April 21) at the site of the protest and will remain there till a solution is found.
“We are untainted candidates and we have lost our livelihood. We want the SSC to take out the list of candidates that they had said they would. All the things being said about the different grades of counselling are false. I know people who paid Rs 18 lakh for their jobs and their names came in the first list. We are very disappointed with the situation. In my eyes, it seems like the tainted candidates are still the priority. Either that or the chief minister is seriously trying to cover for her minister.”
State education minister, Bratya Basu, had said the fresh list will be made public on April 21.
Rahaman said, “He is very good at drama. That is his career. I have no idea how educated he is, but what is happening against us can very easily be solved. They want to save the thieves in the ministry and we are suffering because of that.”
Lalita Biswas was a Sanskrit teacher for Class XI and XII students at a school in West Midnapore’s Keshpur. She too arrived on Monday noon, when the protests began.
She said, “I will stay here until our demands are met. We have received no help from the government. There was no food or water available last night. We have been going all the way to Central Park to use toilets because there are no bio-toilets here for us.” Speaking about the demands, the mother of a two-year-old said, “We want our jobs back at any cost. Until then, we will not budge. Every time we’ve had to protest, I’ve to leave my child and come. My mother-in-law is taking care of her. They understand how important the situation is because my salary is crucial to run the household.”
Prashanta Mandal, who has a family of six dependent on his salary, has his OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) sheet as proof of his qualifications.
He said, “Everyone at home is stressed because no one knows when this mess will end. We were hopeful that the situation would have gotten better, but it only seems to get worse every day. We have no hope left. My mind is completely blank, I have no idea how I will survive or how my family will survive.”
Mandal was at the Netaji Indoor stadium when chief minister Mamata Banerjee assured the dismissed teachers and non-teaching staff of backing them.
“The CM said she will stand beside us, but the state has come up with a completely different strategy. They have decided to call those who went through counselling one to three untaintend, which is not wholly true, because I am an untainted candidate. I went through the fourth counselling, so, according to the state, I am tainted. We have no clue how to proceed.”
Sukomal Jana, 37, was a mathematics teacher at Debipur HM Vidyapith in Kultali, South 24 Parganas. He arrived at the scene of the protest at 10am on Monday.
He said, “We want our jobs to be secured in accordance with the Supreme Court’s judgment. We don’t want to keep facing the same issues we have been facing about our credibility.”
Jana, who too was present at the meeting at Netaji Indoor Stadium, said, “She [CM Banerjee] said she would help us get our jobs back. But now, the situation has completely changed. The government has not supported us, instead they are causing a bigger mess. NGOs have come forward to help us with food and water, but no one from the government has assured us of anything. We want the list to be announced at the earliest. We want to get back to our jobs. It is too late for us in life to look at other career alternatives. We might as well sit on the streets till we get our jobs back, because we have lost absolutely everything. ”
Rupali Murmu, 36, hails from Paschim Midnapore. She was a teacher at a government school in Garden Reach. Murmu stays at a women’s hostel and she is unsure how she will pay her rent for the coming months.
“We give our best to get government jobs because of security. It isn’t about me getting my salary till December. I want the job security I deserve till the age of 60. I have worked really hard and had to wait really long. Sitting for a fresh exam is unfair because we already are disconnected from the syllabus. And why should we give another exam? We had to wait for years to get this job anyway. I don’t want to spend more time waiting for the results to come out. I am a qualified candidate and I demand what I deserve.”
