Banga Vidyalaya at Jharia in Dhanbad. Picture by Gautam Dey

Dhanbad, Jan. 2: Bengali might get its due: the second language status. But the government’s little interest in providing minority educational institute tag to a Bengali medium school, reveals its lack of commitment to promote the language.

Established in the British era at Jharia, Banga Vidyalaya is one of the oldest Bengali medium school of the state.

The institute is in a sorry state due to the lack of funds. The school meets its expenses by collecting a nominal fee from the students. “Apart from maintaining the school, we have to pay the salary of the teachers from the collected amount,” said Dwij Pada Banerjee, the principal of the school.

The school imparts education upto Class VIII. Once the school that boasted of 500-plus students, is now struggling to retain 100.

Moreover, many of the quality teachers, who made the school popular in Jharia and adjoining areas, have left the institute as they were dissatisfied with the meagre salary.

And those who stayed back, hoping that the school would get the minority institute tag someday and they would have a better future, now regret their decision. “I have spent 30 years of my life teaching here and you I can barely manage to put food on the table for my family,” said a teacher.

Lack of funds has taken a toll on the infrastructure of the school as well. Once well-stacked, the school library shows dusty and empty racks as old books got damaged due to lack of maintenance and new ones were never bought, said the principal.

This, despite the fact that the human resource development department had conducted several enquiries as a prerequisite for granting minority institution status to the school — sought for the first time in early ’60s. The most recent survey was conducted on December, 2008.

“Students from far-off places such as Amtal and Patherdih used to study in the school,” said Banerjee, adding that the alumni of the school include several eminent doctors, engineers and colliery officers, including the famous gynaecologist D. Chakraborty, T.K. Mukherjee. The crown prince of the Jharia estate M.P. Singh is also an alumnus of the school.

Principal Banerjee has been fighting to get minority educational institute tag for the school since 1960.

Contacted, the district superintendent of education Ratan Kumar said:“We have sent out the necessary information about Banga Vidyalaya.It is upto the HRD department to take necessary step.”